Hi everybody, the topic for today is Naval Invasions.

The main design goal for naval invasions has been to make invasions something that requires a lot of preparation to make it possible to pull off, combat "gamey" tactics of sneaking troops in when others are not looking and make it clear how you go about defending yourself, something that requires both navy, air and land.



Let's start with what is required to do a naval invasion:

• You need to position troops at a starting naval base and draw up an invasion plan for where you want them to go.
  
• Before the invasion can be launched you need to prepare the invasion. This is first a matter of needing a certain amount of convoys available (which the invasion plan will grab) and a time. Both these depends on just how big this invasion is. Small invasions can be planned and executed quickly but large amount of divisions will require plenty of preparation time.
  
• For each strategic area you pass through with the invasion plan you must have sufficient Naval Supremacy. You get that by having sufficient amount of ships on patrol and by controlling the skies (air superiority). If you do not control these things you won't be able to invade (no sending your whole army to suicide). This makes it pretty clear now to defend as well. For example as UK - as long as your fleet is strong and stationed around the island and your air force is up and about you can feel safe from naval invasions.

There are also things you can do to improve your chances of successful invasions:

• Use special troops - Marines are much better than other troops for securing the beach.
  
• Make sure to always have ships set up as escorts. Even if you have sufficient naval supremacy to launch the invasion - if the enemy rallies their whole fleet after the invasion is already under way there is still a chance some of the convoys could get intercepted.
  
• Station battleships in the destination coastline. They will support the invasion with naval bombardment which will help your guys get the edge when fighting on the beaches.
  
• Use a commander with the Invader trait, he will help speed up the preparation as well as speed up to time it takes to get invading troops ready for fighting.
  
• And finally: make sure to research transportation technologies. The really useful ones are only available from 1940 (unless you research ahead with the penalties for that), but you can improve things like: Needing less transports to carry out invasions, halving the preparation time required, get extra defense from damage taken during invasion and speed up the time it takes for your troops to get out of the ships and on to the beach where they can fight.

The actual invasion combat has some special rules. Once troops land they first need to unload from ships and during this time they are unable to fire back effectively. If you have the right technologies researched troops will actually get some extra protection during this time, but still it's something you want to do as quickly as you can. Once on the beach they can fire back, but will still be suffering from naval invasion penalties.

Next week we'll talk about nukes!

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Hi everybody, the topic for today is Naval Invasions.

The main design goal for naval invasions has been to make invasions something that requires a lot of preparation to make it possible to pull off, combat "gamey" tactics of sneaking troops in when others are not looking and make it clear how you go about defending yourself, something that requires both navy, air and land.



Let's start with what is required to do a naval invasion:

• You need to position troops at a starting naval base and draw up an invasion plan for where you want them to go.
  
• Before the invasion can be launched you need to prepare the invasion. This is first a matter of needing a certain amount of convoys available (which the invasion plan will grab) and a time. Both these depends on just how big this invasion is. Small invasions can be planned and executed quickly but large amount of divisions will require plenty of preparation time.
  
• For each strategic area you pass through with the invasion plan you must have sufficient Naval Supremacy. You get that by having sufficient amount of ships on patrol and by controlling the skies (air superiority). If you do not control these things you won't be able to invade (no sending your whole army to suicide). This makes it pretty clear now to defend as well. For example as UK - as long as your fleet is strong and stationed around the island and your air force is up and about you can feel safe from naval invasions.

There are also things you can do to improve your chances of successful invasions:

• Use special troops - Marines are much better than other troops for securing the beach.
  
• Make sure to always have ships set up as escorts. Even if you have sufficient naval supremacy to launch the invasion - if the enemy rallies their whole fleet after the invasion is already under way there is still a chance some of the convoys could get intercepted.
  
• Station battleships in the destination coastline. They will support the invasion with naval bombardment which will help your guys get the edge when fighting on the beaches.
  
• Use a commander with the Invader trait, he will help speed up the preparation as well as speed up to time it takes to get invading troops ready for fighting.
  
• And finally: make sure to research transportation technologies. The really useful ones are only available from 1940 (unless you research ahead with the penalties for that), but you can improve things like: Needing less transports to carry out invasions, halving the preparation time required, get extra defense from damage taken during invasion and speed up the time it takes for your troops to get out of the ships and on to the beach where they can fight.

The actual invasion combat has some special rules. Once troops land they first need to unload from ships and during this time they are unable to fire back effectively. If you have the right technologies researched troops will actually get some extra protection during this time, but still it's something you want to do as quickly as you can. Once on the beach they can fire back, but will still be suffering from naval invasion penalties.

Next week we'll talk about nukes!

Read original post with larger images

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Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

China is always a rather difficult beast for Hearts of Iron games, still we have put on our thinking cap and seen what we can do to at least make things better. So as the game opens we have the Chinas at peace but hostile to each other.



The Kuomintang government will get the option launch an offensive against the communist insurgents, which will eventually end up in the possibility of a border war between Mao and Chiang. There will be no actual fighting, but units in border states will start to suffer attrition.



Maybe not 100% accurate but we are much more interested in what happens when Japan attacks and the peace afterwards. Should a Nationalist player chose to go for a real war, we’ve given Mao the ‘Cornered Fox’ trait which will help him defend.



Sometime during the hostilities, the Xi’an incident occurs and pressures Chiang to accept a temporary truce with Mao. This is the first step towards the Chinas looking outwards to the imminent threat of Japan that looms to the east.
When Japan attacks China the Nationalists get an event that allows them to set up the Chinese United Front faction against Japan. Communist China will get the option to join this faction. If they do then there is a follow up event where they annex Shanxi (a player Shanxi can refuse this). The other warlord states (except Sinkiang) will get the option to join with the Nationalist Chinese. Sinkiang will continue to be the odd man out until a war between the USSR and Germany breaks out. At that point they will throw their lot in the Chiang because the USSR is now a little too busy.



Our united China has proven a much more effective road block to Japan (more balancing to be done there but we are pleased with our progress). If Japan gets defeated the Chinese United Front will end, this was always an alliance of convenience for the two sides. Sneaky Mao will take advantage of the confusion to seize northern China and Manchuria. This is part a reflection of communist strength in those areas but also to give the PRC a better territorial base from which to get the civil war rolling.



Before we kick off the civil war we first give the PRC some free troops (supplied from unspecified communists somewhere in the world). With the PRC armies now nicely reinforced with their new territorial base, we fire an event to kick of the war between the two sides, to help the communists along we also hit the KMT forces with a morale penalty for the opening stages of the war. China is far more finely balanced than before.



Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

China is always a rather difficult beast for Hearts of Iron games, still we have put on our thinking cap and seen what we can do to at least make things better. So as the game opens we have the Chinas at peace but hostile to each other.



The Kuomintang government will get the option launch an offensive against the communist insurgents, which will eventually end up in the possibility of a border war between Mao and Chiang. There will be no actual fighting, but units in border states will start to suffer attrition.



Maybe not 100% accurate but we are much more interested in what happens when Japan attacks and the peace afterwards. Should a Nationalist player chose to go for a real war, we’ve given Mao the ‘Cornered Fox’ trait which will help him defend.



Sometime during the hostilities, the Xi’an incident occurs and pressures Chiang to accept a temporary truce with Mao. This is the first step towards the Chinas looking outwards to the imminent threat of Japan that looms to the east.
When Japan attacks China the Nationalists get an event that allows them to set up the Chinese United Front faction against Japan. Communist China will get the option to join this faction. If they do then there is a follow up event where they annex Shanxi (a player Shanxi can refuse this). The other warlord states (except Sinkiang) will get the option to join with the Nationalist Chinese. Sinkiang will continue to be the odd man out until a war between the USSR and Germany breaks out. At that point they will throw their lot in the Chiang because the USSR is now a little too busy.



Our united China has proven a much more effective road block to Japan (more balancing to be done there but we are pleased with our progress). If Japan gets defeated the Chinese United Front will end, this was always an alliance of convenience for the two sides. Sneaky Mao will take advantage of the confusion to seize northern China and Manchuria. This is part a reflection of communist strength in those areas but also to give the PRC a better territorial base from which to get the civil war rolling.



Before we kick off the civil war we first give the PRC some free troops (supplied from unspecified communists somewhere in the world). With the PRC armies now nicely reinforced with their new territorial base, we fire an event to kick of the war between the two sides, to help the communists along we also hit the KMT forces with a morale penalty for the opening stages of the war. China is far more finely balanced than before.



Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Welcome to a new development diary. This time *takes a sip of earl grey* we are going to look at United Kingdom. They start as the leader of the allies (who at this point is basically the commonwealth) and what really sets them apart is their sprawling colonial empire and the Royal Navy - the strongest fleet in the world at this time at 35 capital ships and around 200 smaller vessels.



United Kingdom starts with 3 national spirits. British Stoicism which makes them less affected by foreign attempts to change their political alignment. The War to End All Wars which impacts their conscription negatively (war is not as popular as since the first world war), and finally the King (King George V) boosts their national unity.

United Kingdom has a well developed naval industry already at start with 19 dockyards. They also have 34 civilian factories and only 14 military factories.

United Kingdom has one of the widest focus trees with lots of different options. It's split into 3 major parts.

Rearmament
The rearmament tree focuses on getting ready for and fighting another war. You will find things like research bonuses to motorized and mechanized troops, implementing the Shadow Factories scheme to allow quicker conversion of civilian industry to military.


Reinforce the Empire
Managing your empire takes up a large portion of the focus tree. The main choices are: Focus on buildup in asia, further developing the commonwealth nations, fortifying the mediterranean (suez malta etc), or securing Iraq and Iran which will set you on a path of war with the Soviet Union.


Home Defense
Home defense focus both on local defense such as coastal fortifications and getting rid of the The War to End All Wars spirit as well as allowing intervention to stop nations from joining the axis. You can for example step in and set up a puppet government in norway should their fascists leanings become too strong, so as to secure scandinavia from Hitler.


Armor & Planes
United Kingdom relied heavily on lend leased American Sherman tanks (which you of course also can through lend lease) but also had their own tank design and eventually developed the incredibly successful Centurion design (too late for the war though).

A well developed air force is important if you want to stop German bombers as well as give them back some of their own medicine.


Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Welcome to a new development diary. This time *takes a sip of earl grey* we are going to look at United Kingdom. They start as the leader of the allies (who at this point is basically the commonwealth) and what really sets them apart is their sprawling colonial empire and the Royal Navy - the strongest fleet in the world at this time at 35 capital ships and around 200 smaller vessels.



United Kingdom starts with 3 national spirits. British Stoicism which makes them less affected by foreign attempts to change their political alignment. The War to End All Wars which impacts their conscription negatively (war is not as popular as since the first world war), and finally the King (King George V) boosts their national unity.

United Kingdom has a well developed naval industry already at start with 19 dockyards. They also have 34 civilian factories and only 14 military factories.

United Kingdom has one of the widest focus trees with lots of different options. It's split into 3 major parts.

Rearmament
The rearmament tree focuses on getting ready for and fighting another war. You will find things like research bonuses to motorized and mechanized troops, implementing the Shadow Factories scheme to allow quicker conversion of civilian industry to military.


Reinforce the Empire
Managing your empire takes up a large portion of the focus tree. The main choices are: Focus on buildup in asia, further developing the commonwealth nations, fortifying the mediterranean (suez malta etc), or securing Iraq and Iran which will set you on a path of war with the Soviet Union.


Home Defense
Home defense focus both on local defense such as coastal fortifications and getting rid of the The War to End All Wars spirit as well as allowing intervention to stop nations from joining the axis. You can for example step in and set up a puppet government in norway should their fascists leanings become too strong, so as to secure scandinavia from Hitler.


Armor & Planes
United Kingdom relied heavily on lend leased American Sherman tanks (which you of course also can through lend lease) but also had their own tank design and eventually developed the incredibly successful Centurion design (too late for the war though).

A well developed air force is important if you want to stop German bombers as well as give them back some of their own medicine.


Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Time for another friday diary! Today I'll be talking about one of the biggest changes in Hearts of Iron IV compared to the previous titles: Battle Plans.



Design Goals
When I started looking at what direction to take HOI4 for unit control and provinces I first looked at HOI2 and HOI3 to see what worked well and what didn't.

HOI2
+ Fewer provinces making full manual control always possible
- Few provinces leads to a lot less cool encirclements and removes a lot of interesting tactical gameplay

HOI3
+ Lots of provinces allowing encirclements and interesting gameplay
+ HOI3 had a purely cosmetic battle plan drawing system, and still people used it - because drawing plans feels natural in a strategic wargame like this and it feels right to see and makes showing things to others in say AARs easier.
- Lots of provinces means manual control everywhere can be overwhelming, difficult to manage in multiplayer and annoying in areas where you "don't care so much".
- You could hand over control to HQ units run by AI for you and give them objectives. The problem was that effectively you had very little control, and features that play themselves are generally not a good idea. Giving up control also isn't something most players like to do.

For HOI4 we decided we wanted to attempt the best of both. Keep the high province count, always allow manual control override, enough tools to automate parts that didn't matter and control and feedback when managing lots of units at the same time so you would not be surprised by the system doing things you didn't tell it. The system is specifically not allowed to be clever, that is the player's job, so if you tell it to suicide into the maginot line it will say it thinks it's too risky, but do it anyway.

The battle plan system in HOI4 lets you draw plans on the map which are followed by assigned divisions, but at any point you can go in and reassign things or issue manual overrides. The player's role is then basically to draw up high level plans and to watch for opportunities and situations to take advantage of (such as small encirclements, or prioritizing fighting a certain enemy, or cutting off someone's retreat). Generally the strategic situation will change over time, so while you may have prepared a longer plan expect that you will need to improvise and adapt parts as you go or break off a group to manage some emergency, or particularly stubborn enemy section.


Controls
Battleplans are controlled for each Army and you have several tools for drawing them:

Naval Invasion & Paratrooping:
Used for planning naval and paratrooper invasions. We will cover these in a diary in 2 weeks or so.

Assign Frontline:
Used to assign divisions in an army to a frontline. You can either assign to the whole frontline with a nation by clicking it, or click and drag to assign just a part of it. Having an assigned frontline is required for making offensive plans because you need to know where to attack from.



Offensive Line:
This tells divisions assigned that you want them to advance along their axis of attack (represented by an arrow that you can bend and adjust as you want) from their assigned frontline to the offensive line. You can chain several of these together if you want as well.

Offensive lines and frontlines may also be overlapping. I prefer to assign a big front line of infantry to a frontline with a broad attack plan, and then manage my panzer divisions or other breakthrough units along smaller sections of that front and with a much narrower offensive line. In my barbarossa plan above Guderians panzer divisions are operating in this way together with von Rundstedt's infantry.

When you have drawn an offensive line you can hover mouse over its arrow and the game will show you a map highlighting step by step of how your units would move to take this area (the green strips in the picture below)


Fallback Line:
This lets you paint a line useful both for say setting up a defensive position behind a river or other position (for example a coastline). They are very useful for falling back in a controlled manner as well by reassigning your attackers to it they will instantly rush back and hold that point instead (I do recommend leaving some defenders to slow the enemy during your retreat).


Garrison Area:
For this order you give the army an area of responsibility instead of a frontline. Divisions will spread out to guard the most important provinces, keep resistance down, or take back provinces as long as it's pretty safe. So useful for home defense, or mop-up of areas.


Assign Divisions
Lets you quickly reassign divisions between frontlines, attack orders or command groups. Super useful and you'll be mostly accessing it by holding down the Control key.

Edit Mode
Lets you adjust any part of a plan by clicking this or holding down the Alt key. You can do things like changing the axis of attack, reshaping offensive or fallback lines.

Delete
You can of course delete whole plans (just right click), or parts of plans (click on the plan on the map).


Planning Bonuses
Battle plans are not just a way of controlling your units, they also come with advantages if you put the time in to prepare them. The longer you prepare a plan the more bonus is acquired up to a point that depends on your doctrine. For example Mobile Warfare Doctrine gives you faster planning but you can only plan to half the level of a player using Grand Battleplan (Even units given manual order as part of a plan will gain this bonus by the way). As you progress along the plan the bonus slowly goes away, so you may want to time it to coincide with a good defensive position for regrouping. There are also certain leader traits that improve planning and can create powerful combos with the right doctrine.


Next week we will take a deeper look at Britain.

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Time for another friday diary! Today I'll be talking about one of the biggest changes in Hearts of Iron IV compared to the previous titles: Battle Plans.



Design Goals
When I started looking at what direction to take HOI4 for unit control and provinces I first looked at HOI2 and HOI3 to see what worked well and what didn't.

HOI2
+ Fewer provinces making full manual control always possible
- Few provinces leads to a lot less cool encirclements and removes a lot of interesting tactical gameplay

HOI3
+ Lots of provinces allowing encirclements and interesting gameplay
+ HOI3 had a purely cosmetic battle plan drawing system, and still people used it - because drawing plans feels natural in a strategic wargame like this and it feels right to see and makes showing things to others in say AARs easier.
- Lots of provinces means manual control everywhere can be overwhelming, difficult to manage in multiplayer and annoying in areas where you "don't care so much".
- You could hand over control to HQ units run by AI for you and give them objectives. The problem was that effectively you had very little control, and features that play themselves are generally not a good idea. Giving up control also isn't something most players like to do.

For HOI4 we decided we wanted to attempt the best of both. Keep the high province count, always allow manual control override, enough tools to automate parts that didn't matter and control and feedback when managing lots of units at the same time so you would not be surprised by the system doing things you didn't tell it. The system is specifically not allowed to be clever, that is the player's job, so if you tell it to suicide into the maginot line it will say it thinks it's too risky, but do it anyway.

The battle plan system in HOI4 lets you draw plans on the map which are followed by assigned divisions, but at any point you can go in and reassign things or issue manual overrides. The player's role is then basically to draw up high level plans and to watch for opportunities and situations to take advantage of (such as small encirclements, or prioritizing fighting a certain enemy, or cutting off someone's retreat). Generally the strategic situation will change over time, so while you may have prepared a longer plan expect that you will need to improvise and adapt parts as you go or break off a group to manage some emergency, or particularly stubborn enemy section.


Controls
Battleplans are controlled for each Army and you have several tools for drawing them:

Naval Invasion & Paratrooping:
Used for planning naval and paratrooper invasions. We will cover these in a diary in 2 weeks or so.

Assign Frontline:
Used to assign divisions in an army to a frontline. You can either assign to the whole frontline with a nation by clicking it, or click and drag to assign just a part of it. Having an assigned frontline is required for making offensive plans because you need to know where to attack from.



Offensive Line:
This tells divisions assigned that you want them to advance along their axis of attack (represented by an arrow that you can bend and adjust as you want) from their assigned frontline to the offensive line. You can chain several of these together if you want as well.

Offensive lines and frontlines may also be overlapping. I prefer to assign a big front line of infantry to a frontline with a broad attack plan, and then manage my panzer divisions or other breakthrough units along smaller sections of that front and with a much narrower offensive line. In my barbarossa plan above Guderians panzer divisions are operating in this way together with von Rundstedt's infantry.

When you have drawn an offensive line you can hover mouse over its arrow and the game will show you a map highlighting step by step of how your units would move to take this area (the green strips in the picture below)


Fallback Line:
This lets you paint a line useful both for say setting up a defensive position behind a river or other position (for example a coastline). They are very useful for falling back in a controlled manner as well by reassigning your attackers to it they will instantly rush back and hold that point instead (I do recommend leaving some defenders to slow the enemy during your retreat).


Garrison Area:
For this order you give the army an area of responsibility instead of a frontline. Divisions will spread out to guard the most important provinces, keep resistance down, or take back provinces as long as it's pretty safe. So useful for home defense, or mop-up of areas.


Assign Divisions
Lets you quickly reassign divisions between frontlines, attack orders or command groups. Super useful and you'll be mostly accessing it by holding down the Control key.

Edit Mode
Lets you adjust any part of a plan by clicking this or holding down the Alt key. You can do things like changing the axis of attack, reshaping offensive or fallback lines.

Delete
You can of course delete whole plans (just right click), or parts of plans (click on the plan on the map).


Planning Bonuses
Battle plans are not just a way of controlling your units, they also come with advantages if you put the time in to prepare them. The longer you prepare a plan the more bonus is acquired up to a point that depends on your doctrine. For example Mobile Warfare Doctrine gives you faster planning but you can only plan to half the level of a player using Grand Battleplan (Even units given manual order as part of a plan will gain this bonus by the way). As you progress along the plan the bonus slowly goes away, so you may want to time it to coincide with a good defensive position for regrouping. There are also certain leader traits that improve planning and can create powerful combos with the right doctrine.


Next week we will take a deeper look at Britain.

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Hello everyone! This weeks topic will be the side effects of war: Occupation and Resistance.

Resistance
The main goal of modeling local resistance in HOI4 is to remove whack-a-mole of rebels running around and to model the strategic problems with occupying large chunks of enemy territory.



Each occupied state you control has a resistance value indicating the strength of the resistance there. It will slowly grow over time. To reduce or halt growth you need to station troops in the area (preferably special divisions with military police support battalions which are very effective for this) or lower your occupation policy for the nation in question.

As the resistance grows in an area it has several effects:

• available supply is reduced creating bottlenecks
  
• your enemies get increased intel and will be able to see more of what is going on
  
• factories will suffer from sabotage and will need to be repaired
  
• troops will take more attrition

So it's important to station troops to combat this, but of course that ties up valuable divisions you might want to use to fight the enemy. You can also appoint ministers with the Prince of Terror trait which will help to combat resistance growth in your occupied areas.

Occupation policies
You can set occupation policies for each nation you occupy. They range from Gentlest to Harshest, where harshest has the most aggressive resistance growth but lets you exploit the most

Gentlest:
- least factories
- local resources
+ most manpower
+ less resistance growth

Harshest:
+ most resources
+ most factory output
- no manpower
- fastest resistance growth



Handing over occupation
Unlike say EU4 or some of our other games, in Hearts of Iron a lot of the map tends to be occupied for most of the game rather than a short period, so it is important to be able to control the occupation during playing. To help with this we have included diplomatic actions where you can select states you occupy on the map and offer the occupation to an ally. This doesn't give them more score for a future peace conference, but it does give them the benefits of the area (industry, resources etc). AI will be quite happy to hand you stuff if you are doing the heavy lifting in the war as well and you can hand over areas you don't have troops to manage, or simply don't care about.




See you all next week again when we will be talking about battle plans!

Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive

Hello everyone! This weeks topic will be the side effects of war: Occupation and Resistance.

Resistance
The main goal of modeling local resistance in HOI4 is to remove whack-a-mole of rebels running around and to model the strategic problems with occupying large chunks of enemy territory.



Each occupied state you control has a resistance value indicating the strength of the resistance there. It will slowly grow over time. To reduce or halt growth you need to station troops in the area (preferably special divisions with military police support battalions which are very effective for this) or lower your occupation policy for the nation in question.

As the resistance grows in an area it has several effects:

• available supply is reduced creating bottlenecks
  
• your enemies get increased intel and will be able to see more of what is going on
  
• factories will suffer from sabotage and will need to be repaired
  
• troops will take more attrition

So it's important to station troops to combat this, but of course that ties up valuable divisions you might want to use to fight the enemy. You can also appoint ministers with the Prince of Terror trait which will help to combat resistance growth in your occupied areas.

Occupation policies
You can set occupation policies for each nation you occupy. They range from Gentlest to Harshest, where harshest has the most aggressive resistance growth but lets you exploit the most

Gentlest:
- least factories
- local resources
+ most manpower
+ less resistance growth

Harshest:
+ most resources
+ most factory output
- no manpower
- fastest resistance growth



Handing over occupation
Unlike say EU4 or some of our other games, in Hearts of Iron a lot of the map tends to be occupied for most of the game rather than a short period, so it is important to be able to control the occupation during playing. To help with this we have included diplomatic actions where you can select states you occupy on the map and offer the occupation to an ally. This doesn't give them more score for a future peace conference, but it does give them the benefits of the area (industry, resources etc). AI will be quite happy to hand you stuff if you are doing the heavy lifting in the war as well and you can hand over areas you don't have troops to manage, or simply don't care about.




See you all next week again when we will be talking about battle plans!

Read the original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Development Diary Archives
World War Wednesday Stream archive