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HOI4 Dev Diary - Pre-Release and International Women's Day ***read the threadmark before posting***

Hi everyone and welcome to the last dev diary before Waking the Tiger releases tomorrow! We are so hyped and kinda wish we could release it already, but sadly tomorrow it is ;D Basically everything has now been covered in diaries, but if you want a reminder, check out the Patch log or the massive recap dev diary or any of the other 28 dev diaries for Waking the Tiger.

Since tomorrow is also International Women’s Day, and it's going to be extremely busy with the release, we felt today could be a cool day to highlight some of the ways we are featuring womenfolk in Waking the Tiger. For the high level country running perspective HOI4 takes on play, where only high generals and such are portrayed, there aren't a lot of women historically (hello 1930s), so we try to make an extra effort when we have a plausible candidate or historical references to women’s impact on the war.

Oh, and before I hand over to the content designers, we have a special gift from our awesome artist, something she has been working on in her spare time for the game: a new loading screen (as part of the free Cornflakes Update) featuring female russian snipers. You can grab it now as a wallpaper too:

sniper_wallpaper_1920x1080_small.jpg

If you want to learn more on female snipers in the soviet army this is a good place to start on wikipedia.

Soong Mei-Ling:
As the wife of the Chinese Leader Chiang Kai-Shek, Mei-Ling served as a trusted advisor for him. Perhaps even more importantly, she was the the main driving force behind the Chinese efforts to gain the support of the United States. It was she who negotiated with Claire Chennault to hire him as a special advisor to build up the Chinese Air Force. Later, she was only the second woman - and the first Chinese citizen - to address both houses of the US congress, again imploring them to send more aid to China in its fight against the Japanese.
Capturesml.JPG


In the game, she is a special advisor to China with a - for now - unique trait called “First Lady”, which gives +5% stability and war support, representing her extensive work to help her husband and sponsor several relief organisations. Having her as an advisor will also make the US more likely to take decisions like sending the Flying Tigers or sending lend-lease equipment.

Yoshiko Kawashima:
Yoshiko’s life story sounds almost a little too fantastic: Born as a princess into the clan of the Chinese Emperor, she was given up for adoption after the revolution - and taken in by a Japanese intelligence agent.

As a young adult, Yoshiko moved around China and Manchuria on various intelligence gathering missions - taking lovers and making enemies along the way. The Japanese later came to use her contacts to old Manchu nobility - and indeed her ancestry - to convince Puyi to become the Emperor of Manchukuo.

After Puyi accepted his new position, Yoshiko decided to raise a cavalry unit to fight the “bandits” (some criminals and some various brands of Communist guerillas) roaming the countryside. Eventually, she came to command several thousand soldiers. Later on, she became quite critical of the Japanese conduct in Manchukuo and was gradually removed from public sight.
Captureyk.JPG


Her end was, if tragic, not particularly unexpected: Captured in Beijing by Nationalist Chinese forces at the end of the war, she was tried for treason and executed in 1948.

In-game, she is available as a general for Manchukuo, with the trait “cavalry officer” to represent her history as a leader in the pacification campaign.

Women in the workforce
The World War placed a heavy strain on the conscriptable population of the nations involved, resulting in many men being drawn from the workforce to fight on the frontlines. To keep the production lines going, it was only logical to look at the much-untapped other half of the population. Historically, millions of women in countries such as Canada, the UK, and the USA took up the jobs the men had left to join the army. In the game this is modeled as a decision that provides a 3% recruitable population bonus, which makes up for the -3% recruitable population bonus from Total Mobilization.
women in the workforce.png


Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl
“Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl” is the name of the Canadian icon of strong female factory workers during the war. Based on a picture of Veronica Foster who made Bren light machine guns for the John Inglis Co., it became a propaganda icon to encourage Canadian women to work in industry. Almost 1 million Canadian women ended up doing so during the Second World War. As a propaganda tool, Ronnie can be seen as a model for the later and better-known Rosie the Riveter in the USA. In the game, “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl” is the flavor name for Canada’s “Women in the Workforce” decision.

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Rosie the Riveter
“Rosie the Riveter” is the name of the well-known American icon of strong female factory workers during the war. Among others, she was depicted on the famous “We Can Do It!” poster, which wasn’t very well-known during the war, but which was revived as a feminist icon in the 1980s. Posters such as these were used to encourage women to take up factory jobs to keep the war industry going. These campaigns were often targeting housewives in an attempt to get them to enter the workforce, with slogans such as “Can you use an electric mixer? If so, you can learn to operate a drill”. In the USA, the amount of working women increased by over 50%, showing that “women could do a ‘man’s job’, and do it well”. This ended up drastically increasing the amount of jobs that were deemed to be ‘acceptable’ for women to take, and therefore was a major influence in the growing emancipation of women during the 20th century. In the game, this is the flavor name for the USA’s “Women in the Workforce” decision.

We_Can_Do_It!.jpg


And more…
There is one more powerful woman to establish as the ruler of a certain key HOI4 nation, but this requires a long and obscure series of events and actions to take place first… Why not celebrate International Women’s day by trying to find out how to make it happen once you got your hands on Waking the Tiger?

And that’s it for today, folks! Make sure to tune in at 16:00 for World War Wednesday where Dan and Daniel attempt to unite all under heaven as Manchukuo! Tomorrow we will also have a release stream where we continue our campaign.
 

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hm I'd love to see one of the daughters of Wilhelm II take over once Wilhelm III dies. Maybe he is referring to the NZ female leader, although that would be a bit lame. Maybe also lady Diana Mosley, for fascist UK.
 
Thanks for adding more women to the game Podcat and team!

Any chance we'll get to hear the occasional women barking for the army? If tanks going vroom and whatnot are battle sounds, women medics and nurses and (for the soviets)l at least soldiers too) getting to shout about hauling people about during a battle would be pretty cool and a nice historical touch!
 
There is one more powerful woman to establish as the ruler of a certain key HOI4 nation, but this requires a long and obscure series of events and actions to take place first… Why not celebrate International Women’s day by trying to find out how to make it happen once you got your hands on Waking the Tiger?

Oh come on just tell us. Or do I have to hover over a million skill trees just to find a single hint.

Love the first lady advisor.

Also is there any chance that border warfare gets opened up to more areas? I feel like it's a really great system that really simulates a smaller scale warfare. And yet only China and Japan vs Russia have them?
 
This is cool. I learned of an interesting princess I should look into. Also increasing the presence of women in the game is awesome, I hope this could be built on, it would be cool to have events for special auxiliary units which could act as garrisons or even supply AA.
 
@podcat I know this is not exactly the best place to ask but this is probaly the place you keep an eye on right now. I didnt see in the patch notes that you fixed pact of rome, are you awere there is a issue with it or am i blind?
 
There is one more powerful woman to establish as the ruler of a certain key HOI4 nation, but this requires a long and obscure series of events and actions to take place first… Why not celebrate International Women’s day by trying to find out how to make it happen once you got your hands on Waking the Tiger?
I'll make a wild guess and say it's Jiang Qing, who rises to lead the PRC if Mao gets removed from power somehow.
 
Very nice. I'm please to see some of the amazing contributions of women highlighted.

When we finally get to espionage there will be another rich seam of brave and dedicated women to include and take inspiration from.

On a more game based note the extra 3% pop will make total mobilisation a thing I actually take as anything smaller than Germany!
 
hm I'd love to see one of the daughters of Wilhelm II take over once Wilhelm III dies. Maybe he is referring to the NZ female leader, although that would be a bit lame. Maybe also lady Diana Mosley, for fascist UK.
Isn’t he related to that Dutch princess? Maybe she also crosses the border and takes power
 
There is one more powerful woman to establish as the ruler of a certain key HOI4 nation, but this requires a long and obscure series of events and actions to take place first…
Merkel?
 
My favorite WW2 gal you ask? Why Katyusha of course !


Apple and pear trees were a-blooming,
Mist (was) creeping on the river.
Katyusha set out on the banks,
On the steep and lofty bank.



And then fired a barrage of rockets from that steep and lofty bank.
 
I think that this DLC is the one that I expected to get, but didn't, when I bought HOI4, so thanks for finally making the game we needed.

Regarding female workers, my mother spent the war in a factory manufacturing parachutes while my father was slumming it in North Africa and Italy :D.

And remember the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) as a civilian group that ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, and included 168 female pilots out of 1320.

Also, the Soviet air force included many female pilots.