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Overall I thought the expansion was excellent for a content pack. Bulgaria has to be on the most enjoyable trees I've played in a long time. The Turkish tree I'm sure will be much better after it is refined slightly, but it almost hits the mark as it is. Everyone remember the content back for Death or Dishonour? Same price, arguably not as good focus trees hahaha. So I see this as an absolute win.
 
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I would like to say that while the quality of the new trees is astonishing and changes to the old trees are welcome, the change to King Michael's Coup really grinds my gears as it made the historical outcome literally impossible. King Michael's coup was after Carol II abdicated - it was not an alternative! I urge the developer team to make a small change and place it below "Force Abdication", and not as a mutually exclusive focus - while it was announced as a gameplay change, I consider it a terrible bug.
 
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will you be adding a few more focuses to the Greek focus tree?
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I would like to say that while the quality of the new trees is astonishing and changes to the old trees are welcome, the change to King Michael's Coup really grinds my gears as it made the historical outcome literally impossible. King Michael's coup was after Carol II abdicated - it was not an alternative! I urge the developer team to make a small change and place it below "Force Abdication", and not as a mutually exclusive focus - while it was announced as a gameplay change, I consider it a terrible bug.

I believe the devs have already said that they are changing this in a future patch.

Source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ions-for-1-10-2-collie.1437351/#post-27028965
 
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Only about 11% managed to bring back Camelry, showing that perhaps the age of the Camel in warfare has passed.
because maybe there are no camels in turkey? turkey is a mountainous country, camels dont like that
 
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I mean, is any of this surprising? The alt history paths that give you options for expansion, as well as coring those new areas, (which is the only way to drastically increase your countries power, unlike other Paradox games where there isn't anything as divisive as core or non-core) are simply the most fun for a single player experience, in which you are the country with agency in conflicts.

In multiplayer, it's not necessary to play paths like this, as their will be more than enough fun to be had just optimizing what you have and taking part in the greater conflict, as well as conquering neighbours being miles harder or outright banned. So to see how good the paths are you should also look at how more fun they are to play in a more historical manner than before.
 
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DevDiaries will be taking a small break as we continue work on the next DLC and Patch “Barbarossa”. More info on those will come when we resume. We don’t expect this break to be nearly as long as the one between La Resistance and Battle for the Bosporus, but 2020 has been a year full of unexpected events, so we can’t give you a firm promise on when they will return.
Does this mean we'll get DDs in less than a month?
Because if not it'll likely overlap with the break, so DDs would only be back by mid January... Nearly 3 months from now. :(
 
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Hello all, and welcome back to another DevDiary! Last week, we released Battle for the Bosporus (some of you may remember it). Given that we took the number 1 top-seller spot on steam within an hour of launch, and without pre-orders, I daresay that the idea of a country pack has been a success.

Now, let’s look at some Telemetry we got from the first couple of days after release!

For starters, we are seeing a big increase in people playing the new countries that is not at all surprising. After release, Germany still leads the list of most-played countries, but it’s overall margin has shrunk quite a bit over the years. After the game’s initial release, some 40% of games were played as Germany, now it is less than 20%. In second place is, unsurprisingly, Turkey with 16%, followed by Greece at just under 10% and the Soviet Union at 7.4 %. Bulgaria comes in a hair below it at 7% of total games played.

Next, let’s look at the focuses everyone has been picking!

About a third of players in Turkey opted to bring back the Sultan, compared to 48% who decided to remain a republic and engage with the big three factions. 12% opted to form their own faction and integrate the Balkans. Of the players who opted to join the world war, most chose to join the Axis, while only a small handful managed to get the old Central Powers back together. Only about 11% managed to bring back Camelry, showing that perhaps the age of the Camel in warfare has passed.

In Greece, it appears that monarchy is in crisis, with 73% opting to bring back the exiled republicans, although more than two thirds then decided to compromise with the monarchists in what can only be described as a disgusting lack of principles. Unfulfilled with merely supporting a simple king, a total of 43% then continued to revive the double-headed eagle in an attempt to restore the Byzantine Emperor.

May we remind people that we have recently released an entire game where you can play as the Byzantine Emperor from the start?

Just putting that out there.

In Bulgaria, it appears that Monarchy is decidedly back in fashion as about two thirds decided to give power to the Tsar. A similar number then allowed the Tsar to form the government, before later having to choose between strengthening the royal dictatorship or arranging for an unfortunate accident for Tsar Boris. The vast majority decided to plot against the Tsar, showing that once again HoI players have the right mindset to play CKIII.

The vast majority then decided to back the old Tsar Ferdinand I - perhaps unsurprisingly, considering that the alternative is a literal child.

On the other side of the divide, there is a clear preference for the Balkan Federation of Socialist Republics, which was picked about 7 times as often as the alternative. Perhaps people just don’t like Stalin? For more than 10% of games, this ends with the Balkans fully unified.

We did also get a lot of feedback from you guys about bugs and other issues that we are going to address in the coming weeks. Like we did before, we will be having an open beta coming soon with a number of bug fixes and some changes to address some of the more widespread concerns raised, such as the time you spend addressing political issues in the Turkish focus tree. We expect that patch to become available for the main branch at a later date. More info on what is in the open beta and how to access it will come when the beta becomes available.

DevDiaries will be taking a small break as we continue work on the next DLC and Patch “Barbarossa”. More info on those will come when we resume. We don’t expect this break to be nearly as long as the one between La Resistance and Battle for the Bosporus, but 2020 has been a year full of unexpected events, so we can’t give you a firm promise on when they will return.

Are peace conferences on the list for the new DLC?
 
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Very good to hear you folks are moving quickly on fixes and tweaks.

I think this was a very good DLC, just had some bugs and some teething issues with the Ottoman branch of Turkey in particular, greek investment decisions, and Turkey's lack of an ability to get a fifth research slot..

There's finally a new king in town. It seems like Bulgaria has taken Mexico's crown for best focus tree in the game!

I hope you also consider revisiting some of the older DLC countries like Canada, Australia, and India. Power creep is kind of getting to be an issue in my opinion. Newer DLC countries tend to have more and better stuff, which isn't necessarily bad, it's just that in comparison the older countries are lagging more and more behind. As Turkey I had over 100 factories in 1941 all without having to puppet or occupy any land beyond what I started with.

When impoverished, unindustrialized(or lightly industrialized) agrarian countries like Turkey start having bigger industrial economies than Canada, I think that's a bit of a problem. Canada should be at the top of the list in terms of industrial might for minors, but it very much seems like we a lot of these very agrarian/undeveloped countries like Spain and Turkey now far outstripping Canada and Australia economically, which seems odd. From a gameplay perspective as well, these older options are becoming less appealing because of how weak they are in comparison to the newer content. Balance is a concern, indeed(Canada should very much be a sleeping giant, like the US, in my opinion, for the balance to work), but I think it's possible to make some beneficial changes here.


Unrelated, but I also noticed a bug with Turkey's focus to lift the ban on the communist party. It causes an event that describes the communists launching a coup and changes the name and leader of the Communist Party.. but it doesn't actually change the ruling party. It seems this event was designed with the assumption that it would be a socialist Kemalist turkey that does it, but when I did it as non-aligned Turkey with Ismet Inonu the event still described him being overthrown in a coup, but the ruling party did not change.
 
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Are you going to fix the 1,000 typos involving Greece? I tried to get “This is Madness” and “Istanbul is Constantinople. Again.” but didn’t work. :confused:
Also Bulgaria really needs a focus to demand Dobruja instead of relying on Germany all the time. (Unless there is one and I haven’t looked hard enough.)
 
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Glad to hear there is going to be a patch soon. I've been holding off on getting this because of the rather long list of bugs/focus tree oversights/programming derps that get brought up on the forums. I do want the expansion. I want it badly enough that I'm willing to finally upgrade to the latest game version to get it. I just want it to work before I buy it.

I hope you'll consider giving the Turkey tree a review in terms of focus completion times. Apart from the 3/4 research slot complaint (which is a huge deal) the second most common complaint I see is that the tree takes too long to complete due to an overabundance of 70-day focuses. I see similar complaints about the Bulgaria focus tree (haven't seen it as much on the Greek side, though) taking too long as well. Well developed and expansive trees aren't any use if the choice focuses for claims and war goals are only accessible a year after the target countries have been annexed by Germany/Italy. The fascist Czech tree branch has the identical problem; by the time you get claims on other countries, Germany has already annexed them.

TL;DR please consider trimming the completion time of some of the Turkish and Bulgarian focuses, and maybe give Turkey another research slot because holy crap, guys.
 
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I can already see the Soviet focus tree;

Oppose Stalin -> Restore the Tsardom -> Anastasia I -> Exterminate Communism -> Reintegrate the Baltics -> Retake Poland -> Revenge for Brest-Litovsk
Change in Management -> Liberal Communists -> Reorganize the Republics -> Glasnost & Perestroika ->Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics
Papa Stalin -> Expand the Gulags -> Cult of Personality -> Erase Trotsky from Memory -> Prop Up the Kim Dynasty -> Soviet Socialist Republic of China
 
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