HOI4 Dev Diary - Meet some new people

  • 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.

podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
Paradox Staff
12 Badges
Jul 23, 2007
12.811
38.516
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Semper Fi
  • 500k Club
  • Europa Universalis III: Collection
  • Europa Universalis IV: Pre-order
  • Hearts of Iron II: Beta
  • Europa Universalis: Rome Collectors Edition
  • Mount & Blade: Warband
  • Paradox Order
  • Hearts of Iron IV Sign-up
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory
Hi everyone, we are still working on 1.4.1. The initial plan was to release it today, but we are currently chasing a multiplayer bug. Its looking likely for a release tomorrow though and an update on the beta version today.

So this diary will be a little brief as we focus on the patch work, and if you want to help test 1.4.1 you can find out how to here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...eta-patch-checksum-73d8-updated-26-6.1031090/.

Our game reports useful data to us, and I'd figured I'd share some of it with you as well.
Here is a list of the new countries in DoD and their relative popularity last week:
1. Hungary
2. Romania
3. Yugoslavia
4. Czechoslovakia

its roughly how I expect it, but what sticks out is that Hungary is almost twice as popular as Romania. In fact right now the only nations more popular to play is Germany, Soviet, USA and Italy. I suspect part of this is because its new stuff (my check doesnt care if you own DoD or not btw) but clearly Austria-Hungary formation is a big draw. We'll keep our eyes on it and see how it develops long term :)

Another interesting data point is when people start. Seems only 4% of games are started on 1939 bookmark. This is something we have noticed across games in the company. People prefer the earliest start point with a large margin. This means that with its a pretty bad idea for us to focus on new start points over improving the popular option and that it probably would have been a good idea to skip the 1939 start for HOI4. I feel that its likely in hindsight that a '41 start could have been more popular.

As a side note we broke both our daily active players count and monthly active record during the DoD release and it seems to be going strong, so thanks everyone for enjoying the game :)

I also want to take the opportunity in this dev diary to present 3 people who just joined the team (art team had to give up lebensraum to fit the new ppl ;)). I'll let them introduce themselves:

Hi! I am @shultays , I am a new programmer at the team and I just joined Paradox a of couple weeks ago. I studied C.S. and then started working with embedded systems for a while (*yuck*) but I have been professionally developing games for the last couple years now. I am excited to work at Paradox and to work on such a complex game! I will be working mostly on the A.I., trying to make game more challenging and fun for you people. Get ready because soon you will be also fighting against me when you fight against the A.I.! Feel free to report anything or contact me so I can improve things around.

@JohanLerstrom here, I'm a senior programmer here at PDS and have worked on pretty much every game we have released since CK2. I even had a brief attempt at leading the CK2 team ( where you might have seen me in some streams ) but programming is my passion so I left the manager hat on the shelf and I've been moving between projects helping out for some time now. My very first contact with Paradox was playing Hearts of Iron 1 with my friends at a LAN party back in what feels like a million years ago so it feels fitting to be working on HoI4 now. My spare time is almost 100% Factorio these days, except an hour per week of Twin Peaks. (Podcat's note: not quite true, we also spend some work lunches discussing Twin peaks)

Yo people! I'm @Bratyn , a bit of the 'wild card' content designer at PDS (been on quite a few projects in a short span of time). I'm excited to be on HOI4 again (had a brief stint on it helping out for DoD), and this time I'll be here for a lot longer, working on some more cool content for HOI4 that I think is going to make the game even more fun to play. I'm Dutch, studied English and History in Norway (don't ask...), and wrote my Master's thesis on WWII while Paradox was developing HOI4. I love my strategy games, so you can imagine how excited I was to finally get to play HOI4 when it released, about a month after I had finished researching the period for nearly two years. Some interests of mine include history, sci-fi, astronomy (and science in general), and a nascent fascination with big WWII-era warships (WoWs!). Just gotta talk Podcat into adding more of the latter (and making them more fun to use) in HOI4...

See you all next week for a final diary before summer vacation whisks us off for much needed rest and relaxation :)
 
Nice to see the devs getting some "reinforcements".

I approve of the bug-swatting, but I have to say that when it comes to new scenarios: if there was a 1933 scenario (preferably starting 30.1.1933), I suspect that would probably be the one preferred by most users. No idea how that scenario could be made without new focus trees, though.

However, when it comes to putting a new focus for further developement of the game, naval warfare, overhaul of the major nations focusses (dlc?) and readjusting the AI in terms of policies and production seem to be important topics here in the forum at the moment.

Just a personal note: there is Steam summer sale at the moment, maybe some of the devs can give the guys at the paradox sales department a hint that they can make some money if they put a moderate discount on the TfV add-on. 10% off doesnt make it tempting yet.
 
*grabs popcorn*
 
please don't cancel the 1939 date. I'm one of those 4% who likes it.
 
Interesting info. Thank you for it, and welcome to the new guys! :)

By the way, my opinion is that people don't play in the 1939 start not only because of the 3 years they're missing,but also because of the mods that aren't compatible with the 1939 start . There are many people that play with mods, if i recall correctly , so that was expectable
 
As it's stands I find the most fun part of the game is the build up. The 39 start would lose that so I'm not interested.

If battle plans and the actual fighting was more fun and less frustrating I'd be more likely to just hop in to fight.

Welcome to hoi4 everyone!
 
Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone!

Team size is increasing. :) As @podcat said, we recently required more lebensraum to fit all of the team, so we implemented Fall Gold and invaded the artist quarter at the office. We now have a beachhead here consisting of three team-members (one of whom is an artist spy)!
 
Last edited:
Hi :)
Welcome @shultays
Feel free to report anything or contact me so I can improve things around.
I promise you we'll feel free to do so ;) Seem a smart move to enlist right before the one month vacation summer time, so we put a lot of hope in you now to teach the AI how to move like this :D
 
Great news about adding new human resourses to the project ! :cool:
Was much needed imho.

Another interesting data point is when people start. Seems only 4% of games are started on 1939 bookmark. This is something we have noticed across games in the company. People prefer the earliest start point with a large margin. This means that with its a pretty bad idea for us to focus on new start points over improving the popular option and that it probably would have been a good idea to skip the 1939 start for HOI4. I feel that its likely in hindsight that a '41 start could have been more popular.

My far prefered country to play is France, and what I can say is that '39 september start for it sucks horribly : not historical/realistic at all. So better to start '36. Though I'd like to try to resist as long as possible to the nazi hordes starting from that late bookmark..
 
Release tomorrow? Multiplayer bug? You do realize that the 1.4.1. beta update from 26/6 has introduced a significant amount of new bugs in SP. Just check the bug report forum.
 
People prefer the earliest start point with a large margin. This means that with its a pretty bad idea for us to focus on new start points over improving the popular option and that it probably would have been a good idea to skip the 1939 start for HOI4. I feel that its likely in hindsight that a '41 start could have been more popular.

Indeed, most folks play the very first scenario - always. However there are lots of people who would like an option to play a "Short Campaign" of sorts, by starting in the "middle" and going forward from there.

In CK2 I actually play the last scenario (1337) much more often than the initial one; in EU4 I focus on the Seven Years War bookmark more than the 1444 one, simply due to the fact that I prefer to play several fast campaigns where most stuff is already upgraded/researched for me, so I can focus on the action.

Perhaps it's not too late to include a 1941/early 1942 bookmark?
 
I remember playing Days of Decision/World in Flames (back in the 90's) and part of the enjoyment centered around the whole "What if?" and "Well I would have done this..." element of the Second World War. So I can see why everyone starts in 1936.
 
Release tomorrow? Multiplayer bug? You do realize that the 1.4.1. beta update from 26/6 has introduced a significant amount of new bugs in SP. Just check the bug report forum.

I want to second that. I also encountered some bugs that I haven't realized before in SP (they have all been posted already, so I did not create new threads). Take a week to trace and eliminate those bugs. I am sorry to have to say this, but I am tired of prematured releases.
 
Austria-Hungary being the most popular doesn't surprise me.

Conquering Austria and having Czechoslovakia as a dominion catapults you to almost 50 factories combined. Playing them, you can actually cause some real mayhem early on in the world.

---------

The 39 bookmark has always struck me as being a lesser polished experienced than the 36. The former still has some multiplayer potential though.