Hello all!

KimchiViking here. New Project Lead for HOI4.
As podcat mentioned in his Dev Diary last Friday; we're going to do these DD's on Wednesdays from now on. Starting with a presentation of the team, as it is right now.

Currently the team is comprised by members from Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Belarus. Which means that if you walk into our section of the Paradox offices, here in Stockholm, you are likely to hear a garbled mix of English, Scandinavian and Russian. And yes, our walls are full of war propaganda posters. People keep toy tanks on their desks. Just how you always imagined it, right? ;)

More people are joining us soon.
However, without further ado. This is the HOI4 team as it looks right now.
In alphabetical order…

• Your name: Carl
  
• Your forum name: SteelVolt
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since August 2014
  
• Role on the team: AI design/AI programmer
  
• A brief explanation on what your role means:
  Together with the responsible game designer I design how the AI should behave and is the responsible for the technical design for the AI. I am also the primary programmer to implement these designs.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  One of my favourite HoI4 AI moment was probably a while back in development when nuke missions were basically set up like regular strategic bombing missions. The AI had not yet been made to construct or use nukes. One day another person in the studio came to me and told me the AI had nuked them. After asking a few questions it became clear that the player had built nuclear powerplants in locations which had then been taken over by the AI who was not really aware of the extra...umpf, it was packing in to its strategic bombing runs against the player.

• Your name: Dan
  
• Your forum name: Podcat
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since the project started development (so after summer 2013 or so if I recall), but I also worked on HOI3 and its expansions.
  
• Role on the team: Game Director
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  I'm in charge of the overall design vision and direction of Hearts of Iron. Designing expansions, writing dev diaries (except today, ha!) and having opinions on everything :)
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I keep hassling the company to squeeze buying a real tank into the PR budget. Sometimes I even think I've convinced Fredrik :D

• Your name: Filippa
  
• Your forum name: Distantaziq
  
• How long you've been on the team: May 2015
  
• Role on the team: Embedded QA
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Assessing risks with changes, assessing the risks of new issues uncovered in the game, testing mechanics to make sure the game functions under certain conditions
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  One of my personal favorite moments - when we got the letter from a fan who suffered from depression and found some relief in playing our PDX games. And also the photoshopped image of Da9l for the Hungary Games. That was hilarious.
  (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-war-wednesday-today-13th-14-30cest.920353/)

• Your name: Ilya
  
• Your forum name: ARMORIOS
  
• How long you've been on the team: More than 1.5 years
  
• Role on the team: Gameplay Programmer
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  I do coding of almost everything in the game.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I have to share it openly: I love the Hearts of Iron-series! :) It was one of my favourite PDX titles since HOI2 vanilla. It was great honor for me to put my hands on the development of new iteration of this amazing World War II game. Also my Russian background means that everything connected to this historical period is close to my heart. I see it as my duty to deliver the best gameplay experience in this WW2 setting. Salute!

• Your name: Jakob
  
• Your forum name: Havebeard
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since May '15
  
• Role on the team: Content Designer and Technical Scripter
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Adding triggers and effects to the scripting language. Research, writing and implementation of focus trees, events and all the other tiny bits and pieces that make up the game.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Until fairly late in the beta Jakob was a max skill general with all traits. Unfortunately someone picked up on it when Denmark kept doing better than expected in the test games.

• Name: Jonas
  
• Forum name: Mrop
  
• How long you've been on the team: A few months
  
• Role on the team: UX designer
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Hello! I'm the UX Designer for Hearts of Iron 4. This means I decide where to put buttons. More broadly, I decide what buttons should exist, if they should even be buttons, or if we should even have buttons in the first place!
  I have only been with HoI for a few months, so most of my time has been spent on the first DLC. I also work on Europa Universalis 4, Tiberius, and Caligula.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  My proudest achievement for HoI so far was when I added a test DLC that replaced Hitler with an anime girl.

• Name: Mats
  
• Forum name: Sideburnout
  
• How long you've been on the team: Sep 2013
  
• Role on the team: Artist
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Making 2d art and implementing them into the game, ranging from the tiniest icon to the cover! Also the fonts, I hate fonts.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Errordawg is one of my greatest creations so far ;), I think he made it into the game thanks to Darkrenown who was kinda fed up with all our cat aficionados and I couldn’t agree more. Whenever Podcat mentions getting dogs into the game I put everything else aside and abide.
  We do use errordog and major console dog emojis btw.

• Your name: Rufus
  
• Your forum name: Omghax
  
• How long you've been on the team: On and off since february. Permanently since August.
  
• Role on the team: QA tester
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Trying to ensure we ship the best possible product by identifying issues early and ensuring they've been addressed before release. Also bug forum liason.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Scientists seem to be attracted to PDX like flies to honey. As I left behind a masters in molecular biology to come work here and our team also includes a nuclear physicist and Physical Geographer. Makes one wonder if we're branching out in unexpected directions.

• Your name: Sergey
  
• Your forum name: quarz
  
• How long you've been on the team: Less than a month
  
• Role on the team: Programmer
  
• A brief explanation on what your role means:
  Implementation of gameplay features, bug fixes, optimization

• Your name: Sofia
  
• Your forum name: KimchiViking
  
• How long you've been on the team: Came aboard after the HOI4-release, in June, this year.
  
• Role on the team: Project Lead
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Out of the mountain of work we have in the backlog; I make sure that the team knows what to work on and by when. So that we can squeeze the most possible value into the game, given the limited time and manpower we have at our disposal.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I’m the sort of person who always likes to test the limits of what a game can do. The possibilities in HOI4 boggles the mind! Playing Germany, right now, I envision it as if I'm enabling Rutger Hauer, by creating my own personal version of the movie “Fatherland”.

• Name: Tomasz
  
• Forum name: TomaszKowalczyk :)
  
• How long been in the team: Since 2012
  
• Role on the team: Senior programmer, Tech lead
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Coding in new features, according to given fancy design, and bug-fixing of all kinds. Also fixing game-performance and stability issues. Responsible for the overall code quality written by the team.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Our team is arming up with Nerf Guns. Should I be worried? o(^_^)o

So, yeah! This is us. :)

It's a small team. (If you compare it to a AAA-title game.) But these people can do great things. I used to watch them from afar. And know that Paradox games only get better with time. Being apart of that process now, is equal parts having a sense of responsibility to carry on that tradition and being chuffed to bits about being in a situation to make things happen.

That's it for this DD. Keep calm and carry on developing HOI4!, I like to say.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

Hello all!

KimchiViking here. New Project Lead for HOI4.
As podcat mentioned in his Dev Diary last Friday; we're going to do these DD's on Wednesdays from now on. Starting with a presentation of the team, as it is right now.

Currently the team is comprised by members from Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Belarus. Which means that if you walk into our section of the Paradox offices, here in Stockholm, you are likely to hear a garbled mix of English, Scandinavian and Russian. And yes, our walls are full of war propaganda posters. People keep toy tanks on their desks. Just how you always imagined it, right? ;)

More people are joining us soon.
However, without further ado. This is the HOI4 team as it looks right now.
In alphabetical order…

• Your name: Carl
  
• Your forum name: SteelVolt
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since August 2014
  
• Role on the team: AI design/AI programmer
  
• A brief explanation on what your role means:
  Together with the responsible game designer I design how the AI should behave and is the responsible for the technical design for the AI. I am also the primary programmer to implement these designs.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  One of my favourite HoI4 AI moment was probably a while back in development when nuke missions were basically set up like regular strategic bombing missions. The AI had not yet been made to construct or use nukes. One day another person in the studio came to me and told me the AI had nuked them. After asking a few questions it became clear that the player had built nuclear powerplants in locations which had then been taken over by the AI who was not really aware of the extra...umpf, it was packing in to its strategic bombing runs against the player.

• Your name: Dan
  
• Your forum name: Podcat
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since the project started development (so after summer 2013 or so if I recall), but I also worked on HOI3 and its expansions.
  
• Role on the team: Game Director
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  I'm in charge of the overall design vision and direction of Hearts of Iron. Designing expansions, writing dev diaries (except today, ha!) and having opinions on everything :)
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I keep hassling the company to squeeze buying a real tank into the PR budget. Sometimes I even think I've convinced Fredrik :D

• Your name: Filippa
  
• Your forum name: Distantaziq
  
• How long you've been on the team: May 2015
  
• Role on the team: Embedded QA
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Assessing risks with changes, assessing the risks of new issues uncovered in the game, testing mechanics to make sure the game functions under certain conditions
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  One of my personal favorite moments - when we got the letter from a fan who suffered from depression and found some relief in playing our PDX games. And also the photoshopped image of Da9l for the Hungary Games. That was hilarious.
  (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-war-wednesday-today-13th-14-30cest.920353/)

• Your name: Ilya
  
• Your forum name: ARMORIOS
  
• How long you've been on the team: More than 1.5 years
  
• Role on the team: Gameplay Programmer
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  I do coding of almost everything in the game.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I have to share it openly: I love the Hearts of Iron-series! :) It was one of my favourite PDX titles since HOI2 vanilla. It was great honor for me to put my hands on the development of new iteration of this amazing World War II game. Also my Russian background means that everything connected to this historical period is close to my heart. I see it as my duty to deliver the best gameplay experience in this WW2 setting. Salute!

• Your name: Jakob
  
• Your forum name: Havebeard
  
• How long you've been on the team: Since May '15
  
• Role on the team: Content Designer and Technical Scripter
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Adding triggers and effects to the scripting language. Research, writing and implementation of focus trees, events and all the other tiny bits and pieces that make up the game.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Until fairly late in the beta Jakob was a max skill general with all traits. Unfortunately someone picked up on it when Denmark kept doing better than expected in the test games.

• Name: Jonas
  
• Forum name: Mrop
  
• How long you've been on the team: A few months
  
• Role on the team: UX designer
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Hello! I'm the UX Designer for Hearts of Iron 4. This means I decide where to put buttons. More broadly, I decide what buttons should exist, if they should even be buttons, or if we should even have buttons in the first place!
  I have only been with HoI for a few months, so most of my time has been spent on the first DLC. I also work on Europa Universalis 4, Tiberius, and Caligula.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  My proudest achievement for HoI so far was when I added a test DLC that replaced Hitler with an anime girl.

• Name: Mats
  
• Forum name: Sideburnout
  
• How long you've been on the team: Sep 2013
  
• Role on the team: Artist
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Making 2d art and implementing them into the game, ranging from the tiniest icon to the cover! Also the fonts, I hate fonts.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Errordawg is one of my greatest creations so far ;), I think he made it into the game thanks to Darkrenown who was kinda fed up with all our cat aficionados and I couldn’t agree more. Whenever Podcat mentions getting dogs into the game I put everything else aside and abide.
  We do use errordog and major console dog emojis btw.

• Your name: Rufus
  
• Your forum name: Omghax
  
• How long you've been on the team: On and off since february. Permanently since August.
  
• Role on the team: QA tester
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Trying to ensure we ship the best possible product by identifying issues early and ensuring they've been addressed before release. Also bug forum liason.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Scientists seem to be attracted to PDX like flies to honey. As I left behind a masters in molecular biology to come work here and our team also includes a nuclear physicist and Physical Geographer. Makes one wonder if we're branching out in unexpected directions.

• Your name: Sergey
  
• Your forum name: quarz
  
• How long you've been on the team: Less than a month
  
• Role on the team: Programmer
  
• A brief explanation on what your role means:
  Implementation of gameplay features, bug fixes, optimization

• Your name: Sofia
  
• Your forum name: KimchiViking
  
• How long you've been on the team: Came aboard after the HOI4-release, in June, this year.
  
• Role on the team: Project Lead
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Out of the mountain of work we have in the backlog; I make sure that the team knows what to work on and by when. So that we can squeeze the most possible value into the game, given the limited time and manpower we have at our disposal.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  I’m the sort of person who always likes to test the limits of what a game can do. The possibilities in HOI4 boggles the mind! Playing Germany, right now, I envision it as if I'm enabling Rutger Hauer, by creating my own personal version of the movie “Fatherland”.

• Name: Tomasz
  
• Forum name: TomaszKowalczyk :)
  
• How long been in the team: Since 2012
  
• Role on the team: Senior programmer, Tech lead
  
• Brief explanation on what that role means:
  Coding in new features, according to given fancy design, and bug-fixing of all kinds. Also fixing game-performance and stability issues. Responsible for the overall code quality written by the team.
  
• Something you want to share with the forumites:
  Our team is arming up with Nerf Guns. Should I be worried? o(^_^)o

So, yeah! This is us. :)

It's a small team. (If you compare it to a AAA-title game.) But these people can do great things. I used to watch them from afar. And know that Paradox games only get better with time. Being apart of that process now, is equal parts having a sense of responsibility to carry on that tradition and being chuffed to bits about being in a situation to make things happen.

That's it for this DD. Keep calm and carry on developing HOI4!, I like to say.

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

Today we released patch 1.2, a.k.a. Sunflower for Hearts of Iron IV.

Highlights of this patch:
- AI improvements
- Custom difficulty settings allow you to adjust the relative power of Germany, France, Italy and the Soviet Union
- Improved peace conferences, based on the popular Steam workshop mod by Neutrino.
- Hotjoin added for multiplayer games
- Resync button added to remedy connection issues without having to re-host multiplayer games
- Added new releasable nations

...and much more!

Due to Steam's limited space, and the length of the patch notes. Please visit our official forum for a full list of changes.

Read full patch notes!

Older save games should be compatible, but as usual we strongly recommend finishing off old ironman saves using 1.1 to avoid unpleasant surprises.

To stay on a previous patch level:
1. Right click Hearts of Iron IV in steam
2. Click Properties and go to the tab that says "BETAS"
3. Select the appropriate patch (most likely you want 1.1 - Red Ball Express) in the dropdown list
4. Close the window and let Steam update the game

When you want to upgrade to 1.2 you repeat the steps, but select "None" in the dropdown list.

If you experience any bugs in 1.2, please post a proper bug report in the bug report forum

Today we released patch 1.2, a.k.a. Sunflower for Hearts of Iron IV.

Highlights of this patch:
- AI improvements
- Custom difficulty settings allow you to adjust the relative power of Germany, France, Italy and the Soviet Union
- Improved peace conferences, based on the popular Steam workshop mod by Neutrino.
- Hotjoin added for multiplayer games
- Resync button added to remedy connection issues without having to re-host multiplayer games
- Added new releasable nations

...and much more!

Due to Steam's limited space, and the length of the patch notes. Please visit our official forum for a full list of changes.

Read full patch notes!

Older save games should be compatible, but as usual we strongly recommend finishing off old ironman saves using 1.1 to avoid unpleasant surprises.

To stay on a previous patch level:
1. Right click Hearts of Iron IV in steam
2. Click Properties and go to the tab that says "BETAS"
3. Select the appropriate patch (most likely you want 1.1 - Red Ball Express) in the dropdown list
4. Close the window and let Steam update the game

When you want to upgrade to 1.2 you repeat the steps, but select "None" in the dropdown list.

If you experience any bugs in 1.2, please post a proper bug report in the bug report forum

Hello everyone, this is going to be a very short diary because the team is knee deep with work on the Sunflower patch today.

Patch is coming along and bugs have been squashed this week, but there are no major new features to talk about this week. The funniest bug found was probably the one where German AI, presumably due to its strong sense of honor, refused to attack units it massively outnumbered (say 40 divisions of medium tanks vs 2 infantry divisions sitting on Copenhagen). We are also looking at integrating the Enhanced Peace Conference AI mod into the patch, because frankly it works well and its creator is a nice guy who gave us permission :)

Oh yeah, also our artist added more neat icons (now 14 in total) for your Armies so it's easier to keep them apart:


Now for something totally different! As you know our games collect stats and metrics and who doesn't love stats?

• 12% of players use Nato counters (this jumped a whole percentage when Black ICE and August Storm mods released)
  
• 12% play multiplayer
  
• 20% play ironman
  
• The most popular major nations are Germany at ~40% of games, Soviet (15%) and USA (12%). France is least popular at 6%.
  
• 35% are played as a minor nation
  
• Mods are super popular! Around half of daily active games use mods of some kind. We are really excited by this, because we spent a lot of time making sure HOI was easy to mod and easy to get mods for in the workshop.

Among mods the most popular ones are cosmetic. Here are the top 3:

• Colored Buttons
  
• More Division Icons
  
• Flavor Names extended

When it comes to daily active players I can't quote exact numbers, but compared to other games and how its historically looked the numbers for HOI4 are strong which looks great for the future :)

I know everybody was hoping for a patch this week (including us!), but we also want to make sure things are as good as they can be when we release, and especially since we are still dealing with a lot of illness among team members we need to push it a little longer. You will know it when I do when the patch is ready :)

See you all next week, in another life where we are all cats (cats playing 1.2 Sunflower)

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

Hello everyone, this is going to be a very short diary because the team is knee deep with work on the Sunflower patch today.

Patch is coming along and bugs have been squashed this week, but there are no major new features to talk about this week. The funniest bug found was probably the one where German AI, presumably due to its strong sense of honor, refused to attack units it massively outnumbered (say 40 divisions of medium tanks vs 2 infantry divisions sitting on Copenhagen). We are also looking at integrating the Enhanced Peace Conference AI mod into the patch, because frankly it works well and its creator is a nice guy who gave us permission :)

Oh yeah, also our artist added more neat icons (now 14 in total) for your Armies so it's easier to keep them apart:


Now for something totally different! As you know our games collect stats and metrics and who doesn't love stats?

• 12% of players use Nato counters (this jumped a whole percentage when Black ICE and August Storm mods released)
  
• 12% play multiplayer
  
• 20% play ironman
  
• The most popular major nations are Germany at ~40% of games, Soviet (15%) and USA (12%). France is least popular at 6%.
  
• 35% are played as a minor nation
  
• Mods are super popular! Around half of daily active games use mods of some kind. We are really excited by this, because we spent a lot of time making sure HOI was easy to mod and easy to get mods for in the workshop.

Among mods the most popular ones are cosmetic. Here are the top 3:

• Colored Buttons
  
• More Division Icons
  
• Flavor Names extended

When it comes to daily active players I can't quote exact numbers, but compared to other games and how its historically looked the numbers for HOI4 are strong which looks great for the future :)

I know everybody was hoping for a patch this week (including us!), but we also want to make sure things are as good as they can be when we release, and especially since we are still dealing with a lot of illness among team members we need to push it a little longer. You will know it when I do when the patch is ready :)

See you all next week, in another life where we are all cats (cats playing 1.2 Sunflower)

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

Hi everyone! Friday means its time to give you all a fresh update on Sunflower (1.2 patch) progress! Its starting to come together nicely now, so without further ado, here is what's been happening...

GUI improvements
Managing a lot of divisions training in parallel can get hard to get an overview of so now it’s possible to compact the entries. As an added help we now color training that is blocked by lack of equipment making it much easier to manage your queue size.


As a minor improvement to support the work on next section naval battle and port strike reports now give a quick summary over damage to survivors as well so you know how much was done in total and naval invasion alerts are more relevant and accurate.

Naval Balance
There has been a bunch of reports about the submarine game not working so well, so this week we fixed bugs and tweaked submarines and convoy raiding. The big bug was that raiders would attack empty routes (supply convoy routes to places with enough local supply, so that they weren't used), this meant that they would be attacking non-existent convoys in a bunch of places rather than real ones making it appear as if it was impossible to catch anything there. General detection was also too low and has been tweaked up. The way sunk convoys affected efficiency of transport also had problems and have been tweaked for much stronger impact now. Starving out islands with a lot of defenders work a lot better now and raiding convoys can be pretty potent!


The AI’s use of fleets and missions have been improved a lot for Sunflower, but it’s still an area that needs more work to be really competitive with players. It’s something we will put effort into in the future.

General balance-wise we have been working on stuff to promote mixed fleets better and discourage light cruiser spam and lowering the impact of evasion in combat, meanwhile torpedoes have also gotten stronger. It’s going to need some more tweaking before the patch is out, but naval balance is now already much better!

Script update
We feel it is a shame that so many of the Soviet loving players chose to avoid the fiery alternate history path that picks Leon Trotsky. It simply has not made sense from a pure gameplay perspective. We’ve added a focus to address the issue that Trotsky is a much weaker choice than Stalin.

After winning the civil war, a Soviet player will be able to pick the focus ‘Permanent Revolution’, which unlocks parts of the same tree that ‘The Great Purge’ does.


Once the focus is completed, Trotsky’s trait will change to ‘Triumphant Revolutionary’. This will remove his Political Power penalty and make it much cheaper to help fuel more righteous worker revolutions across the globe.

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”- Trotsky


The focus trees have long been a source of many weird, funny and frustrating bugs.
The exiled government of Germany would demand Memel from Lithuania, who would then lie down flat and hand over the territory. Countries would welcome their invaders by building infrastructure and factories in the occupied territories. Diplomatic pressure on Turkey would make them a puppet of the exiled Germany. The USA would view a democratic Germany as still being ‘The Fascist Menace’ and jump at the first chance of war with them. Japan would go for war with the USA, despite being pushed back to the islands by the Chinese.

These and many other issues with the National Foci have been addressed in the upcoming patch.

I’ll mention a few of the general changes here:

• As a general rule foci are blocked when a country has capitulated. We’ve added an option in script to unblock it for when the foci still make sense to complete.
  
• Adding buildings via focus should now look for control of the state before building.
  
• Blocked some of the foci leading to war if the nation has the same ideology.

At the moment there are some AI issues left to deal with, but if all goes well I hope we can get the Sunflower patch wrapped up during next week, at least as an open beta for public testing. Thanks for being patient!

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

Hi everyone! Friday means its time to give you all a fresh update on Sunflower (1.2 patch) progress! Its starting to come together nicely now, so without further ado, here is what's been happening...

GUI improvements
Managing a lot of divisions training in parallel can get hard to get an overview of so now it’s possible to compact the entries. As an added help we now color training that is blocked by lack of equipment making it much easier to manage your queue size.


As a minor improvement to support the work on next section naval battle and port strike reports now give a quick summary over damage to survivors as well so you know how much was done in total and naval invasion alerts are more relevant and accurate.

Naval Balance
There has been a bunch of reports about the submarine game not working so well, so this week we fixed bugs and tweaked submarines and convoy raiding. The big bug was that raiders would attack empty routes (supply convoy routes to places with enough local supply, so that they weren't used), this meant that they would be attacking non-existent convoys in a bunch of places rather than real ones making it appear as if it was impossible to catch anything there. General detection was also too low and has been tweaked up. The way sunk convoys affected efficiency of transport also had problems and have been tweaked for much stronger impact now. Starving out islands with a lot of defenders work a lot better now and raiding convoys can be pretty potent!


The AI’s use of fleets and missions have been improved a lot for Sunflower, but it’s still an area that needs more work to be really competitive with players. It’s something we will put effort into in the future.

General balance-wise we have been working on stuff to promote mixed fleets better and discourage light cruiser spam and lowering the impact of evasion in combat, meanwhile torpedoes have also gotten stronger. It’s going to need some more tweaking before the patch is out, but naval balance is now already much better!

Script update
We feel it is a shame that so many of the Soviet loving players chose to avoid the fiery alternate history path that picks Leon Trotsky. It simply has not made sense from a pure gameplay perspective. We’ve added a focus to address the issue that Trotsky is a much weaker choice than Stalin.

After winning the civil war, a Soviet player will be able to pick the focus ‘Permanent Revolution’, which unlocks parts of the same tree that ‘The Great Purge’ does.


Once the focus is completed, Trotsky’s trait will change to ‘Triumphant Revolutionary’. This will remove his Political Power penalty and make it much cheaper to help fuel more righteous worker revolutions across the globe.

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”- Trotsky


The focus trees have long been a source of many weird, funny and frustrating bugs.
The exiled government of Germany would demand Memel from Lithuania, who would then lie down flat and hand over the territory. Countries would welcome their invaders by building infrastructure and factories in the occupied territories. Diplomatic pressure on Turkey would make them a puppet of the exiled Germany. The USA would view a democratic Germany as still being ‘The Fascist Menace’ and jump at the first chance of war with them. Japan would go for war with the USA, despite being pushed back to the islands by the Chinese.

These and many other issues with the National Foci have been addressed in the upcoming patch.

I’ll mention a few of the general changes here:

• As a general rule foci are blocked when a country has capitulated. We’ve added an option in script to unblock it for when the foci still make sense to complete.
  
• Adding buildings via focus should now look for control of the state before building.
  
• Blocked some of the foci leading to war if the nation has the same ideology.

At the moment there are some AI issues left to deal with, but if all goes well I hope we can get the Sunflower patch wrapped up during next week, at least as an open beta for public testing. Thanks for being patient!

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

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.




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.




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!




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!



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!

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive

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.




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.




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!




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!



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!

Read the original post

Useful links
Official Website
Hearts of Iron IV Wiki
Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive