HoI4 Dev Teasers (previously Podcat's Twitter Teasers)

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I was afraid of this. I really don't like having a communist tree for the US.
I don't have anything against alt-history, but it would work better if the "point of divergence" was not 1936 but earlier. Both communist USA and monarchist Germany aren't very plausible if the alt-history starts in 1936, but with NSDAP getting embroiled in public scandals or the American government botching something in response to the great depression (more dead during the bonus army debacle...) it wouldn't be that much of a problem. Getting a newspaper with the divergent history (telegraphing the possible major alt-history paths) at game start would be an interesting solution. Given that they are almost always based on internal politics there shouldn't be too much unwanted coupling between the various countries.
 
Tomorrows Dev Diary will be about UK though, at least according to last weeks Dev diary
 
I don't have anything against alt-history, but it would work better if the "point of divergence" was not 1936 but earlier. Both communist USA and monarchist Germany aren't very plausible if the alt-history starts in 1936, but with NSDAP getting embroiled in public scandals or the American government botching something in response to the great depression (more dead during the bonus army debacle...) it wouldn't be that much of a problem. Getting a newspaper with the divergent history (telegraphing the possible major alt-history paths) at game start would be an interesting solution. Given that they are almost always based on internal politics there shouldn't be too much unwanted coupling between the various countries.
I'm not against alt-history either, but surely there are other possible alt-history paths for America that don't involve switching ideologies.
 
I'm not sure what the issue here is. We haven't seen even half of what's to come and the salt is already real. Current America to begin with is far more entertaining when you flip in ideology, I don't see what it would hurt to make that official, along with other paths and improvements.
 
So German communists aren't plausible but US communists are? This is getting ridiculous, what's the metric here? How do they choose what to include or not? It feels like they're just doing it for the memes at this point
 
So German communists aren't plausible but US communists are? This is getting ridiculous, what's the metric here? How do they choose what to include or not? It feels like they're just doing it for the memes at this point

We never said German communists were implausible?
 
So German communists aren't plausible but US communists are? This is getting ridiculous, what's the metric here? How do they choose what to include or not? It feels like they're just doing it for the memes at this point

The metric being 'available time for implementation'. I was personally quite miffed by it because I had ample ideas to work with. As for how we choose what to include and what not, deadlines tend to have a thing or two to say about that.
 
The metric being 'available time for implementation'. I was personally quite miffed by it because I had ample ideas to work with. As for how we choose what to include and what not, deadlines tend to have a thing or two to say about that.
it's very weird that you prioritized a democratic path over a communist path for germany, because the democratic path is boring af and from a gameplay pov it makes sense having an extra communist major power rather than a democratic one

also the kaiserreich was itself a functional democracy and the kaiser was a constitutional monarch

just my $0.02 anyway, i appreciate the variety you add but i think the german democratic branch is the least interesting one you've done so far
 
it's very weird that you prioritized a democratic path over a communist path for germany

I will reiterate:

'available time for implementation'

It was the most time-efficient to tie in with the other path we were adding. A communist tree with an entirely new entry point would have required -much- more time.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I think that may be a UK focus... The idea being that they are spreading the revolution back to the colonies or something. We dont know how far down the tree the focus is so it may just be one to get wargoals on the USA.

It also fits the tweet of being a jab at the 4th of july
 
So German communists aren't plausible but US communists are? This is getting ridiculous, what's the metric here? How do they choose what to include or not? It feels like they're just doing it for the memes at this point
To me "plausibility" doesn't seem to be a metric whatsoever, from all the nations, Japan's alt-hist is the most outlandish of all.
The idea really seems to have fun with goofy scenarios, so for that, a communist path for Germany might not work, seeing as most of their action is with the Soviets.
Maybe if we already had an alt-hist Russia, or a differentiation between communist branches, that might've been more feasible.
With that said, I do agree with @grandad1982, the US (and the UK as well), would have quite an interesting and fun fascist and communist paths.
 
The metric being 'available time for implementation'. I was personally quite miffed by it because I had ample ideas to work with. As for how we choose what to include and what not, deadlines tend to have a thing or two to say about that.

So the metric for including something or not is simply whether you have time or not, not whether it was remotely plausible historically? I'm just trying to get a sense of how things are prioritized.
 
So the metric for including something or not is simply whether you have time or not, not whether it was remotely plausible historically? I'm just trying to get a sense of how things are prioritized.
Time seems to be their credit for everything. Ask why this feature or that feature wasn't added, or why this bug still hasn't been squashed. The inevitable answer, if you could actually get one from a dev would be that it's due to time.
 
Time seems to be their credit for everything. Ask why this feature or that feature wasn't added, or why this bug still hasn't been squashed. The inevitable answer, if you could actually get one from a dev would be that it's due to time.

It just seems like if the limiting resource here is time, wouldn't that time be better spend improving the historical parts of various trees before going into Communist USA-type stuff?
 
It just seems like if the limiting resource here is time, wouldn't that time be better spend improving the historical parts of various trees before going into Communist USA-type stuff?
It seems unclear who actually works on what when it comes to content; as far as I know there's no way to tell if focus tree time and mechanics time is zero sum. Either way I'll reserve the majority of my salt for the customers. If no one cared about government flip focus trees they'd probably stop making them.