If we don't get an Italy rework in Barbarossa I'm gonna be mad

[safe-keeper]

It's not really the same as what happened to Italy, Hungary, and Romania, though. Those were countries that tried to leave their factions, but Germany intervened to prevent it (to various degrees of success). You can try to overthrow Italy's government and start a civil war so that part of the country leaves the Axis and joins the Allies, but there's no structure for "We realize we're on the losing side, so let's have the king fire Mussolini, change sides so we don't get completely occupied and wiped out, and, oh by the way, Germany disarms half our army because we screwed it up, and now we are in an accidental civil war with half the country defended by German troops with Mussolini as a puppet."

So perhaps there could be a system where a member of a faction could sue for peace independently, like in CK and EU, or even offer to "defect" to the winning faction (like an Axis minor declaring war on Germany), but then the leader of the faction has x days to occupy, say, 50% of their victory points, and that allows them to... I don't know, start a civil war or something?

 

[pro.gamer.69]

It's not really the same as what happened to Italy, Hungary, and Romania, though. Those were countries that tried to leave their factions, but Germany intervened to prevent it (to various degrees of success). You can try to overthrow Italy's government and start a civil war so that part of the country leaves the Axis and joins the Allies, but there's no structure for "We realize we're on the losing side, so let's have the king fire Mussolini, change sides so we don't get completely occupied and wiped out, and, oh by the way, Germany disarms half our army because we screwed it up, and now we are in an accidental civil war with half the country defended by German troops with Mussolini as a puppet."

presumably, the player would remain in the faction/ideology they originally chose (i.e. the Axis). they would experience a civil war once they reached a certain level of capitulation. the player wouldn't be trying to leave the faction, the AI would.

given that they managed to make either path - either the one i mention, or the one you describe - work for France, in many senses, there's no reason why it wouldn't work for Italy/Romania/Bulgaria/Hungary, who all experienced similar things. once you reach, say, 75% surrender progress, they get a civil war for the ideology of their main occupier.

the issues i see with it are with annoying mechanics/exiled divisions/whatever for the countries occupying the part of the country which flips ideology, and whacky situations in ahistorical settings. but i still feel it could work.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

This is an excellent point. I was thinking of options for a new Italian Focus Tree and the this switching to the Allies is critical to the Historical path. And all that would entail...Germany rescuing Mussolini... his rump state, etc.

Edit (Added): IF Allies occupy XXX province(s), Decision / NF unlock —> switch faction. That would be so great.

i wasn't thinking that you would switch sides, but rather that the occupied side would break off/rebel, which is historically accurate enough for italy and the balkans. however, it could also be something like France's situation, though if you create two tags it will invariably lead to the US puppeting two Italies.

 

[Secret Master]

So perhaps there could be a system where a member of a faction could sue for peace independently, like in CK and EU, or even offer to "defect" to the winning faction (like an Axis minor declaring war on Germany), but then the leader of the faction has x days to occupy, say, 50% of their victory points, and that allows them to... I don't know, start a civil war or something?

Kind of.

I was thinking of something like this (for AI nations only):

1) Rework war support mechanics so that it responds to overall casualties and loss of cores. If necessary, boost war support for certain majors like the Soviets. Higher conscription laws might also factor into this.

2) Establish specific "country considers leaving faction" thresholds for ruling party support and war support. The lower the war support, and the lower ruling party popularity is, the worse the new effects are. (Also, rework ruling party support in various countries so that none of them are 90% or higher for things like fascism at game start.)

3) At each threshold of war support and ruling party popularity, assign some kind of "bad events/ticking stability loss" events and/or mechanic. Each of these events or ticking stability loss event fires a step in the "we are defecting from our faction" mechanic. I'd see four steps in such a mechanic (kind of like how puppets have different steps): All expeditionary forces loaned to faction members returned and all garrison manpower loaned to faction members recalled, diplomatic overtures to enemies, military take over of government/new government formed, attempt to switch sides.

4) During the diplomatic overtures phase, if the opposing faction refuses an offer for the country to change sides, no further progress will be made and the country won't defect. (To use Romania as a historical example, there's no reason for Romania to defect from the Axis if Stalin signals a refusal to recognize King Michael and his government as legitimate.)

5) During new government formed phase, the ruling party may be switched, elections are suspended if the government allows elections, and ministers that encourage ideologies opposed to the current faction are installed automatically and for free.

6) Upon switching sides, the country becomes hostile to its old faction. Territory occupied by its new faction remains occupied until the peace conference.

7) This is important: progressing through the steps can be slowed or stalled by the presence of faction leader troops on the country's VPs. You need more troops on those VPs to stall or slow progress the further the country has progressed in steps. The required troop count also increases based on how poorly supported the ideology of the faction leader is in the country trying to defect and how low war support is.

The goal of the system would be to give countries in HOI4 the historical tools Germany used to try and stop Hungary, Romania, and Italy from defecting. It should be clear to the player that defection is coming (Germany knew what was happening and in each case tried to stop them), and there should be prevention measures. The ideal situation would be that faction leaders on the losing side of the war should have to actually pay attention to how bad the war is going for minors and not just in terms of losing cores.

 

[mursolini]

Focus trees have greatly outsized importance in eyes of so many communty members, and for no good reason. There are perfectly serviceable focus trees for every major for every major mod, and separate focus trees mods all over the place. Let the only people that can develop mechanics focus on that.

It's not really the same as what happened to Italy, Hungary, and Romania, though. Those were countries that tried to leave their factions, but Germany intervened to prevent it (to various degrees of success). You can try to overthrow Italy's government and start a civil war so that part of the country leaves the Axis and joins the Allies, but there's no structure for "We realize we're on the losing side, so let's have the king fire Mussolini, change sides so we don't get completely occupied and wiped out, and, oh by the way, Germany disarms half our army because we screwed it up, and now we are in an accidental civil war with half the country defended by German troops with Mussolini as a puppet."

That isn`t entirely true either, since very many Italians fought on German side during Italian campaign, hence a democratic coup & civil war is sort of justifiable.
After all, King firing Mussolini is a "coup", nobody can legally fire dictator.

Hungary and Romania are represented perfectly well by just plain capitulations, after all, Soviets changed their governments, and kicked previous ones out.

The only true change of side, would be Finland, when it fought USSR but not allies, then peaced out and kicked Germans out, keeping it`s government unchanged through all of this.

 

[Warhawg01]

There are tons of great ideas here, with much more thought put into them than mine. So much so, I’m actually now glad that Italy isn’t getting updated, — the work required to get it right.

 

[safe-keeper]

I really like step seven. So if you start to lose the war as Germany, or even just if one of your minors is in trouble, you find yourself having to pull troops from the front to keep your allies from turning on you. Would make the eastern front feel a lot more tense as Germany, particularly during the late war period.

 

[OldCleric]

i disagree plenty with what PDX prioritizes and the speed at which content is produced (though I have no idea if the latter is "fair" or not), but I still find the DLC enjoyable enough to be worth the price.

The speed is probably the main problem here, since there are always opportunities to get a basically reasonable price as you say. I just don't think it's really acceptable for the outlook on the heinously bad Italian focus tree to be "we have nothing planned and no timeframe."

This has been an issue for years and given the makeup of the modding community and the development background of BfB, the claim that focus trees are too difficult is not really serious and doesn't suffice anymore.

I think the most useful comparison is to line HOI4's development schedule up with other Paradox titles. In this regard it clearly just falls short.

I'm excited for the supply update and don't think it's appropriate to be hostile to the devs, but way too many people dismiss complaints that are totally legit. Paradox needs to support HOI4 better and that really starts with cleaning up things that should be in hotfixes, like Italy's tree.

 

[unmerged(235683)]

It seems like a hard issue to tackle. On the one hand, OP is sort of overreacting in the manner of his response to the devs by them not having complete an Italian focus tree. "Scummy" are inappropriate words to use for this forum. On the other hand, it's difficult to not point out the glaringly complex focus tree of Mexico, whose involvement of WWII was not as significant as Italy, and for the devs to dismiss Italy when they did have some chances. Now, mistakes happen, and hindsight is too easy, MtG would have benefitted an Italy focus tree rather than Mexican focus tree. And while the devs rightly state their wish to theme their expansions, I think MtG already disrupts that track record.

By the way, I don't mean to downplay the Mexican focus tree. Mexico is an awesome nation to play and I've spent hours playing games with it. However, I think for a WWII game one of the three major Axis powers should have been higher on the list.

It's very nice to see the USSR getting its awaited revamp. After the UK, USSR is my most played nation and I'm so excited for all the logistics and changes to land combat to forever change the way we okay HOI4 that I'll he spending a few months cheesing the current system to have massive armies in harsh terrain, low infra areas where my soldiers feed off the blades of grass they march on.

 

[Liquid Ghost]

We knew for months that it was either going to be SU or Italy and someone was going to be pissed about whichever option they took. I'm not surprised they chose SU given what we know from telemetry.

BTW, is there any consensus on what the minors are going to be? Finland and Poland?

 

[Secret Master]

After all, King firing Mussolini is a "coup", nobody can legally fire dictator.

That's not true at all. In fact, the King of Italy had the legal authority to fire Mussolini from his post as Prime Minister based on assuming his legal powers via Article 5 of Italy's constitution (ruling documents?). Furthermore, the Grand Council's position in the legal framework of the country meant that when his own fellow fascists voted him out of his position as head of the party, the king had all the required legal precedent for removing Mussolini like he was just another failed prime minister that couldn't get a ruling coalition together.

The fact that the Grand Council's voting against Mussolini also meant the king had enough de facto political power to remove him is should not be read as the king having no de jure power to do it.

Hungary and Romania are represented perfectly well by just plain capitulations, after all, Soviets changed their governments, and kicked previous ones out.

Not in the least. For example, how does Romania capturing around 50,000 German soldiers during German attempts to suppress King Michael's coup get represented in a simple capitulation? Capitulation removes most or even all units of the capitulating country; it doesn't let them immediately swap sides and start shooting at their former allies. None of this even addresses the mess that was the Hungarian-Romanian frontier at this time. And you can't say Romanian military actions taking against German forces weren't significant militarily.

Hungary also tried to get out of the Axis, but Germany was able to secure the country without firing a shot by a combination of strategic and quiet placement of German forces and using a ruse to keep Horthy out of the picture. Hungary's case is why I suggested having faction leader troops on VPs could slow or stall defection: it worked in this case.

 

[Reinner]

BTW, is there any consensus on what the minors are going to be? Finland and Poland?

Finland is a no-brainer. It fought in Barbarossa, aswell as in Winter war and Continuation war. Poland is literally standing between the two giants that later clash so i expect them to get reworked aswell, Poland also has plenty of interesting "what if" scenarios. Hard to say anything for the Baltic states, maybe they will give them focus tree similiar to what Chinese warlords received and i expect Germany to get some changes/tweaks but nothing too major.

 

[LogOutGames]

Didn't Bulgaria flip before the Soviets reached it? As far as I know, the Motherland Front (the Communists) had successfully couped the Tzar a few days before the Soviets had entered the country. So maybe war support should be shared among faction allies. If the war is being lost on one front all members should get debufs.

 

[kimidf]

We knew for months that it was either going to be SU or Italy and someone was going to be pissed about whichever option they took. I'm not surprised they chose SU given what we know from telemetry.

BTW, is there any consensus on what the minors are going to be? Finland and Poland?

Well Poland is considered to be a major in this game as the game developers have said many times, so it obtained a free own tree at the launch of the game to those who reserved the deluxe edition of the game or else it came by default with TFV if you obtained it previously

 

[Geffito]

OP you are completely right, and the userbase of this forum is absolutely cancer, full of annoying kids with 2,000 hours who don't even know how to
play the game properly and lick paradox's boot.

I don't even blame the developers, but the company, they are only 5 in the team, how does one of the most played games in steam
has such a small team? I am surprised they can even update the game at all.

 

[Rubidium]

Let me also make it clear that I I think mechanics that do something like that well would be worthy of their own DLC. It's not just Italy, but Romania and Hungary would also benefit.

And quite a few other historically interesting countries (Finland and Siam, for instance), plus alt-history branches for some of the existing ones.

 

[SRhistory]

OP you are completely right, and the userbase of this forum is absolutely cancer, full of annoying kids with 2,000 hours who don't even know how to
play the game properly and lick paradox's boot.

I don't even blame the developers, but the company, they are only 5 in the team, how does one of the most played games in steam
has such a small team? I am surprised they can even update the game at all.

I agree with you. They should expand dev team so the progress will be faster (dev can work on more items) next to this what i see on development makes me happy. Yes many people want a rework on italie. But dev said they are not doing it in the barbarosse update but maybe after this? In the dairy you can read
“The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.”. Of course they will not tell you all else the surprise is gone and also the flexibility of dev.
Stop complaining and just make a suggestion and up vote it with 500+ votes. Then dev can’t ignore it!
Next to this... it will make the forum nice to read. Even for new players... just think about that one...”new player comes to the forum and read this kind of messages”. Well if i would be new i would think what a f... game. Which in fact isn’t true because else we wouldn’t have this high amount of players!

Ps

I could advice dev to work via scrum/epics/features and other it related stuff. This speed up the progress and time to market is much faster. But well let me not do it because if i read many people there post... they don’t understand what it is to be a dev’er .

 

[Geffito]

I agree with you. They should expand dev team so the progress will be faster (dev can work on more items) next to this what i see on development makes me happy. Yes many people want a rework on italie. But dev said they are not doing it in the barbarosse update but maybe after this? In the dairy you can read
“The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.”. Of course they will not tell you all else the surprise is gone and also the flexibility of dev.
Stop complaining and just make a suggestion and up vote it with 500+ votes. Then dev can’t ignore it!
Next to this... it will make the forum nice to read. Even for new players... just think about that one...”new player comes to the forum and read this kind of messages”. Well if i would be new i would think what a f... game. Which in fact isn’t true because else we wouldn’t have this high amount of players!

Ps

I could advice dev to work via scrum/epics/features and other it related stuff. This speed up the progress and time to market is much faster. But well let me not do it because if i read many people there post... they don’t understand what it is to be a dev’er .

The issue is the priorities, they added Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece and even Portugal with a massive focus tree with a lot of content with clearly a lot of effort put into, half of which had a very minor involvement in ww2, but not the majors, its crazy when you think about it, there is absolutely no logic for this, they don't even make extra money from this

 

[Bolshevik-]

Because Italy lose to Greece and in Egypt (after the Torch Op), you don't gave them a tree ?

They have a unique focus tree. It may be bad but its still there.

Turkey didn't even participate until Feb 45. So why would Turkey be stronger than Itlay ?

Because I'v seen multiplayer games where Italy and Turkey are players and Turkey has a larger economy by 1939. Literally all I'v said. I feel like you have trouble reading.

 

[safe-keeper]

The issue is the priorities, they added Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece and even Portugal with a massive focus tree with a lot of content with clearly a lot of effort put into, half of which had a very minor involvement in ww2, but not the majors, its crazy when you think about it, there is absolutely no logic for this, they don't even make extra money from this

Again: Italy had a focus tree when the game was first released. Mexico, Bulgaria, Greece, and Portugal did not. Granted, the devs weren't as skilled at making focus trees then as they are now, so some (most? All?) of the older trees are being redone.

Of all the hobbits to get second focus tree, someone inevitably had to get theirs last, and that someone turns out to be Italy. Or at least, the US and the USSR were prioritized ahead of them, which I totally understand: the east front was a major part of WWII, where the war would be won or lost. The US is a superpower that plays a huge role, while Italy is the smallest of the majors and pretty much only has a significant role to play in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

I can perfectly well understand why it was done the way it was.