HOI4 - Development Diary - 26th Of August 2016

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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone and welcome to this weeks diary with an update on Sunflower (1.2) patch. This is a great diary because its mostly written by other team members while I grab the credit of posting it! :D First up is @Voffvoffhunden with new nations we are adding in.

New Nations
Have you ever felt that the Soviet Union was a bit of a big, threatening blob, but that there was little you could do about it apart from taking all their territory for yourself?

Things are about to get a whole lot more colorful!

You can for example enjoy a stay in the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, as the territory of the Ukrainian SSR joins the fray as releasable cores! Get yourself a nice little puppet just a grenade’s throw from Moscow, or release it from the Soviet Union, take control and have your own little reconquest against Poland.

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Of course, one pesky country doesn’t do much for the breakup of the Soviet Union, so let’s all give it up for our favorite Caucasus trio!

Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are releasable, and offer a whole new regional playground. I hear Tbilisi is lovely this time of the century.

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As Poland gets invaded, Georgia might look to set up its own little empire Between the Other Seas, Azerbaijan might want push towards Stalingrad to ensure it controls ALL the Caspian oil, and Armenia, bordered on all sides by larger potential enemies, offers a whole new challenge for those players who like to play small nations and make them big.

Now, we hear you, some people prefer hotter climates to former Soviet states, and some players would rather dismantle the Allies than the Comintern.

For you there’s always Southeast Asia!

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Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia can now hang out with Siam, offering new and challenging paths to domination in East Asia, or more states to turn into precious communist puppets.

We’re not stopping with the French-controlled mainland, however, as both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands can get a sock to the jaw as you force them to release Indonesia and Malaysia!

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The colonial map will never be the same again.

Looking to the future, there is a lot more we want to do, to allow enterprising players to redraw the world map through victory, or give themselves new challenges.

Even with the new countries released, the Soviet Union is still an enormous block that we will be looking to add even more cores to. There are the Soviet republics of Central Asia, of course, which will be a huge chunk of territory. These will be followed by some more Soviet republics that never became independent, but which a forceful peace treaty might find use for to guarantee global stability/overlordship.

There’s also some more work to be done in Asia, such as the division of India, and Papua New Guinea, which Australia currently clamps on to with fists of steel.

Then there’s Western North Africa, where the control of France and Spain is a little too secure. That brings us on to the subject of the rest of Africa, which has just an immense number of post-colonial states whose independence is tightly tied to the era.

From there, we’ll see where future updates take us!

Theoretical states are always interesting, and who knows, I’ve heard a rumor that Texas really wants to secede from the Union...

AI Update from @SteelVolt

This week I started out making sure that the AI is capable of canceling deployment lines when it badly needs the equipment in the field. Following up on that I am currently working on improving the AIs template upgrade and selection capabilities as well as fixing a bug or two in that system that popped up during development.

Oh, and there was that funny bug: AI could give away states to countries not at war with the original owner, leading to it being immediately given back...to the original owner!

See you all next week!
 
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Why Belarus is not there?
they are on our future list (which is pretty long). Fleshing out the game with more releasable nations is a long term goal. We plan to add more with big patches and expansions ongoing.
 
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With the addition of more releasable nations being added for peace treaties is there the possibility of peace conferences being fleshed out further with non territorial demands? Demilitarized zones , army/airforce/navy limits and other options would be a welcome addition to the game, however I can see an issue where these changes may require a more dynamic focus tree to work in a way that is balanced and fun, with focuses to defy the treaty terms being added to a nations focus tree with each of these focuses potentially triggering another war.

@podcat , @SteelVolt , @Voffvoffhunden

First: Ty for the dev diary and taking the time.

1. Can we have more details on the AI work and Africa situation? Has Africa AI been solved? (didn't see a mention of that in the diary though I'm happy to hear about releasable african nations).

2. Will there be any UI/gameplay changes in 1.2?

3. Any changes planned to air war mechanics in 1.2? Is that in the pipeline anywhere?

4. Also a request: PLEASE PLEASE showcase some patch features in the next WWW? Is that a thing that's possible?
1. I dont see it showing up as a problem anymore no
2. there are more diaries before patch is out :)
3. no, its a huge undertaking. for The Future, certainly.
4. I'v talked to Daniel about it, we will see (stuff has to actually be stable as well to show it off).

Proof that the Japanese Ai is capable with Manchukuo in the game
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The second Image shows that the japanese Puppet states can do what they were meant to do! defend the japanese Empire!

BRING IT BACK PARADOX! XD

I tried some of the mods and in my 3-4 tests I ran it didnt seem to have a huge effect on ai performance. You do have to remember that having japan win decisively is also not wanted. I definitly see us adding them, but I'd probably want to bundle it with other things focused on the pacific war at the same time (if you just want the nation there are mods, the overall goal for us is more fun war in asia and pacific).
 
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@SteelVolt - any update on the Naval AI testing, from the changes reported last week? Without additional info, we'll have to assume our typical high expectations :)

My focus has been elsewhere, though the other coder who aided me for a couple of weeks by working on that has left us, I think the most severe issues are fixed. That being said, there is still work to be done to improve the naval AI, which may become a focus for a future patch.
 
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Can we have more details on the AI work and Africa situation? Has Africa AI been solved? (didn't see a mention of that in the diary though I'm happy to hear about releasable african nations).

It is a matter of balance, and thus a large grey zone between "great" and "total and utter borkiness", where small tweaks may have a large impact. I will be doing another small improvement pass on it, but over all it does look significantly better than it used to as far as we can tell.
 
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Can we know what modders can expect from the patch at this point, or do we have to wait?

It will be an open beta, giving the modders time to familiarize themselves with the changes before it goes live. Of course some stuff will most likely change from beta to live, but hopefully it will make things easier.
 
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So how to install/update that patch?

When we release it in open Beta you will get it by right clicking the game in Steam -> Properties -> BETAS -> Select patch in the dropdown list.

It's not out yet, so no need to try today. Once it's fully released it'll automatically download through Steam.
 
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Sounds great! Adding more releasable nations is always a good thing for flavor and replayability. If I may add a suggestion myself I would also like to see the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be 'releasable' in further patches. The way this can be done is of course different than through peace conferences because we are talking about merging (at least) two countries here, but it would still be nice if it was possible to do through decisions or maybe even national focusses.

"Formable union tags" like austria hungary, or say byzantine empire etc kinda need a new system to handle tag switching well. its something I would *love* to add (and we tried before release), but its very tricky. Do know its on our future wants list tho.

What I'm really hoping for from the upcoming patch is a way to defend from naval invasions with an army. Just allowing a front line to be set along a coast (or anywhere, lines well behind the border would be useful for other things) would be great! The inability of my legions to hold territory against incessant 3000-man D,E,F,...,n-Days is quite irritating.

I use defensive lines which work quite well.

What about free Québec? I want to destroy canada and usa☺

I'v seen Québec mods around on the workshop for now ;)
 
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I hope you'll also try to find a way to make it so the AI will land on either side of the port as well as on the port itself, otherwise I as a player can just keep a couple of garrisons there and never worry about losing it.

It has indeed been able to do this before, but something happened at some point that made it stop doing it. Hopefully turns out to be a simple fix.
 
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Devs, what is the time frame for giving us a limited OOB? I know you guys are considering it but is it on the 'future list' or something you want to get done sooner?
A future expansion kind of timeframe

Last time I saw a Austria-Hungary mod, forming it cleared all production training, research and trade, and also reset all national foci. The modmaker fixed the national foci by adding conditions where doing each foci set a flag and once the foci reset, you bypassed all foci you previously got and set the flag for. But even with that fix, you still ended up losing valuable unit training time, research time and production efficiency due to it all cancelling unless you plan ahead so everything finished just before the focus for forming it.
Yeah. Honestly modders will need code support to do these kind of nations well. Its among my list of top issues for mod support but it will take time

Most important question. Releaseable East/West Germany?
They are in and appear as possible if the situation in europe is mostly historical and after accepting it in events around the yalta conference

I do hope that the evasion stat issue rendering CLs and DDs overpowered will be rebalanced in this patch.
Iv been looking at it but im not sure if it will be done in time for 1.2 or not.
 
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Not to plug in the stuff (too much) but I kinda did the legwork on that already. With those ship attributes and the define tweaks the battles work out reasonably well balanced, imo (in that the ships perform in how you'd expect them to, instead of the immune CLs and DDs just wiping the floor with everything) At the least it's not worse from how it is currently in the vanilla game, so if you use that as a starting point, that can cut you a few hours spent on tweaks and tests.

Thanks, iv seen your mod. The underlying formula isnt working so well though and needs a change for long term balance health. You can get to a better place with number tweaks, but wont fix all issues atm

This is cool as fuck, but what do we ever need puppets for? You get free resources, yes, but for every puppet you create you lose valuable states to build factories.. (or reactors)
2 reasons. It makes for better borders when nations lose in peace conferences, but its also a long term thing. Eventually the idea is that puppets are necessary and prefered in many situations (atm puppets are good only for roleplay and when playing a minor with manpower issues since puppets can conscript more than you can on annexed)
 
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so steelvolt. this update that will include Manchukuo/East Hebei and a more fleshed out pacific. will that be a DLC? or standard update?

when do you think you would work on this? this year? or further in the future :S (hopefully soon lol)

thanks again

The only part of that I have any clue about is pacific war AI, which I hope to be working on soon(tm). It is not set in stone yet. We will have to see how our work evolves the coming few weeks.
 
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@SteelVolt
I haven't seen any mention of it in those recent dev diaries, but are you guys looking into the production AI, while at it? At the very least, could you please please squash whatever thing it is, that makes the German and/or Italy pretty much regularly completely shut down their fighter production from early 1940 onwards? Like, the British AI already has upper hand here, it doesn't need this sort of 'help' with her enemies shooting themselves in the foot here :x

(the AI actually recognizing that assigning production to not-yet-built and/or damaged factories is fruitless and so it should be distributed to working units instead would be handy, too. This can screw up German AI pretty badly, since it effectively disables production of some equipment types, given how the AI completely fails at handling resistance suppression)

Unfortunately we may not have time to address that issue for this patch, but will have to push that on a future patch.
 
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