Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years!

Issues with the old system
When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere.

So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:



First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details...

Air Wing Interface

The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time.

The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.


Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress.

Assign Air missions
Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.


As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units.

Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.



Air Combat Window
As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.



The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview.

The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions.

In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress.

You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters.

Radar
You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one


Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:


As is normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :)

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then!

//podcat

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years!

Issues with the old system
When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere.

So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:



First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details...

Air Wing Interface

The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time.

The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.


Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress.

Assign Air missions
Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.


As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units.

Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.



Air Combat Window
As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.



The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview.

The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions.

In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress.

You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters.

Radar
You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one


Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:


As is normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :)

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then!

//podcat

Read the original post

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

Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years!

When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere.

So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:



First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details...


The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time.

The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.


Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress.

Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.


As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units.

Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.



As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.



The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview.

The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions.

In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress.

You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters.

You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one


Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:


As as normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :)

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then!

Join the discusiion here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-air-improvements.1022579/

Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years!

When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere.

So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:



First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details...


The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time.

The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.


Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress.

Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.


As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units.

Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.



As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.



The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview.

The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions.

In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress.

You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters.

You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one


Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:


As as normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :)

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then!

Join the discusiion here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-air-improvements.1022579/

Hi everyone and welcome to today's dev diary. I’m home with a nasty cold, but lets power through and check out some more stuff coming in Death or Dishonor and the Oak update. Today’s main topic is Equipment Conversion, or how to choose the StuG Life.

Using older chassis to mount more powerful guns etc was very common in WW2 era Germany, in fact its most produced armored fighting vehicle the StuG III was essentially a PzIII with its turret removed to make room for a more powerful gun. We've always let you build these self-propelled variants in HOI4, but its not been possible to convert existing vehicles before. Now if you get Death or Dishonor it will be! This is a great way of getting rid of older stuff you might not want to deploy and keeping it relevant for longer.


If you look at the top production line there you can see that the conversion tickbox is enabled, and that the line is using suspiciously little resources and running at high speed. This is what it looks like with the box unticked:

You can only enable this if you have spare equipment that is possible to convert from sitting around in your stockpile. When converting you pay the difference in resources only rather than the full amount and production speed is much higher.


Note that it lists in what order and what will be converted (although here all I had for the diary was PzIIIs).

So what exactly can you convert?

• Any base model (PzIV) or upgraded variant marked obsolete (say PzIV B) to a newer one (PzIV C). This goes for planes too.
  
• Any base model or variant (up to one tech level back) to a self propelled. So you can convert a Medium Tank 1 to a Medium Tank Destroyer 1 or Medium Tank Destroyer 2 (the second one would then cost more resources).
  
• The above also works for licensed or captured equipment (although you can't convert a captured T-34 to a PzIV C, they need to actually be upgraded versions of the same thing).

There are also some new techs that help improve conversions to be even more efficient. 2 of them in the machine tools tree and Dispersed Industry also gives a base bump.


For modders its fairly easy to mess around with this, check out the spoiler for scripting examples:



We have also been updating the war overview interface to make it nicer and more informative.
its now possible to see total losses, fielded manpower, industry and also to be able to sort by each column.

Another thing is that we now showcase capitulation a bit clearer (see Free France) and its now also possible to get out of capitulation. Previously this only happened at the end of the war which led to some weird cases where a France who had reclaimed all their territory still wouldn't be able to stop their side from giving up if the other majors had fallen. Now the capitulated state is reset if you reclaim your original capital and get back 90% of their surrender level.

This weekend is PdxCon and next Wednesday we will be taking a look at new air stuff! Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with maybe only Daniel at 16:00CET (unless he manages to snag another sidekick than me). It will be full "hot code!" mode and start a new campaign as Hungary to show off stuff from last week's diary.

// podcat

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 today's dev diary. I’m home with a nasty cold, but lets power through and check out some more stuff coming in Death or Dishonor and the Oak update. Today’s main topic is Equipment Conversion, or how to choose the StuG Life.

Using older chassis to mount more powerful guns etc was very common in WW2 era Germany, in fact its most produced armored fighting vehicle the StuG III was essentially a PzIII with its turret removed to make room for a more powerful gun. We've always let you build these self-propelled variants in HOI4, but its not been possible to convert existing vehicles before. Now if you get Death or Dishonor it will be! This is a great way of getting rid of older stuff you might not want to deploy and keeping it relevant for longer.


If you look at the top production line there you can see that the conversion tickbox is enabled, and that the line is using suspiciously little resources and running at high speed. This is what it looks like with the box unticked:

You can only enable this if you have spare equipment that is possible to convert from sitting around in your stockpile. When converting you pay the difference in resources only rather than the full amount and production speed is much higher.


Note that it lists in what order and what will be converted (although here all I had for the diary was PzIIIs).

So what exactly can you convert?

• Any base model (PzIV) or upgraded variant marked obsolete (say PzIV B) to a newer one (PzIV C). This goes for planes too.
  
• Any base model or variant (up to one tech level back) to a self propelled. So you can convert a Medium Tank 1 to a Medium Tank Destroyer 1 or Medium Tank Destroyer 2 (the second one would then cost more resources).
  
• The above also works for licensed or captured equipment (although you can't convert a captured T-34 to a PzIV C, they need to actually be upgraded versions of the same thing).

There are also some new techs that help improve conversions to be even more efficient. 2 of them in the machine tools tree and Dispersed Industry also gives a base bump.


For modders its fairly easy to mess around with this, check out the spoiler for scripting examples:



We have also been updating the war overview interface to make it nicer and more informative.
its now possible to see total losses, fielded manpower, industry and also to be able to sort by each column.

Another thing is that we now showcase capitulation a bit clearer (see Free France) and its now also possible to get out of capitulation. Previously this only happened at the end of the war which led to some weird cases where a France who had reclaimed all their territory still wouldn't be able to stop their side from giving up if the other majors had fallen. Now the capitulated state is reset if you reclaim your original capital and get back 90% of their surrender level.

This weekend is PdxCon and next Wednesday we will be taking a look at new air stuff! Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with maybe only Daniel at 16:00CET (unless he manages to snag another sidekick than me). It will be full "hot code!" mode and start a new campaign as Hungary to show off stuff from last week's diary.

// podcat

Read the original post

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

Welcome to the third dev diary on Death or Dishonor and 1.4 Oak update! I hope you are hungry for more info because today we will be talking about... Hungary (ugh that joke didnt really work now did it?)



A landlocked Kingdom run by an Admiral, Hungary had without a doubt one of the more unusual political systems of the interwar period. At the end of the Great War, Hungary had broken away from the disintegrating Habsburg Empire, and after a brief period as a communist republic, was occupied by the Entente.

Subsequently, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, which reduced Hungary to a rump state. In the Treaty, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and a third of its population. Harsh restrictions were placed on the Hungarian military. Hungary was banned from having a Navy (a crushing injustice, to be sure) or an air force. The Army was limited to 35,000 troops, what military factories existed were under strict observation. In many ways, it was the Treaty of Versailles of Hungary.



In game this state is represented by Hungary being a Disarmed Nation, with no available manpower, and a crippling 50% construction speed penalty for military factories. Getting out from under the treaty is your first objective. There are several ways to do this: At the far right of the tree, you have the Bled Agreement, which historically was signed in 1938 and which allows you to rearm freely. But the surrounding nations must approve it. Should they refuse, you can still abolish the treaty through other means.

After you have gotten the right to bear arms back, the tree opens up and you can choose how to rebuild your military. On the Army side, you can choose between the infantry heavy Home Defense branch and the offensive-focused Mobile Focus. In the Air Force branch, you can select how to procure new planes - you can develop them yourself or get them through license deals with other countries (the licenses in these focuses are free).

Politically, one of the obvious goals is to regain your territory. Fans of intricate event chains will be happy to know that you can gain all of these territories through peaceful annexation - if the other side agrees. The AI will call your bluff if it believes you are weaker than it, and things can quickly spiral out of control (the Demand Transylvania event chain is possibly the most extensive event chain we have ever done in HoI history, with 25 events and 16 different outcomes), which can even bring in other European countries.

If you want to take the country down a somewhat less historical path, you can decide to murder Horthy and restore the Hungarian People’s Republic, either to join the Comintern or to make your own faction.

On the other end of the political scale, we worked with the idea that Hungary was, in principle, still a monarchy. Two attempts by the deposed Carl IV in the early 1920ies failed to put the Habsburgs back on the throne, with the Hungarian parliament passing a law banning him from ever returning. The rejection broke poor Carl’s heart, and he died soon after (some say it was the pneumonia he contracted while flying to Hungary in an open plane to regain his throne, but we know better). This left his son Otto von Habsburg in charge of the house.



The monarchist faction in Hungary was split over whether the Habsburgs should be forever banned from the Throne of Hungary, or if it was only Carl who was no longer welcome. In the game, you can side with either faction. You can either offer the crown to a proper Constitutional Monarch and become a democracy, or to a King who has...connections to certain rather radical groups in other countries.

Finally, you can invite Otto von Habsburg to take the throne that was once his to inherit. If you do, you have committed to seeing the Habsburgs restored to their old glory. It will be a struggle, as the other powers of Europe will most certainly not tolerate this, and you may well find yourself at war with all three sides main factions.

Hungary also comes with lots of new art (2d and 3d)


Also new generals and leaders, here are a few of them (guess who gets to be a real admiral)



For next week's diary we will be checking out the new Equipment Conversion feature. Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and continue part two of our new Romania campaign.

Also, we added Aluminum in Asia (you know who you are ;P)

Author: Podcat

Read the original post

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

Welcome to the third dev diary on Death or Dishonor and 1.4 Oak update! I hope you are hungry for more info because today we will be talking about... Hungary (ugh that joke didnt really work now did it?)



A landlocked Kingdom run by an Admiral, Hungary had without a doubt one of the more unusual political systems of the interwar period. At the end of the Great War, Hungary had broken away from the disintegrating Habsburg Empire, and after a brief period as a communist republic, was occupied by the Entente.

Subsequently, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, which reduced Hungary to a rump state. In the Treaty, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and a third of its population. Harsh restrictions were placed on the Hungarian military. Hungary was banned from having a Navy (a crushing injustice, to be sure) or an air force. The Army was limited to 35,000 troops, what military factories existed were under strict observation. In many ways, it was the Treaty of Versailles of Hungary.



In game this state is represented by Hungary being a Disarmed Nation, with no available manpower, and a crippling 50% construction speed penalty for military factories. Getting out from under the treaty is your first objective. There are several ways to do this: At the far right of the tree, you have the Bled Agreement, which historically was signed in 1938 and which allows you to rearm freely. But the surrounding nations must approve it. Should they refuse, you can still abolish the treaty through other means.

After you have gotten the right to bear arms back, the tree opens up and you can choose how to rebuild your military. On the Army side, you can choose between the infantry heavy Home Defense branch and the offensive-focused Mobile Focus. In the Air Force branch, you can select how to procure new planes - you can develop them yourself or get them through license deals with other countries (the licenses in these focuses are free).

Politically, one of the obvious goals is to regain your territory. Fans of intricate event chains will be happy to know that you can gain all of these territories through peaceful annexation - if the other side agrees. The AI will call your bluff if it believes you are weaker than it, and things can quickly spiral out of control (the Demand Transylvania event chain is possibly the most extensive event chain we have ever done in HoI history, with 25 events and 16 different outcomes), which can even bring in other European countries.

If you want to take the country down a somewhat less historical path, you can decide to murder Horthy and restore the Hungarian People’s Republic, either to join the Comintern or to make your own faction.

On the other end of the political scale, we worked with the idea that Hungary was, in principle, still a monarchy. Two attempts by the deposed Carl IV in the early 1920ies failed to put the Habsburgs back on the throne, with the Hungarian parliament passing a law banning him from ever returning. The rejection broke poor Carl’s heart, and he died soon after (some say it was the pneumonia he contracted while flying to Hungary in an open plane to regain his throne, but we know better). This left his son Otto von Habsburg in charge of the house.



The monarchist faction in Hungary was split over whether the Habsburgs should be forever banned from the Throne of Hungary, or if it was only Carl who was no longer welcome. In the game, you can side with either faction. You can either offer the crown to a proper Constitutional Monarch and become a democracy, or to a King who has...connections to certain rather radical groups in other countries.

Finally, you can invite Otto von Habsburg to take the throne that was once his to inherit. If you do, you have committed to seeing the Habsburgs restored to their old glory. It will be a struggle, as the other powers of Europe will most certainly not tolerate this, and you may well find yourself at war with all three sides main factions.

Hungary also comes with lots of new art (2d and 3d)


Also new generals and leaders, here are a few of them (guess who gets to be a real admiral)



For next week's diary we will be checking out the new Equipment Conversion feature. Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and continue part two of our new Romania campaign.

Also, we added Aluminum in Asia (you know who you are ;P)

Author: Podcat

Read the original post

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

Time flies and suddenly its Wednesday again, and Wednesday means diary time! As you might have noticed we just announced Death or Dishonor, so that together with the 1.4 update is going to be today's topic! After that you can dive into technical AI details with SteelVolt.

1.4 "Oak" Update

As normal the DLC will be accompanied by a free update, this time called 1.4 "Oak". We wanted to make sure to take this time to deal with some big, complicated and difficult things that the community had been asking us for for a long time. First up is improving air gameplay, the other is the AI. After the 1.3 update there were a couple of areas identified where the most important was German AI performance. We started digging into that and there were a couple of hurdles to solve. 1) First of all divisions along front lines were not fighting as effectively as they should which led to a lot of "shuffling" and fronts slowing down massively. That meant that Germany struggled a lot versus soviet union. 2) Axis minors did not manage expeditionary forces very well when it came to helping out Germany. 3) In some cases Africa could end up as a big battleground draining precious axis materiel and weakening them (this one we solved with impassable sahara, check last diary). 4) Unit usage such as garrison and template and production management were far from optimal.
SteelVolt will be filling you in on 1-2 of those above today. The rest and further details for Oak will be covered in future diaries.

Death or Dishonor Country Pack

While we buckled down on the AI our brave content designers have been working as part of our long term plan to flesh out the world with unique national focus trees and extra immersion. We felt that the kind of expansions we have been doing/planning were of quite different types so we wanted to clarify that. So a bit like how Leviathans was labeled a Story Pack the HOI4 version will be "Country Pack". A country pack then is an expansion that isnt a full $15-20 (DoD is $9.99) and that focuses sharply on a specific set of countries or region. For Death or Dishonor this is Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia - Nations swept up in the turmoil of mid-century europe and faced with pressure and threat both from allies, axis and comintern. Nations that could have gone many different directions leading to interesting "What if" scenarios while letting people who want to relive history get behind the wheel of nations like Romania and partake in operation Barbarossa etc. The pack also contains new features like Equipment Conversion (StuG:s!) and equipment licensing, things that we felt was well in line with the theme of these nations.
More details here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBmzi0ik-A

AI Update #1 with SteelVolt

Friends!

Here we are again. It has been quiet these past couple of months, but we have been hard at work nonetheless. We were graced with time to catch up with some of the technical debt we had worked up earlier, and getting this time has really been a blessing. Several aspects of the AI has undergone substantial improvement and in a couple of cases major reworking in order to not just improve how they work now, but make it easier to work with for future expansions and improvements.
The first major part I want to talk about is what we call the unit controller, or what you may know as the "battle plan AI". Since this is a feature intended to be used by the players as well, it is important that it feels as good as possible. As some of you have noted, there have certainly been room for improvements, the most severe issue seeming to have been its tendency to send units from one end of the front to the other and sometimes at the same time having another unit from the other side coming to meet it and take its old place. This was usually done with strategic redeployment, resulting in them having zero organization upon their arrival. Less than optimal, for sure.
We gave the task of improving this to one of our coders who was really annoyed with how it worked. While we expected him to have to rewrite the system almost completely, he ended up doing only some rewrites but a ton of touch ups and tweaks.

The results is something that at first glance might not look significantly better, but it sure feels better to play with, and upon closer inspection does a better job over all. First of all it is much more reactive.
Before, units were sometimes given long move orders along the front, they had to complete the move before getting new instructions (which would sometimes be to move back to where they came from). This was in fact a way to solve the even worse problem of units very often getting stuck being given new move orders every hour to different locations, and not moving anywhere at all as a result. Now, however, we have finally gotten time and resources to work out a proper solution, and units that are moving can be grabbed for new orders as the front situation changes. This means that even while units still sometimes do get longer move orders, though more rarely than before, they almost never finish them, but gets grabbed by something else on the way as the front changes.
If we look at the screenshots from the old version [Old 1 and 2], both Germany and Soviet are struggling with long reassignments of units that will be unavailable until they have walked the distance. Moving on to screenshots from a more current build [New 1] we can see a bunch of green arrows, but the long ones are not likely to complete before getting grabbed by something closer and the end province manages to get hold of another unit that does not have to walk as far.
This can be seen in screenshot [New 4] and [New 5], taken just a few hours after one another. While it may seem like this could hurt entrenchment, over all it seems to improve performance by not locking units up in long move orders, meaning that units already standing in good positions are more likely to remain there than before.


If we look at the German side we can see a great example of another important improvement to the system; units shifting to the side in stead of keeping a unit away from the front for a longer travel [New 2]. This change means that under some circumstances it may look messy, but in reality it is a coordinated move that makes units over all move much shorter distances.
A seemingly messier example can be seen in [New 3], which ends up resolving the rebalancing faster than before and keeping the units on the front more.

This is certainly not the only thing we have worked on. Another noticeable change is that expeditionary forces have been significantly improved. This turned out to be one of Germany's greatest weaknesses; once France had fallen it would send a large force to Italy who would send them to starve in Africa. The AI is now much more sane in these decisions, as well as areas like Africa has been made even less interesting to fight in.

Next AI update I will be telling you about a pretty large change for the AI; something we call Roles, and how it helps us get AI division design under control. Now back to podcat!

For next week's diary its time to return to look at the new focus trees, and that means its Hungary's turn. Do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and testing out the new Romania.

Read the original post

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

Time flies and suddenly its Wednesday again, and Wednesday means diary time! As you might have noticed we just announced Death or Dishonor, so that together with the 1.4 update is going to be today's topic! After that you can dive into technical AI details with SteelVolt.

1.4 "Oak" Update

As normal the DLC will be accompanied by a free update, this time called 1.4 "Oak". We wanted to make sure to take this time to deal with some big, complicated and difficult things that the community had been asking us for for a long time. First up is improving air gameplay, the other is the AI. After the 1.3 update there were a couple of areas identified where the most important was German AI performance. We started digging into that and there were a couple of hurdles to solve. 1) First of all divisions along front lines were not fighting as effectively as they should which led to a lot of "shuffling" and fronts slowing down massively. That meant that Germany struggled a lot versus soviet union. 2) Axis minors did not manage expeditionary forces very well when it came to helping out Germany. 3) In some cases Africa could end up as a big battleground draining precious axis materiel and weakening them (this one we solved with impassable sahara, check last diary). 4) Unit usage such as garrison and template and production management were far from optimal.
SteelVolt will be filling you in on 1-2 of those above today. The rest and further details for Oak will be covered in future diaries.

Death or Dishonor Country Pack

While we buckled down on the AI our brave content designers have been working as part of our long term plan to flesh out the world with unique national focus trees and extra immersion. We felt that the kind of expansions we have been doing/planning were of quite different types so we wanted to clarify that. So a bit like how Leviathans was labeled a Story Pack the HOI4 version will be "Country Pack". A country pack then is an expansion that isnt a full $15-20 (DoD is $9.99) and that focuses sharply on a specific set of countries or region. For Death or Dishonor this is Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia - Nations swept up in the turmoil of mid-century europe and faced with pressure and threat both from allies, axis and comintern. Nations that could have gone many different directions leading to interesting "What if" scenarios while letting people who want to relive history get behind the wheel of nations like Romania and partake in operation Barbarossa etc. The pack also contains new features like Equipment Conversion (StuG:s!) and equipment licensing, things that we felt was well in line with the theme of these nations.
More details here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBmzi0ik-A

AI Update #1 with SteelVolt

Friends!

Here we are again. It has been quiet these past couple of months, but we have been hard at work nonetheless. We were graced with time to catch up with some of the technical debt we had worked up earlier, and getting this time has really been a blessing. Several aspects of the AI has undergone substantial improvement and in a couple of cases major reworking in order to not just improve how they work now, but make it easier to work with for future expansions and improvements.
The first major part I want to talk about is what we call the unit controller, or what you may know as the "battle plan AI". Since this is a feature intended to be used by the players as well, it is important that it feels as good as possible. As some of you have noted, there have certainly been room for improvements, the most severe issue seeming to have been its tendency to send units from one end of the front to the other and sometimes at the same time having another unit from the other side coming to meet it and take its old place. This was usually done with strategic redeployment, resulting in them having zero organization upon their arrival. Less than optimal, for sure.
We gave the task of improving this to one of our coders who was really annoyed with how it worked. While we expected him to have to rewrite the system almost completely, he ended up doing only some rewrites but a ton of touch ups and tweaks.

The results is something that at first glance might not look significantly better, but it sure feels better to play with, and upon closer inspection does a better job over all. First of all it is much more reactive.
Before, units were sometimes given long move orders along the front, they had to complete the move before getting new instructions (which would sometimes be to move back to where they came from). This was in fact a way to solve the even worse problem of units very often getting stuck being given new move orders every hour to different locations, and not moving anywhere at all as a result. Now, however, we have finally gotten time and resources to work out a proper solution, and units that are moving can be grabbed for new orders as the front situation changes. This means that even while units still sometimes do get longer move orders, though more rarely than before, they almost never finish them, but gets grabbed by something else on the way as the front changes.
If we look at the screenshots from the old version [Old 1 and 2], both Germany and Soviet are struggling with long reassignments of units that will be unavailable until they have walked the distance. Moving on to screenshots from a more current build [New 1] we can see a bunch of green arrows, but the long ones are not likely to complete before getting grabbed by something closer and the end province manages to get hold of another unit that does not have to walk as far.
This can be seen in screenshot [New 4] and [New 5], taken just a few hours after one another. While it may seem like this could hurt entrenchment, over all it seems to improve performance by not locking units up in long move orders, meaning that units already standing in good positions are more likely to remain there than before.


If we look at the German side we can see a great example of another important improvement to the system; units shifting to the side in stead of keeping a unit away from the front for a longer travel [New 2]. This change means that under some circumstances it may look messy, but in reality it is a coordinated move that makes units over all move much shorter distances.
A seemingly messier example can be seen in [New 3], which ends up resolving the rebalancing faster than before and keeping the units on the front more.

This is certainly not the only thing we have worked on. Another noticeable change is that expeditionary forces have been significantly improved. This turned out to be one of Germany's greatest weaknesses; once France had fallen it would send a large force to Italy who would send them to starve in Africa. The AI is now much more sane in these decisions, as well as areas like Africa has been made even less interesting to fight in.

Next AI update I will be telling you about a pretty large change for the AI; something we call Roles, and how it helps us get AI division design under control. Now back to podcat!

For next week's diary its time to return to look at the new focus trees, and that means its Hungary's turn. Do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and testing out the new Romania.

Read the original post

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