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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
 
It doesn’t seem THAT unrealistic that Greece beats Turkey in a war. I see a path to Greek dominance of the region. I don’t see a path to the creation of a polity that never existed, that always saw itself as the Roman Empire. The communists wouldn’t want an empire, the fascists not a foreign empire, the democrats not an autocracy.

While Greek dominance of the Balkans and Anatolia was unlikely, the resurrection of Byzantium not even a goal for anyone involved. There are levels to the implausibility see. I’m fine with a lot but I want the theme to be WW2, not EU4.
That's why I asked if there would be custom names depending on the political stance, since after thinking a bit about it, having a Communist or Democratic Greece turning into Byzantium would indeed seem weird.
For the fascists or the neutrals, it doesn't seem so strange to claim their old empire back. Maybe not Byzantium itself, but there are several greek empires they can claim to have reformed (Byzantium being the closest one, but they can use Alexander or another similar figure).
 
Would they EVER call it Byzantum though? Byzantine Empire never was called as such.
Byzantium is also used in EUIV even though it's still wrong, I suppose how the other countries would see you is taken into account (like, maybe I'm not sure how Germany called itself in this time period, how it's Nazi Germany and not Third Reich ?)
 
could we get some more native state/province/city name change events added to the game instead of needing to mod them in? :) pretty pls...
 
That's why I asked if there would be custom names depending on the political stance, since after thinking a bit about it, having a Communist or Democratic Greece turning into Byzantium would indeed seem weird.
For the fascists or the neutrals, it doesn't seem so strange to claim their old empire back. Maybe not Byzantium itself, but there are several greek empires they can claim to have reformed (Byzantium being the closest one, but they can use Alexander or another similar figure).

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.
 
A-H is formable by focus in the DoD Hungary tree. They showed Germany getting a focus to integrate Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg last Dev stream

Imperial Germany also have a focus to influence Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to form A-H.
 
Miedzymorze?
 
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.
 
@podcat one important question, am i allowed to form those countries only in peace time or can i create / use the decision when i take the provinces? The most annoying thing with New nations or formable one is when i can't form them im wartime... I have to wait peacetime, FYI the game is over by then i conquered everybody
 
I like the achivments. Its not so Random crap like in Stellaris o_O
 
What happens when a formed country is puppeted/conquered? Does it lose it's tag if it's puppeted? Can you release/satellite/liberate the formed nation with it's tag?