HOI4 Dev Diary - Meet some new people
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I've played the 1939 start in the past and expect it to be a bigger challenge (stuck with the stuff and balance that was historically there at the time - or close to it) the trouble i have with it for a while now is it feels like its still the same after all the updates/patches etc.
Have there actually been any changes to the number of units we start with in 39 for instance since release? If it has gotten any love (balance) since the start i'd love to try it again, its just i usually try out new patches on the 36 start and yes as germany first, but dont let those numbers fool you.. it soon will be other nations when ive proven for myself this gameversion is worth investing lots of time
I'd sooner think '39 start needs MORE love than less tbh, and we'd see it would get played more specially by people looking for a (historical) challenge
oops almost forget... Welcome to the team new peeps!
I was almost going to start this post with: "hi im N, and im a hoi4-addict too !!"
The thing with the 39 start (and previous HOI's post-36 starts) is that historical OOBs are not what you necessarily want to use in-game for various reasons. The groups of 3-4 destroyers, for example, are just looking to get slaughtered. Having a 39 start or a mid-war start means that you have to deal with this organizational nightmare right off the bat (try organizing the US air force in the HOI3 1944 start. Yikes.), which is unfortunate. I was always willing to do it for a truly interesting start date like 1943 or 1944, but for 1939 where nothing has really happened yet I just don't get the appeal.
Podcat, I think part of the problem with the 1939 start is that it feels a bit like starting mid game with a whole bunch of the decisions already made for you.
I think what might make it feel better would be a separate focus tree which accounts for that, so you feel like you are starting a fresh playthough rather than a partially completed game.
Of course I might be completely wrong about that so please don't immediately adopt that idea without any consideration.
With regards to the 1933 start that many people seem to want, this might be nice but would definitely require changing the focus trees and probably also the tech tree to account for the extra build up time.
With regards to a later start, I do remember having a decent time playing Barbarrossa in HOI 3 (even if the amount of divisions I had to move was terrifyingly large), so I'd nominate that as a new start date if you were considering. But again in HOI 3 without the focus trees it felt less like you were starting a partially played game and more like a fresh scenario.
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
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
This is pretty much what I asked for 6 months ago. I know you get a lot of &$#@ from this community about the AI and this shows (once again) that the paradox devs listen to their community. Multiple programmers are worth their weight in CIC. I look forward to what all three of you will undoubtedly contribute and I wish you the best.
@Bratyn it seems a great many in this community care a great deal for naval history. I hope you are able to help make this side of the game as exciting and enjoyable as it deserves to be. Here are some useful links perhaps you can take a look at in suggestions -
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/graf-zeppelin.1000539/#post-22448929
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/le-fantasque-french-destroyers.1006734/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/why-wont-my-ships-engage.991677/
(can't quote but louella tracked down the issue before it was locked)
Now I have one question for @podcat
Can we get a comment on this? If not that is fine too.
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Welcome!
Amen...with special attention to transmitting information to the gamer.
Amen...with special attention to transmitting information to the gamer.
- Information for decision making by the player
- Information regarding consequences of actions
Bringing in a "Naval nut".......excellent that means the next DLC will include an overhaul of tha naval system
I'd reach a different conclusion from this data. I think its a great idea to make different start points - as long as they are before 1936! Look at the popularity of CK2 early start dates.
Also I've always considered '39 as a better multiplayer start date. Do you have stats for multi vs single player games?
It's my sad duty to inform you that Bratyn has had to leave the team due to an unfortunate work related accident in about two minutes.
Edit: Bratyn has provisionally been readmitted to the team, on the condition that he achieves rank 1 in the next WoWs season.
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The 1933 start seems to be interesting as it would have major impacts on the whole game. These few years could change the ingame world completely.
The game surely gets more complex and it would even come in handy for all long-term planning strategists.
I see that Austrian-Hungary is popular. Thats good.
Well I hope that in future DLC it will also be possible to create the A-H from the Austrian side with their own national focus tree.
The game surely gets more complex and it would even come in handy for all long-term planning strategists.
I see that Austrian-Hungary is popular. Thats good.
Well I hope that in future DLC it will also be possible to create the A-H from the Austrian side with their own national focus tree.
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Regading the 1939 start stuff, If you want more people to play in this era, make IRONMAN fixed at the 1939 start, so that the world is locked in.
Ok - so how about ways to differentiate the 1936 model from the 1939 model:
1. 1939 is interesting because you start with all the mistakes that everyone made. The fun of 1936 is "can you do better that in real life because you have the benefit of knowing what is about to happen". So there should be something to separate these 2 models.
2. 1936 is partially limited because while as a player you get total freedom to be "non historical", the AI is locked into the historical policies - that you know giving you as the player an advantage.
Therefore I suggest the following AI modifier.
Add a "historical slider" to the start of the 1936 campaign, so you can set how the AI reacts. If you want the AI to act historically, then as a player you should be penalised for increased difficulty. However, if you set the AI to be more and more "non historical", ranging up to "total wild cards where the US can suddenly turn Facist" and you get a very random world, full of surprises, then fewer penalties.
So you can play 1936 as "true history" but player is penalised for foresight, so that it is much harder to achieve a 1939 starting point.
play 1936 with increasing levels of "wild card development from the AI" - the wilder the AI, the lower the penalty.
or as 1939 start at normal history levels - in true history mode, but where you are probably at an advantage over the 1936 start.
Another way of looking at the difference between 1936 and 1939 is the World Tension Meter.
if you start 1936 with foresight of what will happen in 1939, you can plan for the war to come much faster than the real politicians could simply because you know it will happen, whereas they did not believe it.
Therefore there should be additional restrictions on your political appointees and advisors in general if the world tension is too low. So this will prevent you from gaining too quick an advantage over your real life opponents who simply did not react quickly enough. Some kind of braking system on aggressive policies and aggressive military appointments would seem fair.
My ideas do get complicated - so here's a simply to apply alternative:
1936 to 1939; apply a modifier to National Foci depending on World Tension and your type of government;
Crude model
If world tension <20%; then National Focus time = 90 days - 1 day per 1% world tension.
Variables for democracy/facist/communist/other should apply.
This would make the game slower to start, and would accelerate as tension rises, and goverments react to world news with more fear and more momentum to change.
This would give you parity between the 1936 start and the 1939 start.
1. 1939 is interesting because you start with all the mistakes that everyone made. The fun of 1936 is "can you do better that in real life because you have the benefit of knowing what is about to happen". So there should be something to separate these 2 models.
2. 1936 is partially limited because while as a player you get total freedom to be "non historical", the AI is locked into the historical policies - that you know giving you as the player an advantage.
Therefore I suggest the following AI modifier.
Add a "historical slider" to the start of the 1936 campaign, so you can set how the AI reacts. If you want the AI to act historically, then as a player you should be penalised for increased difficulty. However, if you set the AI to be more and more "non historical", ranging up to "total wild cards where the US can suddenly turn Facist" and you get a very random world, full of surprises, then fewer penalties.
So you can play 1936 as "true history" but player is penalised for foresight, so that it is much harder to achieve a 1939 starting point.
play 1936 with increasing levels of "wild card development from the AI" - the wilder the AI, the lower the penalty.
or as 1939 start at normal history levels - in true history mode, but where you are probably at an advantage over the 1936 start.
Another way of looking at the difference between 1936 and 1939 is the World Tension Meter.
if you start 1936 with foresight of what will happen in 1939, you can plan for the war to come much faster than the real politicians could simply because you know it will happen, whereas they did not believe it.
Therefore there should be additional restrictions on your political appointees and advisors in general if the world tension is too low. So this will prevent you from gaining too quick an advantage over your real life opponents who simply did not react quickly enough. Some kind of braking system on aggressive policies and aggressive military appointments would seem fair.
My ideas do get complicated - so here's a simply to apply alternative:
1936 to 1939; apply a modifier to National Foci depending on World Tension and your type of government;
Crude model
If world tension <20%; then National Focus time = 90 days - 1 day per 1% world tension.
Variables for democracy/facist/communist/other should apply.
This would make the game slower to start, and would accelerate as tension rises, and goverments react to world news with more fear and more momentum to change.
This would give you parity between the 1936 start and the 1939 start.
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I think that the 1939 start is not at all a bad thing. It`s basically the best option for playing the US when going for the Allies. There is basically not much to do between the start and 1938-1939
However I do really miss an option for starting points where you are in the midst of conflict such as a "Invasion of Scandinavia and France"-start, Barbarossa start, "Pearl Harbor" start Stalingrad/El-Alamein start and a Kursk/Invasion of Italy start. And perhaps a "end of war" start. All could have specific events surrounding those starting points.
