HOI4 Dev Diary - Stability and War Support

[podcat]

Hello everyone! Today we are going to be talking about National Unity, or rather the fact that it no longer exists…

National Unity
National Unity first made its appearance in Hearts of Iron III, basically as a mechanic to make France surrender at an appropriate time (when Paris fell essentially). It was largely moved over to HOI4 unchanged. While it does accomplish what we wanted it's also a very restrictive currency to work with design wise. A player who is winning doesn't really care what their NU is, making a lot of focus choices meaningless in those instances (or almost, there is always that time your country gets blanketed in nukes and someone dropping paras on one of your big cities seals the deal in multiplayer). We wanted to model different nations better and make sure we could do more interesting focuses and events where picking a loss of NU wasn't always the better choice compared to giving up, say, political power. So what's the answer?

Stability and War Support
These are two new values shown in the topbar that replace National Unity. Stability models the people's unity and support for the current government. War Support on the other hand represent the people’s support of war and of fully committing to fighting that war. As an example Britain in 1936 would be a pretty stable nation, but with very low war support. A nation like France would be much more unstable and with equally low war support, while Japan would have high war support and also high stability (mostly due to the emperor’s influence).

Stability average is 50% and nations with higher stability than that gain bonuses to industry, political power and consumer goods. Once you drop below 50% there are penalties instead as well as lowering your surrender limit (although nothing as extreme as how NU affected things). Strong party support helps increase stability, but being in a war - no matter how well supported - is going to lower your stability. Stability also works to protect against coups against your nation as well.

War Support has several passive effects and also limits several of the laws. You can’t switch to full War Economy without enough war support for example.

Note that in the picture below France is getting +30% war support because they have been attacked by Germany. An offensive war on the other hand for Germany actually hurts their war support. This comes with some interesting balancing effects:

• Democracies challenging Germany early over Rhineland etc would put themselves as attackers, forcing them to fight hindered by the war support penalty.
• Fascist or aggressive nations will generally have more initial war support but are likely to be surpassed by democracies in a defensive war when it comes to war support.
• Defensive nations will be able to ramp up army sizes faster due to mobilization speed while attackers need to play a bit more carefully. The return of “national pride” from HOI3 in the form of combat bonuses on core territory will help here too.

Speaking of mobilization speed, you no longer get a chunk of manpower instantly when enacting conscription laws or other changes to recruitable manpower. Instead how quickly the manpower is made available by the law change is controlled by your mobilization speed. The higher the war support the faster new manpower trickles in.

The air war also affects things as successful enemy bombing (or nuking) will lower War Support. Shooting down enemy bombers will offset this somewhat, as people are seeing you fight back against the enemy.

Here is an example on what can happen in a nation with low war support and low stability in a war. The severity of these particular options depends on exactly how low your stability/war support are. Here it's pretty bad.

For Germany a good way of raising war support is to pull off its diplomatic expansions without being opposed:

War support is also affected by how your allies manage. If a major ally surrenders it will lower your war support, so make sure to keep your friends in the war. On the flip side successfully capitulating major enemies increases your war support.

There are also some new ways to affect War Support and Stability outside events, ministers and national focuses that we aren't ready to show off yet

See you again next week!

 

[Archangel85]

For modders, how will this affect the add NU options? Or will the NU bonuses will just be converted to Stability by default?

NU has been completely eliminated. You'll have to go through the script and change NU effects/triggers to stability and/or war support. Use add_stability add_war_support has_stability has_war_support

 

[Archangel85]

What is the reasoning behind events like Anschluss raising war support?
One might say: "look we don't need war, we got/get what we want.", thus rather lowering war support.

It's more of a "The Western Allies are a bunch of cowards, if it comes to war we can take them easily and they will back down anyway"/"The Führer clearly knows what he is doing so if he says we need to go to war then we need to go to war"

 

[Havebeard]

What is this little telephone all about?

Error dog is on vacation.The topbar is holding his phone for now.

 

[Archangel85]

Also, the option of "a pay rise in enlisted soldiers..." intrigues me - does this mean money is making a return?

The team is split on the issue of money. 14 out of 15 people on the team want money in. @podcat thinks differently.

The issue is that money played very little role in the internal economies. The Reichsmark was essentially monopoly money during the timeframe of the war. Inflation was an issue, but price controls and rationing could counteract that. Manhours spent is a far better value to assess the "cost" to the war economy of building weapons. For the purpose of paying soldiers, the government could always just print money, so in this particular event the effect is simply that it costs more pp.

Personally, I would love to get money back in the game at some point, but it'll probably be focused more on international trade where you actually had to pay in hard cash.

 

[Archangel85]

So how do you capitulate an enemy country now?

80% of VPs occupied, but we are experimenting with low stability/literally being France lowering that threshold

 

[Archangel85]

Since Germany never actually declared war on either France or Great Britain, how will this affect their ability to mobilise, since they weren't really in a defensive war? Or will it count as such because of guarantees to Poland and so on?

Let's ask the Poles if the war was aggressive...

 

[Archangel85]

This is exactly my point.
How many countries did the population have a say in what their leader did or did not do? America, yep. England, I think so. Germany, nada. Russia, no sir. Japan, nope. Italy?

Now I may be 100% incorrect in my assumptions. However why are we having National Unity (now called something else) in a game where only a couple of countries took into account what their population thought in the first place?

Shouldn't stability and war support only matter for very few countries? Why would those be any part of a country that during the time period did not care?

And if playing historical and the game goes just like the real world, why do we need this feature after 9/1/1939? This like its predecessor seems to be a feature that may be used by a very few countries and none after 9/1/1939?
It just seems to add more restrictions with absolutely no benefits whatsoever.

I'm not a expert at the game or the war. I'm just putting this into real world play. At this point in time I fail to see any benefits to my future game play. Exactly what countries will this have a profound effect upon? What will it change? Isn't it just all out the window on 9/1/1939 or earlier?

However, I'm hear to learn. Where am I wrong? School me boys!

Germany didn't have elections, true, but the Nazis were very aware of public morale. They were very worried that the German population would stab them in the back like they (thought) it had in 1918, and made sure to keep the sacrifices the general population had to make to an absolute minimum until Stalingrad. War support is not just approval rates, it is the willingness of the population to bear the rationing, the extra shifts at the tank plant, the willingness to buy war bonds, the likelihood that they will pull strings to get out of the draft or volunteer and so on. Basically faith that a war would be winnable and that your side is morally right.

 

[Archangel85]

@Archangel85

Can we get some more motorized/mechanized artwork in the next patch, please? Some Italian stuff was added in v1.4, but France still doesn't have its own truck or half-track icons.

France should have gotten its truck icon in 1.4.2

 

[Archangel85]

@Archangel85

Is current armored tree "set in stone"? It feels "too generic" and in some places odd. Light tanks existed until MBT introduction and a bit further, medium tanks appeared in 1920-s. Don't remember "stop-gap" in development between early 1930-s heavy tanks and early WW2 models.

It seems like you tried to make tree, loking mostly at German tank development, but it was an odd decision, honestly.

Nothing is set in stone, but it is probably set in burnt clay. The system sort of works for most countries, even if the flavor names don't always match (Matilda...Matilda!), so it is not really a priority right now. Personally I would love to put in more of a national flavor to tech trees (like the British doctrine of infantry and cruiser tanks), but it is a balancing nightmare and a bang-for-buck issue (takes a lot of time to do well, probably not something people will pay enough money for)

 

[podcat]

Any words what will be in next dev diary @podcat ?

Not sure which of the next two things I want to talk about will get done first so didnt want to jinx it. Its gonna be one of them anyways ;3

Surrender? Do you mean capitulate or is there some info you are keeping from us?

yeah sorry about being confusing I meant capitulate.

Now that the NU is gone, what causes countries to surrender? %0 war support?

the system works as if you had 80% NU from before which was a pretty good sweetspot for behaviour. Some nations (like france) are affected by Disjointed Government and has a lower value, also if you drops too low that also lowers things. But we are talking down to 50% or so in NU terms, not anything like 0% which was just wierd.

Changing national unity to two values is cool and all, but when are we are going to see major changes you have planned for the next expansion? A major over haul of ahistorical mode, like King of the Hill mode where everyone (and the AI) plots world domination, or a random mode where countries have random manpower/industry, could be cool also. New laws, new historical events for historical mode, new ways/stronger ways of dealing with max forts, would increase replayability.

Something like that is actually soemthing I have been thinking about. Sometimes you just want a FFA or balanced MP. its not a priority right now tho, and not sure how many would want it.

PS: Has @Sideburnout gone?

He is on another secret project right now, but we have filled his shoes with another awesome artist.

 

[podcat]

Any feature to invest in propaganda to raise war support?

Key victories at key locations should help raise stability as well.

yes. we got some propaganda ministers, but there are other ways. I cant show that yet though as its not done :3

 

[Archangel85]

Has this secret project a 3 in his title, and a V and a T?

Yes. We are proud to announce that we have teamed up with Valve to make "Valve's Half-Life T-3"

 

[podcat]

I would like to see how Great Purge would be reworked to affect stability and war support. As well as Collectivism focus, which was goddamn useless compared to positive heroism and only provided some NU.

We have/are reworking a bunch of events and such due to these changes. basically all places that touched on NU.

What effect will comets have on stability?

Good point actually we'll have to think on this. would suck to actually lose stability now

I'm thinking of how this works for China which was not very stable, but had a ton of war support. (War support as in "Let's not surrender despite getting kicked in the teeth")

Well, early on China had pretty bad war support also. I dont think it was until there were major losses of territory that the people rallied fully

Couple questions for the devs:

1. Are you gonna add the ability to delete captured and produced equipment? Or the ability to lend-lease captured equipment? (I dont want 9 different types of fighter II in my stockpile etc.)

2. AI division template name changes. It really breaks the immersion when i fight against eg. a division called '15. Infantry Type 7'. Or just add events when AI unlocks some new tech it will change their existing templates so no more of these immersion breaking names.

Otherwise this patch is looking good so far

Well, stay tuned for diaries for info on more stuff coming. We'll be doign one every week.

What happens when you're in two separate wars, one offensive and the other defensive?

It somewhat balance out

 

[Archangel85]

I understand it is a relative thing & you are European focused, but Japan was not stable in the 1930-40 period. I would say the Emperor had actual less influence on government than the King of England did and it was only in 1945 with the implementing Imperial Rule allowed Japan to surrender. If you look at the number of Prime Ministers & cabinet re-shuffles 1936-40 and political assassination of an elected Prime Minister & coup attempts 1930-40 it would not be seen as stable. Now it was not likely to go Communist or Fascist, but it between democratic & military dictatorship type of governments that were in play.

Now with Tojo coming to power, first as Minister of War in 1940 & more importantly also (held both jobs) as Prime Minister in Oct 1941 the Japanese government becomes much more stable. There is a reason Japan didn't enter the larger war earlier and it was because the government was not stable, France falls in June 1940 & Britain is on the ropes at that point but they wait until almost the end of 1941 to go after the European colonies. I have been doing research for my government mod.

Your Stability mechanic will be very important in the development of HOI IV.

Imagine you are in a crowded bar and shout "I'm going to bring down the government, who's with me?". Stability is the amount of people who will tell you sit down and shut up. While Japan's politics were quite unstable in the period, the Emperor himself was almost untouchable. Any government would, in the final instance, still adhere to the idea of the Emperor being part of the system near the top. the Emperor would therefore legitimize any government that had him as a part (however large or small his actual role may be). On the contrary, I think you would agree that removing the Emperor would force any government to find a new source of legitimacy, which would no doubt be a long process.

How about the airplane issues that I brought up some months back? You answered in that thread, and it's in my signature.

It's on the list, but art time is limited. Very limited. In fact, if any of you could look between the sofa cushions for lost art time, we would really appreciate it.

 

[Archangel85]

Will this force democracies to demobilize after the hordes of fascism are gone? Revert their recruitment and industry laws back to peace time standard? Would be a neat feature and make world war three much more of a challenge...

Yes. If you have mobilization or manpower laws that your population no longer supports because the war is over, bad things will happen.

 

[Archangel85]

Excellent!

Does this effect fielded manpower as well? So if you have many divisions/wings/ships and your manpower is sitting at 0 will you also get negative effects?
It would force the player/AI to disband some divisions/wings or mothball ships to avoid disgruntled soldiers.

It's still in development and we will have to see if we can make the AI understand that it should disband units in that case (but not in this case, or if that case and that other case happen simultaneously, unless yet another case also happens etc.).

 

[Archangel85]

Can/will we have reserve units somewhat like we did in HoI 3?

Maybe one day, but probably not in this DLC cycle

 

[Archangel85]

Very interesting indeed. Combined with the new telephone symbol makes me think we're finally getting intelligence into the game.

The forums have repeatedly assured me that HoI needs absolutely no intelligence to play well.