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HOI4 Dev Diary - Custom Gameplay Rules

Hi everyone! Most of the team is now back after summer so it’s time to spin up the ‘ol diary machine again. Today we are going to be talking about something we have been thinking about adding for a really long time: Custom Gameplay Rules.

First off, let me explain why we are doing this - HOI4 is a game people play in a lot of different ways. Single player, multiplayer, achievement runs, casual relaxing and various other. There is also a big split between people who play “historically” vs people who don’t (it’s around 50/50). A lot of stuff that adds fun and a sense of power in singleplayer are not very balanced for organized competitive multiplayer so organizing these games can be challenging, often including long rulesets and policing by the server host. I personally think a big reason competitive multiplayer isn’t as common (about 6% of MP games are competitive) is because it’s so much harder to set them up when they require reading rulesets, which become fragile when the game itself isn’t enforcing them.
When it comes to single player, players often ask for ways to tailor how they play. For example; some will use console commands to switch nations to set them on certain paths to match their long term plans for the scenario they want to play out etc, but it’s not exactly beginner-friendly, and isn’t possible to do in multiplayer either. So looking at all of these things we decided that we needed to support different rulesets and let players affect how the ai did things in more detail.

So, enter Custom Game Rules. This is a new setting you can do before you start your game, and includes the old buff sliders for majors as well:
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It’s possible to store and load presets if you have a couple of prefered profiles you run (say single player and multiplayer?). We have tried to make rules as moddable as possible although when they directly impact hard-coded gameplay mechanics we need to make sure we have worked them in first. We’ll go over the modding aspects towards the end!

So what kind of stuff can you do? We haven’t fully finalized it all, but let’s go through what we got. I am sure people will have tons of suggestions in the comments too ;)

All diplomatic actions have the possibility for rules. So we can restrict or ease up how things work. This is particularly good when you want to tie focus trees into it. The new British tree has a lot of interaction with releasable nations, so this also lets us manage that from scripts and avoid exploits and weird situations (such as the player going down the ‘empire’ path, and yet releasing every colony they own).

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Covert actions are also included here, so you can for example restrict coups and such only to AI nations (a common rule in our own MP sessions).
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There are also other bits and pieces like being able to limit fort levels constructable, limiting paratroopers and such we are playing around with. Other things rules we see people use a lot are for example limiting war declares before certain dates etc. I expect we will be presenting a full listing of options later when we stream stuff closer to release.

You can also affect how you want the AI to act. Mostly this means it will be preferring certain choices and switching to alternate plans. If you want to tailor-make your game experience this is a great way of ensuring certain (a)historical outcomes being attempted by the AI no matter your settings.
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For most there are options for ideology while some like Manchukuo are more relevant to its situation:
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Some settings, like this particular one, are dependent on DLC, so without Waking the Tiger (which comes with that focus tree) the option simply won't be there. Otherwise the whole custom rules system is part of the free update and is for sure something we will be building on in the future.

Rules will generally turn off achievements, but its possible to set it by rule so if we introduce something we feel is ok in both it will still work.

Modding
So, when we started with this we realized we couldn't support every tiny rule some MP groups were using and instead we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to mod things in. It’s my hope that some cool ruleset mods will be developed specifically for competitive multiplayer and the like in the modding workshop. Very popular options may even see inclusion in the base game in the future, who knows :) I expect some of the big mods will want to include custom rules as well for their players.

Rule definitions look like this:
mod1.jpg


They can then be checked from triggers from say the tech tree, focus tree, events etc and in other places we have added support for triggers. Example:
mod2.jpg


Diplo actions are a little special. They each get two possible triggers. This way you can turn on or off the standard game checks (like checks against world tension from game code) with the _TRIGGER_OVERRIDES_GAME. For your own rule checks you use the _ENABLE_TRIGGER for the specific action and the scope will contain the target nation as well so you can do nation specific rules.
This is what the triggers for Guarantees look like:
Screenshot_1.jpg


That’s it! Tune in next week to find out more about what we are up to with Man the Guns and the 1.6 ‘Ironclad’ update.
 
This is Orwellian: just as there were discussions about house rules for SP/MP games, this dev diary shows up.
It's almost like the devs are reading what the unwashed masses are talking about.

Meanwhile over at Bethesda:
Forum discussions demand the next Fallout to have relevant choices and no FPS anymore, Bethesda uses its patented sentiment analysis and interprets it as: "We want Fallout 5 to be CoD meets PUBG"

devs MUST read community feedback! it's their job.. nothing strange in it... finally i would say!
 
I'm very pleased to read this dev diary. HoI4 developers please consider these humble requests of the multiplayer community.

As someone who hosts big competitive multiplayer lobbies 3-5 times a week I greatly appreciate the effort and attention that Paradox is giving toward our side of the community. The ability to direct the ai's focuses are already an amazing leap forward to making our multiplayer games more enjoyable. Thank you. One thing that we have always wanted was a way to disable technology or, limit it to a certain year such as fighter 3s, medium tank 3s, strategic bombers or nukes. Another feature we would love would be a feature to control player's combat width such as only being able to deploy a minimum combat width of 20 to limit cancerous organization walls of unequipped troops as well as limiting the lag from so many divisions especially when the ai spams out small divisions in the late game.

Another feature we would love to see is the ability to restrict the player's ability to justify war before a certain year or month as well as the ability to make some countries truly neutral in the sense that the players are unable to justify war goals on them for example Turkey and sometimes Sweden. A way to make it impossible for players to delete factories would also be nice as well as make it impossible to change the division template of encircled units. Other features I would love to have at my disposal would be ways to ban certain continuous focuses, looking at you air production and a way to limit certain diplomatic options such as military access so the entire American army and Allied airforce can't be dumped into the USSR forcing them to actually hold France or do a D-Day. Edit: I just remembered that the multiplayer community would greatly love the ability to control the minimum size air wing to 100 or 200 to help limit ace stacking with 1 plane air wings giving you 100% war support early and lag. If Germany does this in the Spanish Civil War they can go War Economy much too quickly. The last thing I would like to be able to do is limit the amount and type of volunteer such as banning air volunteers or banning a volunteer with tanks in it. These are common rules in many multiplayer groups not just my own.

Thank you HoI4 developers on spending time, money and effort to make multiplayer a more enjoyable experience, I greatly appreciate it and I guarantee you that your efforts in multiplayer will be rewarded with greater loyalty, sales and overall growth and success of the game.

Also since I'm mentioning multiplayer I'll do a shameless self-plug of my own multiplayer community. If you are a multi-player looking for a good group of experienced and skilled but, non-toxic players then my community is perfect for you! We are very open to teaching new players to the multiplayer scene and we do not tolerate irrational hatred or grief toward new players simply because they are new or don't know the meta or make a few simple mistakes. We will teach you. One thing as a multi-player that I want to actively combat is the over inflated elitism and toxicity that is present in some of the competitive HoI4 multiplayer scene. Here are the links to our discord group and our Steam Group Chat which is just Steam's version of discord
https://discord.gg/wkRz5Nq
https://s.team/chat/TxDMVG3M
 
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Will we be getting better Peace options?

@podcat?

Especially for stalemates like Axis vs. India alone, or the USA alone? Or the like? What about forcing peace through the consol which currently doesn’t work well?

Will the consol command changing province/state ownership be fixed?

The consol command doesn’t currently work properly.

The provinces change colour and certain build options become allowed, but most stay with the previous owner. Very annoying.
 
A question and a suggestion:

what it does is have ai pick focuses and answer some events as they did historically. Its allowed to break this under certain conditions. Generally because its a lot weaker/stronger or their enemies are, or that stuff has somehow gotten very historical through player actions already. At its core its simply a priority order for how to pick focuses and answer some events
So this means no more Franco-British Union, no more Chinese United Front not forming. and no more Finland giving in when playing historically, correct?

For the suggestion I'd like an "infrastructure first" setting for generic focus tree countries, which would force such countries to beeline the first research slot, and then grab all the remaining factory (at least civilian) focuses. Aside from political focuses this is what a human player would generally do, and it gives the AI the most benefit in the long run whether or not they're taken over by the player. The AI will often take focuses it will never get any benefit out of instead of getting factories/infrastructure seemingly just to screw with the player. Two clear-cut cases of this being an unnecessary annoyance are it not being worth it for Italy to take Albania in a historical time frame because it often won't complete the relevant focuses until as late as 1941 as it's busy building a navy with 3 dockyards, and the supply limit for Japan gets artificially lowered because Mengkukuo is busy trying to build an air force with 2 factories (and yes the player could build in them but that shouldn't be necessary).
 
Good stuff. I've spent most of my 2,2k MP hours in this game hosting, so I know the amount of headaches dealing with illiterate people can create. Best to just have game mechanics enforcing house rules, saves a lot of trouble with new players as well. It's too bad we didn't get this sooner, but better late than never, right?

Also, hopefully there'll be at least 4-5 presets like in the other PDX games. I think that's a good amount.

Finally, will there be an option to block off the Manchukuoan focus path to annex Mengkukuo and core China while still remaining as a puppet of Japan?

rJFnCbR.png

It's wildly ahistorical and unrealistic and the AI doesn't do it when historical focuses are on, but players in competitive historical MP still can because it's in the "historical" part of the focus tree for Manchukuo.

>Introducing ethnicity, culture and/or religion to a WWII game. What could go wrong?

Maybe not quite that, but they could do something like AoD did with national ideas to add more individuality to each country:

AoDIdeas.png

EDIT: Edited pictures into thumbnails so they're not huge.
 
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Would it be possible to add an option to hide parts of the Focus Tree that have been closed off? If I have gone for the 'Oppose Hitler' focus, the 'Rhineland' and related focuses are just a waste of space. With more and more additions to the major focus trees, things are starting to get cluttered.
 
Will there be a Set rule for german AI to go for the Moscow - Berlin axis pact focus? I mean this focus exist, but it's being used so, so rarely, the AI never uses it even with historical focus off.
 
Nice changes, but what about the alt history slider? can't we get more options(for e.g ai focus to stop the player(s), or be random, or be aggressive? also can we have more games when germany turn to democratic/kaiser side? I played atleast 100 games since wtt and Germany never ever went alt history :(
 
Quick question but can generic tree nations be be set on different outcomes for ai behavior? like non aligned or pick a side? and Democratic, commie, or fascist? I sometimes switch to Brazil and make it choose commie or fascist focus paths for example to add South America as a theater in the war for fun

Situation 1: I'm playing as the USSR and i want Iran and Turkey to go down the communist path to help defend the motherland .
Situation 2: Playing as the Kaiser Reich i decide i want to try and get Turkey into my faction to recreate the central powers, can i send Turkey on the path toward my goal?
Situation 3: As Axis i want Mexico to invade the US, can i set them up to go down the fascist path?
Situation 4: as Cuba i want to create a carribean communist alliance, can i set Haiti and the Dominican republic to go down the communist path?

or will boost popularity and stage coup be the only way to accomplish this?
I will say im super excited about the ai behavior mechanic
 
... However... wouldn't Airborne troops be more difficult to find/train than Marines ... & similarly wouldn't Marines be more difficult to find/train than Mountaineers...

Based on what these specialized infantry represent, no.

Like the idea of custom gameplay rules. Appreciate the hard work you guys do, especially with the amount of negative chatter you get.