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HoI 4 Dev Diary - Formable Nations and Achievements

Hello, and welcome back to another dev diary! We are on the home stretch, with only two more issues to go before release! The team is working very hard to squash the last bugs and tweak the almost-possibly-partially-final values.


Today, we will talk about Achievements and Formable Nations.


Formable Nations have already been teased by some ill-advised clicking on stream. We won’t tell you just how you can get the infamous form_hre decision, but rest assured: it is quite a journey. And no, the trigger that was accidentally shown on stream is no longer quite so accurate...


The historical purists can also rest assured that they won’t see the decision pop up if they follow the historical path, and the AI is set to never go down this path.

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The goal of the Formable Nations system is to give players a goal to work towards and enhance the sandbox gameplay. The formable nations have proven quite popular in other titles such as EUIV and the economics-simulator-that-shall-not-be-named. The implementation was fairly simple on the mechanics side: if you are one of the countries that can form a nation and control the required territories, you can activate a decision to form that nation. This gives you a cosmetic tag and cores on the relevant territories.

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We have a few fairly plausible formable nations like the Baltic Federation, Scandinavia, or the United Netherlands, which are pretty easy to do. We also have a number of somewhat less historically accurate formable nations like, say a reborn Roman Empire (which Mussolini may or may not have been aiming for), and finally the really far out ones like the Byzantine Empire.

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We envision these latter ones to be a late-game thing, after you have already achieved dominance over your region, when you want a little extra flavor for that world conquest. We’ve also attempted to ensure that all world regions have at least some possible formables.

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Again, the AI is set to never take these decisions in historical mode, and the territory requirements are such that only the more plausible and easy ones would likely ever be taken by the AI.


Currently, you need to control the territory directly, but future iterations might also allow you to form nations diplomatically.


Your reward is a new name and country color and a new flag. We had a lot of fun coming up with alternative history flags for a lot of these countries. For some, there are some additional goodies like custom namelists.

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(This particular one is also available if you form Austria-Hungary through the Hungarian focus tree)

We’re not going to spoil the full list of countries that you can form - you can find them out yourself in just a few weeks.

And if forming a new nation isn’t enough of a challenge for you, Waking the Tiger also comes with 18 new achievements:

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Awake and Angry: Reconquer all of China and Manchuria and force a Japanese surrender.

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms - as China, puppet and then annex Yunnan and Guangxi Clique.

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Sun Tzu Reborn: As Any Chinese Nation, have fully upgraded/promoted field marshal to Level 10.

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The people have stood up!: With Mao as your leader, win the Chinese Civil War.

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Made in China: As Communist China, have over 100 military factories

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Tojo shot first: As Japan, nuke a core territory of the US before the US develops nuclear weapons.

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Sunrise Invasion: As Japan, conquer Mexico then Europe before 1945.

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The Dragon Swallowed the Sun: As Manchukuo, break free from Japan and annex your former Overlord without being in a faction.

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Hail to the Qing: As Manchukuo, restore the Qing dynasty.

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The good, the bad and the weird: As Manchukuo, have max level infrastructure in every owned state and generate at least 15 units of oil.

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Battlecry: As a warlord, conquer all of China and Japan.

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Panda-monium: As a warlord, be at war with all chinese nations simultaneously.

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Make a man out of you - Have at least 1.000.000 manpower queued up for deployment.

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My ships don't lie: Form Gran Colombia and have 20 capital ships

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I swear I’m not a Byzantophile: As Greece, Form Byzantine Empire.

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Australia-Hungary: Annex all of Hungary as Australia

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Our Other Place in the Sun: As Imperial Germany, conquer a Caribbean island.

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Monarchy is back in fashion: As Germany, bring back the Kaiser and ensure that Italy is controlled by Victor Emmanuel by killing Mussolini.


That is all for today. Next week, we will take a closer look at the nuts and bolts of the game and talk a little about what our AI programmer(s) have been doing in these past weeks. On stream, Daniel and Gabriel continue their run of “historical” Germany, so tune in at 16:00 CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


Rejected Titles:

Providing a sense of Pride and Accomplishment

Stealing Victoria II game mechanics for fun and profit, mostly profit

Dan Lind’s Disney Song Singalong

Google Search History: Byzantium Tank Division Names

We use only the finest memes for our achievements

Proud to announce the Shakira/Sabaton collaboration project
 
Seems to me that Byzantium is probably one of the least odd formables here. Sure, the name is ahistorical, but the Megali idea was a thing, and as recently as the treaty of Sevres, Greece was slated to get some decent sized chunks of Turkey.

A lot changed for Greece between the Treaty of Sevres and 1936 though, including several million dead and displaced Greeks who had been living in Anatolia.

That said, I am very happen we have more alt-history options baked into the base game.
 
The AI won't do the HRE ever. It will not take any in historical mode (this might change later if we find a way to properly detect if a game has gone very ahistorical), but will take them if they have the requirements in ahistorical mode. If AI Greece somehow manages to conquer all of Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and the necessary parts of Romania by itself, congrats, make a screenshot and post it on reddit for free Karma.
Thanks for the clarification! I was worried that I would see some pretty outlandish stuff in non-historical. Well too outlandish. :p Have you guys ever thought of creating a menu with various check boxes for features like in CK II?
 
I don't think Byzantium is ahistorical at all. After all, the Greeks tried to do it in 1919, but they were defeated by Ataturk.
The ahistorical thing about Byzantium is its name. "Byzantium" exists only in history books. The name the Byzantines used is Roman Empire. Since Italy can do the same empire in different lands, maybe there's need of a different name, hence Byzantium.
 
I also wish there was an achievement with the name of "Manchurian Candidate". Though I'm sure that was probably proposed.
 
I understand what you mean, I just don’t think Byzantium would ever be used. And I would like different names depending on which ideology is in command too, so complete agreement there!

But yeah. Paradox seems to agree with me that it’s impossible and be clear that this is strictly memery. I approve of large parts of this dev diary, I enjoy formable nations and think it’s fun with alt-hist paths. I just dislike the meme nations since I would like the theme to be more WW2 than EU4. I think it’s weird that they’re in vanilla. Mods, sure, but base game?

I also am a bit shocked about how many people defend HRE, Byzantium and Roman Emperor Mussolini as historically plausible.

Those are my gripes.

Totally agree, same here.
 
I also wish there was an achievement with the name of "Manchurian Candidate". Though I'm sure that was probably proposed.

When they do the DLC that gives us spies and subterfuge, I could see that one slipping in quite nicely too....
 
If you are playing in non-historical, I don't see why the AI shouldn't be able to pick the wacky options if they somehow stumble into the requirements, I'm sure it would be incredibly rare anyway.
 
Needs moving capitals on forming new tags, like in EU4.
the story is a bit different here tho. There you are forming it for the first time while in HOI its more like leadership are refering back to the glory days for their nation as a way of strengthening their position (dictators and all that) and for those cases moving your capital doesnt really make sense
 
Look, i don't mind these fantasy nations/scenarios but this is strange to say the least.

Personaly id rather have the content team working on scenarios such as the winter war or barbarossa.
As the games main selling point is about world war II.

It would fit the game a hell a lot more than forming byzantium or the kalmar union.
And btw if they had the time to work on these fantasy nations overcoming and coring states, why not work on a state coring mechanic instead.

Im sorry but this feels like a random feature that just appeared out of nowhere.
 
"HOI4 is a collection of bad mechanics in a pretty coat and good mechanics hidden beneath layers of obscurity so nobody understands them!"

"I can form Byzantium? Take my money now!"

Seriously though, nice addition if you ask me, my last game was in a modded Byzantium, it will be nice to see if I can put it back on the map myself. Right now I'm back in full swing with EU4 and enjoying it and after that it's probably time to check out Stellaris which seems to be improved from decent to spectecular with a few DLC's so I won't be touching HOI4 for a while but I'm pretty sure I'll be coming back to it at some point in the future. I don't have the feeling I scratched all the layers of the game and I'm sure that a few more gamechanging updates and DLC's like Stellaris had will improve it quit a bit going forward. I'm looking really forward to the alt-history refounding of the German empire or austria-hungary and reforming Rome or Byzantium is going to be icing on the cake.
 
the story is a bit different here tho. There you are forming it for the first time while in HOI its more like leadership are refering back to the glory days for their nation as a way of strengthening their position (dictators and all that) and for those cases moving your capital doesnt really make sense
I can understand that. I just feel it's silly to name your whole country after a city and then not make that city your capital.