HOI4 Dev Diary - Patch 1.3.3 Update #2

[Dracolithfiend]

And lastly, the AI is now a lot better at handling safe fronts. It used to sometimes assign significant numbers of units to fronts that posed no threat. Some of these were to countries fighting a common enemy, even when they were winning against said enemy, and others were just...not a threat in any way.

Thank you for fixing bugs like this. I kept reporting it and bringing it up in posts and everyone was like "The heck you talkin bout?". I kept seeing the soviets place 40 or so divisions on the neutral afghan front

Can you please look into naval combat and see why ships engage in battles and retreat in the same spot over and over again for ever? They head towards each other on the battle screen and before they start fighting both sides retreat. My ships are not set to avoid combat and should be able to outrun the enemy so even if the enemy is they should still fight right?

 

[Morboth]

View attachment 241055

All I can see is SteelVolt playing as Uruguay, and that makes me full of joy!

 

[kelestra]

@podcat :
Same question, as SteelVolt isn't answering:

@SteelVolt :
Can you please say anything about the still existing battleplaner problems, especially disappearing frontlines, merging frontlines, division shuffling and embarking into areas with 0 sea dominance?

 

[Archangel85]

All I can see is SteelVolt playing as Uruguay, and that makes me full of joy!

Uruguay is just used for -handsoff games, since they are unlikely to get involved in anything.

 

[Neferaton]

I played a game until 1940 yesterday and on my Notebook the Performance increased incredibly. Before the beta-patch the game used to slow down as soon as the war started. Now I can actually Play in the same fluid manner as before the war. I can't really say much about the AI, it seemed as weak as before since I finished off Poland and France without a Problem (on Veteran) but I forgot to make enemy nations stronger in the game options. I'll try another game today evening with all levers set fully to the max And I'll see about performance on my main machine! So far I'm very impressed and happy about the changes. Keep it up!

 

[SteelVolt]

@SteelVolt :
Can you please say anything about the still existing battleplaner problems, especially disappearing frontlines, merging frontlines, division shuffling and embarking into areas with 0 sea dominance?

disappearing frontlines: I was not aware that this bug was back again. If you are able to reproduce it; please report it in our bug forums and tag a dev in the report.

merging front lines: I fear you will need to be a bit more specific here; which part of fronts merging are you having problems with? If it is only how AI handles it on its end (not for the player), then I am aware there are some issues.

division shuffling: This is going to be a farily high priority in the coming months or so.

embarking into aread with 0 sea dominance: We are aware that this happens, but a good and proper solution is pretty complicated to accomplish for this. I will see what I can do.

 

[Aodhan_]

division shuffling: This is going to be a farily high priority in the coming months or so.

This is good news and it's most annoying thing ever for me anyway.

 

[Dalwin]

disappearing frontlines: I was not aware that this bug was back again. If you are able to reproduce it; please report it in our bug forums and tag a dev in the report.

merging front lines: I fear you will need to be a bit more specific here; which part of fronts merging are you having problems with? If it is only how AI handles it on its end (not for the player), then I am aware there are some issues.

division shuffling: This is going to be a farily high priority in the coming months or so.

embarking into aread with 0 sea dominance: We are aware that this happens, but a good and proper solution is pretty complicated to accomplish for this. I will see what I can do.

With regard to division shuffling. I know in an early patch, 1.1.0 IIRC, you increased the minimum distance for shuffling units to SR instead of walking from 4 provinces to 8. With the big improvement in 1.3 where units attacking out of a province no longer make the AI think that province is empty and needing reinforcement, things got much better. Perhaps it would now be worth considering lowering the distance that was changed in 1.1 from 8 provinces down to 6 since that is a minor factor compared to what you changed later.

It is not just that units lose org when being SRed, but that it can take a very long time to walk 7 provinces. This effectively takes units out of the fight for much longer than it should. It takes much longer to walk that long distance than it would to regain the org after taking a train ride. What is even worse is that following that long walk it is highly likely that the front will have shifted so the unit involved will be forced to pick a new destination and begin walking toward it and so on.

The more of these units talking long walks and effectively not being on the front then causes the line to be thinner and even more units needing to be shuffled. Filling the gaps quickly (by SR) should cut down on the total amount of shuffling, IMO.

 

[Dracolithfiend]

Can we stretch fronts across multiple nations while at peace yet? I really hate having one front against axis Italy, one against axis Germany, and one against axis Hungary when playing in the Balkans.

 

[Dalwin]

Can we stretch fronts across multiple nations while at peace yet? I really hate having one front against axis Italy, one against axis Germany, and one against axis Hungary when playing in the Balkans.

No, I tested this last night and you still cannot.

 

[Gort11]

I'd love to be able to do that also.

 

[kettyo]

Hello guys,

Looks like an awesome patch.

I have a fear though that the cuts made to military buildup will lead to fascist/communist never completing their buildup (especially if they want to be up-to-date in tech) and so will not start the war (at least not intentionally).

I'm really curious how it will play out in practice.

 

[Baldeagle91]

disappearing frontlines: I was not aware that this bug was back again. If you are able to reproduce it; please report it in our bug forums and tag a dev in the report.

merging front lines: I fear you will need to be a bit more specific here; which part of fronts merging are you having problems with? If it is only how AI handles it on its end (not for the player), then I am aware there are some issues.

division shuffling: This is going to be a farily high priority in the coming months or so.

embarking into aread with 0 sea dominance: We are aware that this happens, but a good and proper solution is pretty complicated to accomplish for this. I will see what I can do.

Not sure this is the same issue, but it's highly annoying when you take a certain provence.... and your armies frontline suddenly jumps drastically longer for no real reason, often the entire front. Also when you encircle the enemy and you can split the frontline the way you want *cos reasons*. It's hard to explain but if someone hasn't reported it it's quite easy to replicate.

 

[podcat]

I'd love to be able to do that also.

me also, but its actually a really really difficult problem to solve with how the system works. We have it on our list but since it kinda needs the same expertise as AI stuff we are prioritising that over it for the moment

 

[Gort11]

You can sort of do it with a fallback line, or just with a bunch of smaller fronts, so I'm cool with it being down the list.

 

[Heath-Bar]

@TomaszKowalczyk:

@SteelVolt:

I enjoyed reading about the changes to resources effects on production and the quality of life improvements.

My favorite part of the diary was the AI update from @SteelVolt and the performance and optimizations update from @TomaszKowalczyk. I know from experience with C++ that one loop or if statement can change the entire way the structure runs. I’d be curious to learn what kinds of class structures you use for any parts of the game or AI system? I am currently studying software development and getting to read about the technical details about a franchise that I have followed for over a decade is a dream come true. Many of your games at Paradox contributed to me going into software development; which I adore so thank you! Oh and 120,000 down to under 700, damn good programming!

 

[EmeraldCougar]

Add possibility to spend political points for increase manpower from non core territories !!!!
Current 2 % of core - is nothing !

 

[Novacat]

Thank you for fixing bugs like this. I kept reporting it and bringing it up in posts and everyone was like "The heck you talkin bout?". I kept seeing the soviets place 40 or so divisions on the neutral afghan front

This also screwed Germany pretty heavily, and yeah, I got the same reactions of people not sure wtf I was talking about. Glad it is finally fixed, it was the major bug keeping me from playing vs AI.

 

[harrymanback]

Moving on, I am surprised this one was not caught earlier:

• Fixed a serious issue where AI would never counter resistance with area defense orders, completely ignoring conquered territory.

While there had been mentions that the AI could probably do better when it came to countering resistance, it really turned out that it never did this at all. This was due to a code mistake in a single if-statement that made the AI exclusively considered OWNED territory, as opposed to CONTROLLED.

Great to see this getting sorted, I switched to Germany late in my games as Spain, and the entire German production line was crippled by resource shortages caused by partisan activity in occupied territories.

Whole update is delight to see, kind that make me willing to part with more money to buy DLC!

 

[SovietSpyCommisar]

Add possibility to spend political points for increase manpower from non core territories !!!!
Current 2 % of core - is nothing !

Good idea, "modern propaganda" continuous focus or something like it.