Hello everyone and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. This time we’ll go into the main flavor of the 1.19 patch, which we call Denmark.

Well, why do we call it Denmark? Well.. First of all, we’ve added lots and lots of Dynamic Historical Event to Denmark, bringing them up to par with other european majors. Skåne also starts with the Skånemarket, a large bonus to the fish produced in the province. We have also added a few new provinces in Jylland, while also increasing the development of Denmark as a whole.


And as you can see here, the Danes get a nice new unit in 1.19 as well..



Norway also got an improvement, getting their map revised to include a fair amount of new provinces, and a wasteland in the center of the mountain range, to make the country more easily defended against the vile swedes. We also gave them a huge chunk of new Dynamic Historical Events, making playing them a fair bit more interesting.



We also improved the political mapmode, as so many had requested, so we now show the terrain map where there has been no colonisation yet, so you’ll have some more informative eye-candy while playing



One other thing to mention today is the fact that we added a fair bit more instructions to the AI for your nation if you crash or are forced to stop playing for a while in a campaign. The following options now exists for your convenience.

• Ignore Decisions -Yes/No
  
• Embrace Institutions - Yes/No
  
• Develop Provinces - Yes/No
  
• Disband Units - Yes/No
  
• Change Fleet Missions - Yes/No
  
• Send Missionaries - Yes/No
  
• Convert Culture - Yes/No
  
• Add/Remove Cultures - Yes/No

Stay tuned.. Next week we’ll talk more about forts, peace options and tradegoods, amongst other things.

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Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

Welcome to the second diary covering stuff in the upcoming (unannounced) expansion and patch, if you missed the previous check <here>. I do have it on pretty good authority that there is gonna be some enlightenment on that today during the World War Wednesday stream (15:00 CEST) ;), so make sure to tune in then!

One of the things we are focusing on in this expansion is to flesh out the commonwealth nations with focus trees, art, flavor and special mechanics. First up is Canada because it was the first of the commonwealth nations to send troops to Britain.
Like many commonwealth nations it suffered from the Great Depression and came through the war a modernized, more independent and stronger nation despite the hardships of the war.

The Canadian focus tree deals with some major issues of the time. Firstly how to get out of the economic depression and get ready for the war, but also problems with conscription, particularly around french-canadians (a major reason was because existing officers were mostly english speaking). Canada had a fairly small population, but mobilized heavily during the war, both militarily (40% of men in conscriptable ages joined the military and a sizable amount of women too) and industrially (a large part of allied production was thanks to Canada). To model that one of the trade offs you will need to do in the focus tree is one between manpower and fielding a larger army or to fully mobilize your industry.

So, without further ado here is the focus tree:
larger

You will notice a few things. First up: it's BIG! Secondly, we have made sure to support all ideologies without restricting internal development and such too much by ideology (you can mobilize industry no matter what etc). This is something we feel strongly for and will keep doing in the future as some of the major trees can be a bit inflexible. It's not readily apparent but there are a couple of new features hidden in choices in this tree as well that we will be talking about in future diaries, but to not give away too much this early: we are expanding on the puppet/subject and master relationships into a new system with levels that can be affected, and there will also be neat new things with technology (I probably said too much already now though.. More in the future!).
Each of the nations we add comes with more Generals/Admirals, portraits, custom equipment icons and 3d models where appropriate. We really want to make sure that nations we add feel fleshed out and give you new ways of playing (focus trees are great for this!)



To make playing the allies cooler we are also adding a new feature with the expansion: Request Lend-Lease. This allows you to make broad stroke requests such as requesting infantry equipment or heavy tanks to your allies, they can then exactly how to fulfill that (or if they can’t at all). Like we usually do we team new features with free stuff in the patch so you can now also modify a receiving lend-lease if you no longer need parts of it (or even the whole thing). This functionality will be for any kind of Lend-lease too so no matter how it's set up you can avoid canceling the whole thing when you just want to change parts.




Next week we will be covering more new stuff, but until then don't forget to tune in for the expansion announcement and multiplayer stream at 15:00 CEST today. We will be trying a new format with spokespersons for each major faction being able to talk on the stream with headsets so things should be more involved than normal!

Read the original post

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

Welcome to the second diary covering stuff in the upcoming (unannounced) expansion and patch, if you missed the previous check <here>. I do have it on pretty good authority that there is gonna be some enlightenment on that today during the World War Wednesday stream (15:00 CEST) ;), so make sure to tune in then!

One of the things we are focusing on in this expansion is to flesh out the commonwealth nations with focus trees, art, flavor and special mechanics. First up is Canada because it was the first of the commonwealth nations to send troops to Britain.
Like many commonwealth nations it suffered from the Great Depression and came through the war a modernized, more independent and stronger nation despite the hardships of the war.

The Canadian focus tree deals with some major issues of the time. Firstly how to get out of the economic depression and get ready for the war, but also problems with conscription, particularly around french-canadians (a major reason was because existing officers were mostly english speaking). Canada had a fairly small population, but mobilized heavily during the war, both militarily (40% of men in conscriptable ages joined the military and a sizable amount of women too) and industrially (a large part of allied production was thanks to Canada). To model that one of the trade offs you will need to do in the focus tree is one between manpower and fielding a larger army or to fully mobilize your industry.

So, without further ado here is the focus tree:
larger

You will notice a few things. First up: it's BIG! Secondly, we have made sure to support all ideologies without restricting internal development and such too much by ideology (you can mobilize industry no matter what etc). This is something we feel strongly for and will keep doing in the future as some of the major trees can be a bit inflexible. It's not readily apparent but there are a couple of new features hidden in choices in this tree as well that we will be talking about in future diaries, but to not give away too much this early: we are expanding on the puppet/subject and master relationships into a new system with levels that can be affected, and there will also be neat new things with technology (I probably said too much already now though.. More in the future!).
Each of the nations we add comes with more Generals/Admirals, portraits, custom equipment icons and 3d models where appropriate. We really want to make sure that nations we add feel fleshed out and give you new ways of playing (focus trees are great for this!)



To make playing the allies cooler we are also adding a new feature with the expansion: Request Lend-Lease. This allows you to make broad stroke requests such as requesting infantry equipment or heavy tanks to your allies, they can then exactly how to fulfill that (or if they can’t at all). Like we usually do we team new features with free stuff in the patch so you can now also modify a receiving lend-lease if you no longer need parts of it (or even the whole thing). This functionality will be for any kind of Lend-lease too so no matter how it's set up you can avoid canceling the whole thing when you just want to change parts.




Next week we will be covering more new stuff, but until then don't forget to tune in for the expansion announcement and multiplayer stream at 15:00 CEST today. We will be trying a new format with spokespersons for each major faction being able to talk on the stream with headsets so things should be more involved than normal!

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone! Today I will start talking about features coming in the future expansion (still not announced yet, so its name shall remain under fog of war). First up are things related to battle plans and managing unit orders

Paid Feature: Blitz Command
The Offensive Lines in battle plans are designed to expand as a front expands and you take territory. This works fine if what you want to do is push along a broad front, but not as well when you are trying to have several orders in the same area active at once or doing encirclements or more detailed things. As long as such are a couple of provinces microing some armored divisions to do it is no big hurdle, but for bigger stuff that becomes a lot of work. So, to improve on this we are adding another tool to the battle plan toolbox for you to use: Blitz Command. A blitz command works differently in that when you activate it it remembers the area you tell it to take and will do that without readjusting its width or caring about other things getting in its way. Perfect for drawing pincer movements and encirclements!



We have also worked on the AI’s ability to identify encirclements and choke points, so even though it's easier to plan an encirclement now actually successfully pulling them off will be more difficult.


Free Feature: Configurable Garrison Order
The Garrison order has gotten some love and you can now configure what you want it to guard and care about. So if you only care about ports and coastlines you can select only ports and coastlines for the order. It will also help you a bit and count up how many divisions are at least needed so that it can place one on each spot according to your order.


Thats it for this week but we are doing a Q&A stream today during World War Wednesday at 15:00CEST so tune in if you have questions (about anything really) and I'll do my best to answer :)

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone! Today I will start talking about features coming in the future expansion (still not announced yet, so its name shall remain under fog of war). First up are things related to battle plans and managing unit orders

Paid Feature: Blitz Command
The Offensive Lines in battle plans are designed to expand as a front expands and you take territory. This works fine if what you want to do is push along a broad front, but not as well when you are trying to have several orders in the same area active at once or doing encirclements or more detailed things. As long as such are a couple of provinces microing some armored divisions to do it is no big hurdle, but for bigger stuff that becomes a lot of work. So, to improve on this we are adding another tool to the battle plan toolbox for you to use: Blitz Command. A blitz command works differently in that when you activate it it remembers the area you tell it to take and will do that without readjusting its width or caring about other things getting in its way. Perfect for drawing pincer movements and encirclements!



We have also worked on the AI’s ability to identify encirclements and choke points, so even though it's easier to plan an encirclement now actually successfully pulling them off will be more difficult.


Free Feature: Configurable Garrison Order
The Garrison order has gotten some love and you can now configure what you want it to guard and care about. So if you only care about ports and coastlines you can select only ports and coastlines for the order. It will also help you a bit and count up how many divisions are at least needed so that it can place one on each spot according to your order.


Thats it for this week but we are doing a Q&A stream today during World War Wednesday at 15:00CEST so tune in if you have questions (about anything really) and I'll do my best to answer :)

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone, today I thought we should do something different and take a look at how some concepts have changed over the Hearts of Iron game series. We'll be looking at supply, upgrades and reinforcement and such first.

Hearts of Iron 1
I didn't remember how it was here, and actually had to go buy myself a copy of the game online because I couldn't find any discs :D

HOI1 has a pretty simple supply "system", a percentage of your total Industrial Capacity (IC) is diverted to supply production via a slider and goes into your supply stockpile. Units consume supply and if they run out they start losing organization etc. For a unit to be able to draw supply it needs to be able to trace a path to a friendly port or its capital. There was also a combat modifier penalizing you from fighting far away from your capital.

Reinforcing had to be done manually (although you could do it for whole armies) by clicking on their strength to bring it back up.

Upgrading divisions was a bit tricky compared to later games. You had to take them off map into the Force Pool, perform the upgrade by partially rebuilding it and then redeploy the unit on the map.

These systems gave great control, but forced you to do a ton of micromanagement and keep track of a lot of things at the same time.


Hearts of Iron II
Supply works a lot like HOI1, but introduces concepts like Supply Efficiency and Transport Capacity (TC). TC is a global value that gets automatically set as 150% of IC (could change by modifiers). Each division adds up to your total need of transport capacity depending on their supply consumption and if you go over it you start getting penalties. What directly effect a division is called Supply Efficiency which is an average of TC, local infrastructure and any bonuses from local HQ.

Supply for divisions was now changed to be less micro intensive. You could prioritize armies and also give them special Offensive Supply when in a pinch. Doing so gave these units improved supply efficiency for a month at huge cost, but was good for your elites and critical offensives.


Upgrading and reinforcement is now also less micro and done by diverting a percentage of your IC to it with a slider. You also had the option of producing attachments (like military police or anti air) to your divisions which could be deployed later.

This basic system made for a lot less micro management, while only giving up some control (there is only really 2 prio levels since a division is prioritized or not), managing attachments was some micro, but it was a step in the right direction and gave great control. One of the major downsides of the system was that there was no real way of controlling Transport Capacity, so if you expand into in asia your front in europe will get same penalty when going over a global TC, but as an abstraction it worked pretty well.


Hearts of Iron III
For HOI3 we wanted to expand on the supply system and make it more realistic. Supply and fuel are transported around the world in a province-by-province (and through naval transports) flow network.


This system meant that there was a realistic delay built in when stuff changed and bottlenecks appeared and it's probably our most realistic system to date. The downside of this was that it was extremely hard to understand and follow (and also was very very bug prone). A problem a week ago could be causing your current frontline issues and because it was all a flow system with incremental changes being able to interpret how it was going wasn't exactly clear. What actions to poke the network with to improve things also was never really readily apparent for people without a lot of experience. We even added an "arcade mode" supply option that bypassed all the complexities and put it back to HOI1 level basically.

Like HOI2 reinforcement and upgrades were now handled by diverting IC and upgrades.


There is no way of prioritizing different armies or geographical areas, but you can tell units not to receive upgrades or reinforcement and in that way control where stuff is sent.

HOI3 also expanded on divisions and basically made everything an attachment. This meant that you could reorganize brigades on the map by shuffling stuff around and do things similar to attachments in HOI2. The downside was that this was very micro intensive when you wanted to reorganize army templates as there was no way of doing it across more than one at a time.


Hearts of Iron IV
For HOI4 we changed the supply flow system to be instant and based around bottlenecks instead. The goal being that it should be easily apparent what is causing your frontline problems. We also moved to larger areas to get a better manage the complexity for calculations and display to player.

When it comes to upgrades and reinforcement we made drastic changes in HOI4. They are now effectively the same things as you produce equipment rather than an abstract supply value to fill your divisions. We also added abilities to prioritize where supply went between theaters for better control, and even flagging division templates as elites, regular or reserves to manage their priority within theaters.

Looking at the system I think gameplay went up on all accounts here. I think the system feels more realistic and immersive when looking at how you need to build exact equipment, but with fuel costs calculated into production of equipment rather than when using them (like on ships). There are some suspension of disbelief issues here we want to work on in the future.

When it comes to managing upgrades of divisions compared to HOI3 we also made a big leap. It's now easy to do incremental changes to lots of divisions at once, either through editing their master division template, or changing a couple of selected divisions at once. Also upgraded equipment now slowly trickle into the divisions, upgrading them bit by bit in the field rather than all at once like in previous games.


Team wise we are working on the expansion right now and should be able to start doing dev diaries on it soon, but let me know how this one felt, is it interesting to take a trip down memory lane?

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone, today I thought we should do something different and take a look at how some concepts have changed over the Hearts of Iron game series. We'll be looking at supply, upgrades and reinforcement and such first.

Hearts of Iron 1
I didn't remember how it was here, and actually had to go buy myself a copy of the game online because I couldn't find any discs :D

HOI1 has a pretty simple supply "system", a percentage of your total Industrial Capacity (IC) is diverted to supply production via a slider and goes into your supply stockpile. Units consume supply and if they run out they start losing organization etc. For a unit to be able to draw supply it needs to be able to trace a path to a friendly port or its capital. There was also a combat modifier penalizing you from fighting far away from your capital.

Reinforcing had to be done manually (although you could do it for whole armies) by clicking on their strength to bring it back up.

Upgrading divisions was a bit tricky compared to later games. You had to take them off map into the Force Pool, perform the upgrade by partially rebuilding it and then redeploy the unit on the map.

These systems gave great control, but forced you to do a ton of micromanagement and keep track of a lot of things at the same time.


Hearts of Iron II
Supply works a lot like HOI1, but introduces concepts like Supply Efficiency and Transport Capacity (TC). TC is a global value that gets automatically set as 150% of IC (could change by modifiers). Each division adds up to your total need of transport capacity depending on their supply consumption and if you go over it you start getting penalties. What directly effect a division is called Supply Efficiency which is an average of TC, local infrastructure and any bonuses from local HQ.

Supply for divisions was now changed to be less micro intensive. You could prioritize armies and also give them special Offensive Supply when in a pinch. Doing so gave these units improved supply efficiency for a month at huge cost, but was good for your elites and critical offensives.


Upgrading and reinforcement is now also less micro and done by diverting a percentage of your IC to it with a slider. You also had the option of producing attachments (like military police or anti air) to your divisions which could be deployed later.

This basic system made for a lot less micro management, while only giving up some control (there is only really 2 prio levels since a division is prioritized or not), managing attachments was some micro, but it was a step in the right direction and gave great control. One of the major downsides of the system was that there was no real way of controlling Transport Capacity, so if you expand into in asia your front in europe will get same penalty when going over a global TC, but as an abstraction it worked pretty well.


Hearts of Iron III
For HOI3 we wanted to expand on the supply system and make it more realistic. Supply and fuel are transported around the world in a province-by-province (and through naval transports) flow network.


This system meant that there was a realistic delay built in when stuff changed and bottlenecks appeared and it's probably our most realistic system to date. The downside of this was that it was extremely hard to understand and follow (and also was very very bug prone). A problem a week ago could be causing your current frontline issues and because it was all a flow system with incremental changes being able to interpret how it was going wasn't exactly clear. What actions to poke the network with to improve things also was never really readily apparent for people without a lot of experience. We even added an "arcade mode" supply option that bypassed all the complexities and put it back to HOI1 level basically.

Like HOI2 reinforcement and upgrades were now handled by diverting IC and upgrades.


There is no way of prioritizing different armies or geographical areas, but you can tell units not to receive upgrades or reinforcement and in that way control where stuff is sent.

HOI3 also expanded on divisions and basically made everything an attachment. This meant that you could reorganize brigades on the map by shuffling stuff around and do things similar to attachments in HOI2. The downside was that this was very micro intensive when you wanted to reorganize army templates as there was no way of doing it across more than one at a time.


Hearts of Iron IV
For HOI4 we changed the supply flow system to be instant and based around bottlenecks instead. The goal being that it should be easily apparent what is causing your frontline problems. We also moved to larger areas to get a better manage the complexity for calculations and display to player.

When it comes to upgrades and reinforcement we made drastic changes in HOI4. They are now effectively the same things as you produce equipment rather than an abstract supply value to fill your divisions. We also added abilities to prioritize where supply went between theaters for better control, and even flagging division templates as elites, regular or reserves to manage their priority within theaters.

Looking at the system I think gameplay went up on all accounts here. I think the system feels more realistic and immersive when looking at how you need to build exact equipment, but with fuel costs calculated into production of equipment rather than when using them (like on ships). There are some suspension of disbelief issues here we want to work on in the future.

When it comes to managing upgrades of divisions compared to HOI3 we also made a big leap. It's now easy to do incremental changes to lots of divisions at once, either through editing their master division template, or changing a couple of selected divisions at once. Also upgraded equipment now slowly trickle into the divisions, upgrading them bit by bit in the field rather than all at once like in previous games.


Team wise we are working on the expansion right now and should be able to start doing dev diaries on it soon, but let me know how this one felt, is it interesting to take a trip down memory lane?

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

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.

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