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Dev Diary - Recap Episode!

Hi everyone! Due to popular demand, today we are going to try to cover everything coming in Waking the Tiger and the 1.5 Cornflakes update. So if you kept up to date with diaries there will be a lot of stuff you do already know, but we also have updates on things that have changed since the diaries as well as things we simply haven't had time to talk about yet. So, grab a cup of tea and enjoy!

Chinese National Focus Trees
All Chinese factions with the exception of Mengkukuo have received new focus trees. While Nationalist China struggles to reform and fight the war against Japan, the Communists plot the great communist uprising that will sweep away Chiang Kai-Shek. The Warlords can take over China through political means or through new border wars, while just beyond the border, Emperor Puyi must choose whether to be loyal to his Japanese masters or try and reclaim his throne by himself.
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The major Chinese factions (Nationalists, Communists, and Manchukuo) are also able to approach outside factions for support in improving technology and providing support. The new focus trees also make heavy use of the decision system, with many country-specific decisions from reforming the army to infiltrating enemy territory in preparation of an uprising.

For more information, see the following Dev Diaries:
Manchukou
Nationalist China
Warlords
Communist China

Chain of Command
For Cornflakes things have changed since the last release and field marshals are now able to leading an Army Group, which is a certain number of Armies (what we had before) led by Generals. There are then places in theaters as before. Theaters are like before just a geographical organizational tool for the player and don't have a commander or the like to keep them as flexible as possible.
While the Generals still come with a soft cap for how many divisions they can efficiently command, the field marshals will now have a number of armies they can efficiently command. Bonuses from leaders trickle downwards, so you will want good people both as field marshals and generals.
Read more about chain of command in the diary here.

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Traits and Command Power Abilities
With Cornflakes we are taking a big step forward on fleshing out the Generals of the game. We are adding several new personality traits to better model them. We are splitting up the single digit skill level into 4 new skills: Attack, Defense, Planning and Logistics. This means that we can model a historic generals strength a lot better. For people with the expansion you will get a whole new screen for your commanders where you will be able to give them new assignable traits. These often give you access to Command Power Abilities. These are special abilities you can fire off from your commanders and they use a new resource called Command Power (it has more uses than this also). Read more details here.

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New Japanese Focus Tree
The Japanese Focus tree has been completely reworked to bring it up to the standards of more modern focus trees. Four main story branches have been added: Two historical ones that deal with the Japanese strategic dilemma of striking north against the Soviet Union or south against the Western Allies, and two dealing with alternate history scenarios for communist and democratic Japan.

For more information, see the relevant dev diary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi-4-dev-diary-japan-rework.1063457/

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Since releasing that dev diary, the Japanese surrender mechanic has been reworked somewhat. When surrendering to China, Japan will now sign a scripted peace that transfers all states on the mainland to their respective controllers in return for a peace.

Emperor Hirohito now has the trait “Imperial Sanction”, which raises the required world tension limit to create wargoal on China to 75%. This is to simulate his historic scepticism of foreign adventures and the low perceived threat coming from the divided and weakened China. The wargoal gained through the focus to stage the Marco Polo Bridge incident is unaffected by this.
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Japan can unlock bicycle cavalry!

Updated German Focus Tree
Germany has now received improvements and expansions to its focus tree, including new alternate history options. It is now possible to oppose Hitler and either revive the Kaiserreich or become a democracy. In the former case you can seek to rebuild Germany’s colonial empire, taking on France and Britain with the possible help of Italy and Austria-Hungary, or you can ally Britain and take on the Comintern. In the latter case, you can unite Europe in your alliance, and take the fight to the Soviet Union and any other places Communism may crop up on the continent.

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Other adjustments to the focus tree have also been made, including a revamp of the industrial tree, and additions to the naval tree, giving many more factories (including a focus switching a number of military factories into naval dockyards - the number going up the more coastline you have). All of this has been described in The New Germany diary. Since then, some new additions/changes have been made, however. The Naval Bomber focus has been improved slightly (2 research bonuses, up from 1), a new Long-Range Escorts focus has been added giving 2x Heavy Fighter research bonus, and the Fascist and Kaiserreich paths now provide options to gain cores on Alsace and Luxemburg, and Alsace only, respectively. In addition, the layout of the new German industrial tree has been inverted to make it look better, and some other minor layout changes have been made for the same reason.

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Waffen-SS Volunteers
Giving Himmler a cabinet position will allow the recruitment of historical and plausible alt-history SS-Divisions (like SS-Division Sveaborg from occupied Swedish territory) in occupied territory. These divisions will spawn with full manpower and often quite high veterancy, but minimal equipment. Their templates are locked, simulating the desire for the Waffen-SS to be organisationally separate from the Wehrmacht.

Repeated recruitment will upset the OKW Generals, who may start to plot against Hitler. Denying the SS recruitment in those territories too often will in turn anger Himmler, who may attempt a takeover.

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Decisions
One of the biggest new features is the addition of a Decisions/Missions system. A variety of these have been added to the game, allowing for quick, short-term decisions that, unlike events, allow the player total control over when they are taken. See https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-decisive-action.1053930/ for a more in-depth overview.

Some categories of decisions are the following:
  • Country-specific decisions: MEFO bills for Germany, surrender decisions for Japan, industry relocation and scorched earth decisions for Soviet Union/China, infiltration and border wars decisions for China, Mers-el-Kebir raid, Case Anton, and scuttling of the fleet decisions/missions for UK, Germany, and France, and many, many more.
  • Generic decisions/missions: Ways to improve stability/war support/research speed, object to attachés, dismantling of the Maginot line, destruction/rebuilding of the Suez/Panama canals, obtaining more building slots (mainly for smaller countries), and a variety of other benefits.
  • Resource development decisions: Create new resource deposits that were/could have been discovered at the time, or expand ones already in existence.
  • New Crisis system: Requiring player action when war support or stability get too low, or bad things will happen.
  • Ideology switching decisions: Gone are the old random events that allowed you to switch ideology - now you have total control over when and how through the decision system, but you will have to invest more political power.
  • Formable nations: Allowing the formation of new countries if you own their historical/plausible territory.
  • Many, many more.
Acclimatization
We have long wanted to simulate the problems associated with shifting troops to new fronts with more extreme weather they are not used to. In Cornflakes we adding a system that lets your soldiers slowly acclimatize to hot and cold weather and reduce those penalties (the penalties have been turned up a bit in turn!). For people with the expansion your troops will also change look when acclimatized. Here is what it looks like for winter (before to the left, after on the right).
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Read more about acclimatization in this diary and check out what desert looks like: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-acclimatization-and-special-forces.1059168/

Volunteer Air Wings
In addition to sending ground units as volunteers, you can now also send air wings in Waking the Tiger. Similar to the limit on land divisions, air wings are limited by the total number of airplanes you can send. The air wings operate from the airfields in the host country and can fulfill all the usual missions. This allows you to have your own Flying Tigers or Condor Legion.
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Strategic Air Priorities
When ordering your planes to conduct strategic bombardment, you can now set which targets they should prioritize. This does not mean they will attack those targets exclusively - bombs are not that accurate in the 1940ies, after all - but it will give you much more fine control over what your bombers hit.

You can read more about this and a few other air features in this diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...i4-dev-diary-airplanes-and-lootboxes.1052860/

Attaching Air Support to Armies
Air wings can now be assigned to directly support an army. The air wings will try to move to the closest air base (while trying to avoid overcrowding it) and conduct missions in the right air zone. Strategic bombers can not be assigned to armies as that would just be silly.
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Air Supply Mission
Transport planes can now be used to drop supplies to encircled troops (or in general to improve supply throughput in low-infrastructure areas). This will cost command power to maintain so you can’t easily do too many of these at once.
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Captured Equipment
Maintenance Support Units will now allow you to capture a certain amount of enemy equipment, starting at 5% of the equipment the enemy loses in a battle, going up as you research new technologies. Having a general with the Scavenger trait will increase this value. Note that its now also possible to lend lease equipment you capture and that its possible to destroy your stockpile. Check out this diary on all sorts of equipment features: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-2.1051941/

Attachés
You can now send attachés to other nations who are at war, for a cost of Command Power and Political Power. This gives you a fraction of the recipient’s Army/Naval/Air experience, gives you a small amount of ticking war support, and gives the recipient a planning bonus. Beware, though, because nations they are at war with may object to your attaché and demand you withdraw them. If you decline, and the objecting nation’s ideology has a lot of support in your country, you may receive a heavy backlash…

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Consolidate
It is now possible to combine understrength divisions together, when short on equipment or manpower. This is part of Waking the Tiger and can come in very useful in situations where having a few full-strength divisions is much more important than having a dozen low-strength ones. For more details: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-1.1049856/

Historical Army Insignias
To better visually separate the armies used in the new Chain of Command system, we have added a number of distinct army symbols. Germany, Britain, the US, France, and the Soviet Union have also received distinct nation-specific icons for added historical flavor. These come as part of the DLC. See more here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-3.1064427/

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Minimap & Pinging
Due to popular demand, Waking the Tiger will feature a minimap in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. In addition, we have added offensive and defensive pinging options to alert allies in multiplayer which aids communication a lot!
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Border Conflicts
Certain countries can now start border conflicts, which are a special kind of combat that does not put two countries into a full-on war. Instead, the fight will be restricted to one state between a very limited number of divisions. The winner takes the contested state (with some exceptions). This is currently used in China and to simulate the Japanese-Soviet conflicts along their shared border.

Border conflicts are started through the decision menu. The first step is to stage an incident at the shared border. Once there is a reasonable cause, you can escalate to a border war. After this, both sides can choose to escalate the border conflict to a full-scale war.
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Check this diary out for details on border wars: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...v-diary-border-wars-the-last-warlord.1060469/

Kick nation from faction
Ever wanted to kick members from your faction? Now you can, at least until you do it enough time to have the other members turn on you :)

Historical Template Namelists
As part of our quest to improve historical immersion, we have created a new system to name divisions. The system pulls from a scripted list of names. Which type of division pulls from which list is set by the player, changing a division’s template changes its name as well.
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Name lists have been provided for all nations available at game start and a large number of the releasable nations. Some formable nations also gain access to special name lists, so Austria-Hungary for example can use the old Royal and Imperial naming schemes.


Stability & War Support
National Unity has been completely removed from the game and replaced by two new values: Stability and War Support. The first represents the support the current form of government has in the population (this is connected but not too closely tied to party popularity). The latter simulates the willingness of the population to bear the hardships of war. Many laws and decisions are now tied to stability or war support, and low stability or war support while at war can quickly lead to crisises like mutinies in the army or wide-spread strikes that need to be dealt with.

The role of determining when a country surrenders is now played by a new value: Surrender Limit, which determines how many victory points need to be occupied before a country surrenders. The base value for this is 80%, but some countries may have higher or lower values (not naming any - France - names).
Get more details here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-dev-diary-stability-and-war-support.1044766/


Naval Updates
Keeping track of naval losses and kills is now a lot easier in a new detail view. There has also been some mechanics changes so check here for details: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-naval-updates.1068689/

Updated production interface
Such an awesome change! With Cornflakes we now have new filtering and drag-and-drop support and can assign more than 15 factories to a line.
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Updates and Changes to Wars
We have done a lot of changes to how wars are handled in the game to avoid problems, and we have also added a bunch of neat stuff to the war interface. Check out the diary for more info: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...iary-war-changes-and-game-difficulty.1066500/
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Refinery Techs
The techs for synthetic refineries have been split into two branches, which improve the oil and rubber output, respectively. These techs no longer increase the amount of refineries you can build in a state. There is now a maximum of three refineries per state.

Infrastructure Affect Resource Extraction
Improving infrastructure now also increase the amount of resources produced in the state. Several states with very low infrastructure had their resource output at game start rebalanced to reach the 1.4.2 level of output once infrastructure has been built up to a certain level.
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Special Forces & Techs
All special forces armies are now a thing of the past. Nations now get a % of their army (plus a baseline limit) that can be special forces. We have also added a new tech tree where you can improve your special forces and affect how many you can field.
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Read more details here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-acclimatization-and-special-forces.1059168/

Graphics!
The expansion is full of cool graphical updates with new 3d models for the different chinas and new portraits etc
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Go here to see it all: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-diary-sound-music-and-art-for-tiger.1067596/

Withdrawals
In Cornflakes you can now execute withdrawals. These differ from retreats in that the happen when the player tells the unit to retreat, not when they break in combat. A unit asked to retreat will fight its way out of the combat (while still able to regain some organization) and leave when it manages to get out. This is great on the defensive and its no longer as necessary to have godlike micro skills and retreat in lock-step and such to avoid getting overrun. We hope this will make fighting as china a lot nicer :)

Music and Sound
Waking the Tiger comes with a revamped battlesound system that sounds great and is very immersive. It also comes with 3 new music tracks.
More info here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-diary-sound-music-and-art-for-tiger.1067596/


Performance and AI

We have put a lot of effort into improving lategame performance and the AI. Read about it in more detail here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-performance-and-ai.1070758/.
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Next week its time for release (whoohoo finally!). We will also show the whole patchlog and a little bit more cool stuff…

Rejected Titles:
Previously on WAKING THE TIGER
Refuelling the Hype Train
Humble-Bragging about DLCs
Press F to pay respect to “1. Infantry Template 3” 2016-2018
It has been 0 days since the HoI team made a France surrender joke
Everyone on the dev team is now scared about compiling the patch log (You should be /Podcat)
I listened to the Cannon Fodder soundtrack during the whole writing of this beast
This diary is way too long to proofread.
 
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Yeah, I'd sooner they spawned with their historical template and you could then change them from there like a normal division. Like as the Soviet Union I can disband or reorganise the NKVD divisions - I don't think the game would be better if those divisions were locked to their starting templates.

Are you able to duplicate the existing template, then rename it off slightly (or however you want), modify that template, then change the division to the new template, leaving the original template intact for the game to use?
 
Why no Corps commanders or jungle acclimatization? I wish the popups were presented in a more interesting looking way. The popups are quite small and generic looking. I think they should be presented as newspapers or military reports or something like that.
 
Why no Corps commanders or jungle acclimatization? I wish the popups were presented in a more interesting looking way. The popups are quite small and generic looking. I think they should be presented as newspapers or military reports or something like that.

Because a Corps is just a small army, which is basically just a self limitation that you could introduce yourself, and as for acclimatization, they were making sure that it worked first for temperature... I can imagine that if it seems to be working they'll introduce terrain-associated acclimatizations!
 
I interviewed for a history teacher position at one of the local high schools and said that for World War II I would use HoI4 to teach about it. Probably not my best option, but I enjoyed it.
I don't think it would be a very effective tool to use, especially considering teachers are on a limited schedule in order to meet all standards. Lecturing on the topic is much more time-efficient than using a game that has a bit too much deviation available.
 
I don't think it would be a very effective tool to use, especially considering teachers are on a limited schedule in order to meet all standards. Lecturing on the topic is much more time-efficient than using a game that has a bit too much deviation available.

I was going to use it purely as a "mechanism" tool, while having the students role play as US congressional representatives through the legislative and committee process... not necessarily "Here's WWII!" but more "You're Representative Hooah from Texas, how do you bring whatever to your district balancing with what the nation needs..." and in the background, here's what happened for the rate of construction etc. Strictly incidental.
 
Why no Corps commanders or jungle acclimatization? I wish the popups were presented in a more interesting looking way. The popups are quite small and generic looking. I think they should be presented as newspapers or military reports or something like that.
Jungles are hot already, and usually quite a distance from the next desert, so why would the wtt system not Work?? I would assume Things Like water Management and lighter clothing are basically the same in These theatres.
 
This will be my first experience with a major release and how the modding community handles it. I realize Waking the Tiger is much more than what has appeared in the past.

So I'm curious. Once the release is out, how do the mod's handle it? I use Expert AI, Kaiserreich (and developing my own mod). Is there a general feel for how long it will take for those mod's to change? Or do they?
 
This will be my first experience with a major release and how the modding community handles it. I realize Waking the Tiger is much more than what has appeared in the past.

So I'm curious. Once the release is out, how do the mod's handle it? I use Expert AI, Kaiserreich (and developing my own mod). Is there a general feel for how long it will take for those mod's to change? Or do they?

The mods need to be made compatible with new mechanics (for example, national unity is out and war support/stability is in) before they'll be (at least reliably - it depends a bit on the scope of the various changes as to whether they'll work at all, but I'd always recommend waiting, particularly for a patch like Cornflakes) playable on the new release. How long this takes depends on the complexity of the mod and the size/availability of the team - there's no general rule, per se, as the range of situations is pretty broad (for example, BICE, KR or the modern day mods may require a fair bit of work, while my simple naval OOBs mod is something I could do in an hour or so - but if I have other commitments this week and the BICE team are prepped and ready, they might still have their mod updated first). If there's a forum thread/area for the mod you're particularly keen on, no harm in asking the modder/modders, they might be able to give you an idea of how long it'll take :).
 
Care to elaborate what a non-broken game would be like?

Features in the base game that people already payed for actually working? How bout the game not grinding to a halt 1/2 way through on top end systems? There's still broken focuses in the focus trees. Supply is still broken in a half dozen ways. A way to turn off ports for supply (so when Japan invades somewhere the supply ships don't route through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic bleeding out men/convoys)? How bout the monthly manpower bug. How bout the endless and useless air/naval spam? Why must it grind to a halt if I ignore the alerts, just make them go away after a while on their own, or let me turn them off. At the very least if I have to constantly right click a stupid icon to clear 1000+ alerts that I care nothing about why does the icon disappear permanently after 20 or so clicks and require a reload or hunting down every last one on the map? Do I need to hear BRRAAHHH, BRRAHHHH, BRRAAHHHH for the 100+ naval invasions that will never occur for hours on end? How bout UI scaling that actually works (hint, the tool tips are broken), I mean does anyone even have a 1920x1080 monitor anymore? There's the org loss bug (where units will very occasionally, when winning a defensive battle, lose all their org). The endless naval battles that never occur. The air war where nothing ever dies. Still impossible to invade Panama Canal from the west. Faction force joins.

And that's just off the top of my head atm. All the devs had to do is actually play the game through once or twice and 90% of these issues would be obvious. I mean is it that much to ask that the devs just play it through once before releasing it? Were at what, 1.5y after release, 3rd DLC, and we STILL HAVE DAY 1 BUGS!!???

And that isn't even touching the balance issues, AI issues (the fun of setting up battle plans that'll never be executed because hitting the execute button = insta suicide), or MP issues.
 
How bout the game not grinding to a halt 1/2 way through on top end systems?

Don't really want to pick over your post one sentence at a time, but they've done a lot of work on the performance and AI for the free patch you're getting in three days time.

You can work on bug fixes and new features concurrently, having new features doesn't mean that they didn't do any bug fixing.

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Don't really want to pick over your post one sentence at a time...

So the game can actually be finished 1.5y after release?? Am I supposed to be amazed? I swear you people are the poster boys for stockholm syndrome. Given their abysmal track record so far, I'll believe it when I see it and those performance graphs do not mean anything without knowing how they were actually constructed (ie. how the game played out). But lets go with the above graphs. i7-6700 is a top end CPU, so the best performance you can hope for is 62ms per frame on average over the whole graph?? That's 16 frames per second!?? And if that's an average over the entire game, that back end (ie. when countries are actually at war and not just building up) will be far worse than the average. They went from 'slide show' to 'slightly faster slide show'. How is that good? SC2 had 10x the units on screen doing far more complex calculations (and actual graphics) maintaining 60 fps on systems 10 years ago.

You can work on bug fixes and new features concurrently, having new features doesn't mean that they didn't do any bug fixing.

Given their track record, I don't think they can.
 
So the game can actually be finished 1.5y after release?? Am I supposed to be amazed? I swear you people are the poster boys for stockholm syndrome. Given their abysmal track record so far, I'll believe it when I see it and those performance graphs do not mean anything without knowing how they were actually constructed (ie. how the game played out). But lets go with the above graphs. i7-6700 is a top end CPU, so the best performance you can hope for is 62ms per frame on average over the whole graph?? That's 16 frames per second!?? And if that's an average over the entire game, that back end (ie. when countries are actually at war and not just building up) will be far worse than the average. They went from 'slide show' to 'slightly faster slide show'. How is that good? SC2 had 10x the units on screen doing far more complex calculations (and actual graphics) maintaining 60 fps on systems 10 years ago.

I think your reading that graph the wrong way.

It says nothing about frame times or fps at all.

It lists ms per "tick" which I interpret as ingame hour.

If the average time to resolve 1 ingame hour ( or tick ) is 62 ms then that means that a year ( or 365*24 = 8760 ticks ) take the system 543 seconds or about 9 minutes.

In some situations profiling itself also can hog a bit of resources, so this doesn't mean it will take 9 minutes to run the game in normal mode with same hardware, it might be faster but probably not slower.

We can also conclude that they ran almost 10 years from the number of total ticks resolved. The most interesting part of the graph IMO is that performance didn't degrade after 9 years ( 1945 ) compared to 5 years ( 1941 ).
 
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I think the Commonwealth and Eastern European countries are pretty big fish in this context though...
Even just creating some decisions and adapting their focus trees to use that system would already be very much worthwhile.

The way it goes, let's say you make a south american and a middle eastern pack in the future.
Those countries, which had comparatively little to do with the war, would have more depth and flavor with decisions than nations that were directly involved.

Please, rethink your position on this, for the good of the game.
You are obviously entitled to your opinions about fish sizes, but I dare say that we, as devs, have the better overview.

Don't mistake using new systems for depth and flavor. If that's what you feel the old content is lacking... well I'm sorry to hear that.

Imagine the backlash we would have gotten if we started by releasing content for South America and then moved on to Europe when we felt like we had a few more mechanics to work with...

On the design and content side we try to get as much out of what we currently have to work with, but if we had to go back and change everything with each new system we got you would be looking at exponential growth in development time and DLC prices.

This is still not a "No we will never look at old DLC", heck I would love it if someone threw 10mio$ (DISCLAIMER.. NOT ACTUAL BUDGET NUMBER) at the design department and told us to have fun and do whatever we wanted with the old content for a while. Sadly there is more to changing a tree to use a new system than "just creating some decisions and adapting their focus tree".
 
SC2 had 10x the units on screen doing far more complex calculations (and actual graphics) maintaining 60 fps on systems 10 years ago.
You are wrong on so many levels, you cannot compare an average strategy game to grand strategy title, it's like trying to compare FPS to an RPG.
 
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I'm really looking forward to this, but just one question - what about division spam? Also discussed elsewhere, but basically most nations (especially smaller ones) are able to field way too many divisions since not all rear support troops at division, corps, army, army group and theatre level are modelled. I think the most realistic would be to assign manpower to armies and army groups without the player getting any immediate benefit, but I guess the simplest way would be to just, say, double the service manpower of each division or halving the available manpower for the nations.