Hello!

1.9 Husky is now live including tons of bugfixes, improvements and new features. The patch should be downloading through Steam as we speak.

Please note that 1.9 will not be save game compatible with 1.8.2. If you want to finish off any ongoing ironman games, please remain on 1.8.2 for now. Here are instructions on how you revert patch levels.

Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9, or your game might not run properly (seriously)

Unfortunately we won't be able to collect bug reports from Steam. If you experience issues, please visit our official forum or submit a ticket to our support.




Plus bugfixes - click here for extended changelog!

The release of La Resistance is upon us!

Tune in to a special release stream at 09:00 CET February 25th, for some chaotic spanish multiplayer and the release of the expansion!

We'll be live over at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Today's Development Diary by Podcat



Hi guys! Here is the promised bonus dev diary. First up is the full changelog, and after that we will be going through all the new stuff we have for modders.

1.9 'Husky' Patchlog

See the full patch log here: https://pdxint.at/2P84LIj

Modding

1.9.0 will include a lot of tools/improvements that will hopefully help modders developing their awesome mods. Bug fixes and small improvements are too many to list here and can be found in the patch log but we will be listing more major stuff in this dev diary.

More effects, triggers and game variables and more variable support

We added quite a bit new effects/triggers and game variables with new free patch. Full list can be found in in the patch notes or the documentation files that are generated by game.

In addition to those new scripting tools, we also added more variable support to existing effects/triggers. And now hoi4 scripting language supports storing tokens as a variable. For example you can do the following:



Here we are storing token infantry_equipment in a temporary variable named to and later we are using this stored token in add_equipment_to_stockpile effect.

At the moment following objects can be stored in variables and all effects/triggers should be able to accept such variables

ideology/ideology groups
equipment types
operation

We have plans for adding support for more, feel free to have suggestions for other types of tokens if you thing they would be useful.

We are also adding a better documentation support for our scripting language. Following html files are output of our new script documentation tools:

Effect Documentation

Trigger Documentation

Modifier Documentation

Dynamic Variables Documentation

History Logger

"History Logger" is a tool that we developed to observe AI gameplay and now it is available for public as well. More details available on AI dev diary



You can see some examples using following links:

https://common-assets.paradoxplaza.com/hoi4-devdiary/history_viewer.html?zip=1.zip

https://common-assets.paradoxplaza.com/hoi4-devdiary/history_viewer.html?zip=2.zip


We hope that it will help people that makes overhaul mods or AI mods. To use it you need to run game you need to lunch the game with "-hands_off" option which make game automatically start up on observing country defined NGame::HANDS_OFF_START_TAG (Or you can manually start the game and run console command "history_logger"). During the run, the game will collect data and dump it on every month under "documents/user/Hearts of Iron IV/history_dump" folder. Once you believe the game collected enough data, you can zip the contents of that folder and load it to game\tools\history_viewer\history_viewer.html file.

The hands off will also output the test conditions that you want to satisfy. You add more conditions to game\tests if you want and they will be reported as a success or fail under user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\logs\tests

Crash Logging

The game will run the last executed script or last loaded script/history/save line if something goes wrong during script execution or save game loading and the game crashes. Which hopefully will give you more information on why it crashes and avoid the problem until we solve the crash itself.



This information is only stored if the game is launched using "-crash_data_log" option (it does have a performance hit so I would suggest not to enable it during regular development). The crash will be outputted to user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\crashes\...\meta.yml which should give you the file & line info

If the game is crashing while loading a save game, I would suggest changing save_as_binary to no under user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\settings.txt so you can see the contents of the save in a text format.

And of course please make a bug report if you encounter crashes so we can actually fix them.


We are adding an aliasing system for country tags. These aliases will work just like a country tag (they are a 3 letter tags that can be used in most places you can use a country tag) but during game play they can be mapped to different countries. For example:



SPD, VIC and MOT are country tag aliases. SPD maps to a country with original tag of SPR (which is a real tag) and has country flag SPR_carlist_spain_flag. When a script calls



It will find the correct SPR and add the political power to that country.

In addition to original tag/trigger combination you can also map a country tag alias to a variable, event target or a scoring system. In previous example MOT is a country tag alias that maps to variable generic_operation_target which is set differently for each country in another part of the script.

Country Scorers

We added a scoring system to our scripting language. Examples can be found under game\common\scorers\country

Here you can score countries using a bunch of triggers and modifiers and then use that scoring entry to in effects such get_sorted_scored_countries and get_highest_scored_country.

This system is also used by various AI implementation. For example operation AI is fully scripted and uses this scoring system for picking targets. Decryption AI also uses this scoring system for finding a decryption target.


It is now possible to add custom modifiers using scripting language. These new modifiers are stored under game\common\modifier_definitions

Once such modifier is defined, it can be used in things that awards a country/state/leader modifiers. It will show up in the modifier tooltips and you can access the value of that modifier in effects or triggers using "modifier@modifier_token" under country/state scopes leader_modifier/unit_modifier under unit leader scopes

Control + Alt + Click to open script files

You can use control + alt + click in debug mode to open script files for things like focuses, ideas, decisions, events, researches and spirits



Here is an example of editing an existing focus. As you can see we also improved reloading so focus tree is no longer scrolled to default position when you change a focus!

More AI strategies

We added a lot of new strategies to override/alter the behavior of AI. It will be possible to create AI strategies to make AI request more units for specific fronts or make AI force activate/not-activate its plans, change aggressiveness etc. These strategies helped us quite a lot for making Allies invading Axis more successfully in Europe.

Moddable Game Speed

This was asked for by a bunch of modders working on MP mods. It is now possible to mod game speed by changing values of NGame::GAME_SPEED_SECONDS

Modding Operations

The Operations system was designed to be very scriptable and can be modded extensively to make new operations.

At the basic level, an Operation is made up of three Operation Phases. In the Vanilla implementation, these phases are pulled randomly from three separate pools: one each for infiltration, execution, and exfiltration. You are by no means restricted to doing that, though (and there are exceptions - for example, fake intel operations don’t require infiltration or exfiltration).



Each phase has its own set of requirements that decides whether that phase is even available (so for example you can’t get the submarine infiltration method if the target country is landlocked). Every phase can also have equipment requirements, which will be drawn automatically from the stockpile. For expensive equipment like transport planes, you can set the equipment to be returned at the end of an operation.



For some phases, we use industry cost, which is rendered as a number of factories for a number of days.

The probability of a phase being selected is determined by a base value that can be modified much like ai_chances in events etc.

Each phase has three localisations associated with it: A plan, an outcome, and an extra outcome if the operation fails. It further has two images it needs: one picture for the overview at the top and another, smaller one for the phase icon on the map.

With the Phases done, let’s get into how operations actually look like in script:





It looks a lot more scary than it really is. Going from the top:



This is mostly Gui stuff and shouldn’t be a big mystery for modders. The Icon is the picture shown in the Agency view. Map_icon is the icon that is shown on the map when an operation is available. Name and desc are the name and description localization strings. Priority determines where in the list of available operations this operation is displayed.



Days is the duration of the operation once it starts. The preparation phase is determined entirely by gathering the required resources.

Network strength is the strength of the network in the target country.

Operatives is the number of operatives necessary to start the operation. This also means the operation is not available until the country has at least that many operatives. This can make testing more advanced operations that require 3 or more operatives a bit tricky.

The visible = {} trigger works much like you are familiar with from decisions and ideas. If it evaluates true, the operation is visible.

Not shown are allowed = {} and available = {} triggers. Allowed = {} is checked to see if an operation should ever be available for a country. This is particularly useful if you want to have an operation that is only for certain countries (like the Heavy Water Raid only being available for countries other than Germany). Available = {} checks if the operation can be taken (if it is visible). This is useful if you want the player to know that an operation might be possible before it actually is (by making the visible = {} trigger less strict than the available = {} trigger).



Selection_target limits the amount of available targets that the operation can be conducted against (FROM is always the target country, FROM.FROM is the target state if there is one, ROOT is the country that starts the operation). This is mostly useful to keep the game from checking against every possible tag or for every state on the map, which hurts performance.

Selection_target_state is a trigger that defines what kind of state can be selected for an operation (in this example, the state has to have some resistance). In combination with selection_target, this means that in this example you can only select states in the target country that have resistance.



Equipment is a separate category that determines what equipment is needed for an operation. As said above, equipment can also be tied to operation phases, but using this parameter is useful for establishing a baseline cost that is independent of what phase is being selected by the game.

Required_tokens is checking for tokens that the country has. In Vanilla, tokens are only granted from other operations, but they could theoretically also be gained through focuses, events, or decisions. They don’t really serve a purpose in and off themselves, but they are useful for forcing the player to complete an operation before they can execute another, making the two connected.



Risk_chance determines how likely it is that things go wrong for your agents. In the example, it is set to 20%. If the RNG decides that your agents are going to have a very bad day, it runs an on_action called on_operative_detected_during_operation, which decides the relative probability of various outcomes (captured, killed, injured, forced into hiding).

Experience is the experience gained by operatives assigned to the mission.

Outcome_chance is the probability that you gain only the base outcome.This value paradoxically means that the lower it is, the more likely that the player gains an extra reward. If you want an operation that can fail, you can just make the base outcome bad, in which case outcome_chance would be the failure chance.

Outcome_modifiers specifies modifiers that affect the outcome. These modifiers are set elsewhere, like Agency upgrades, national spirits, ideas and ministers etc. Depending on the sum of these modifiers, the base outcome is more or less likely (making the bonus outcome more or less likely in turn since the operation always rolls an outcome).

• Possible modifiers include:
  
• Outcome_modifiers (modify outcome chance)
  
• Risk_modifiers (modify the risk chance)
  
• Cost_modifiers (modify the cost in equipment)

A particularly neat feature is that operations can define entire modifiers by themselves, which makes this system very flexible. In other areas, you need to have a modifier be defined in code, while here, you can just define a modifier by giving it a name in the operation. You can then refer to that modifier by name when you add it to a minister, a technology, or a national spirit.



This is where the magic happens. Outcome_execute is essentially just a field to run an effect (not much different from, say, a decision or a focus in that sense). Outcome_extra_execute is another effect field. Outcome_chance is what decides whether the operation runs outcome_execute or outcome_extra_execute when it finishes (outcome_chance is the chance that it runs outcome_execute instead of outcome_extra_execute).

In this example, a simple random_list takes over if the game rolls a bonus, to determine how big the bonus is. You can do a lot of cool stuff here - an operation that can lower stability in an enemy nation could, for example, have a small chance to start a civil war under some circumstances.

If you want to have the operation always have the same outcome, put the effect it should run into outcome_extra_execute and set outcome_chance to 0.

Outcome_potential is essentially just there to generate a tooltip for the expected outcome of the operation before it is run. As you can see, it is the same as outcome_execute, to show the player the minimum they can expect to gain from running the operation.



This is the part that sets up how the phases are selected. Every phase has a base probability, and as you can see, that probability can be modified.

As a special treat the operation pictured above contains a bug that I only noticed while I was writing this. See if you can find it!

Don't forget to tune in to the final La Resistance stream before release!

We'll be continuing last weeks playthrough as Germany, over on twitch.

Live at 16:00 CET: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Today's Development Diary by Podcat



Hi everyone! From the time we show off features in dev diaries and release a lot happens. Usually its just bugfixing and work behind the scenes, but sometimes it can be bigger changes too. So today we will pick out some stuff thats changed since you last read about it. But first, but not least, lets talk a bit about AI development!


When we started with 1.9 'Husky' and La Résistance there were 2 main things we wanted to achieve. First we wanted to nerf germany (without actually nerfing them) by giving resistance more teeth. This worked pretty well, as after we had made the new resistance system Germany would consistently collapse to large polish uprisings behind its lines and needed to be expanded how to manage all that as well as control its equipment production better. Resistance is now constantly hurting garrisons and you don't pre-build garrisons, so stockpiling and not rushing units is more important.

The second thing is also related to Germany (its ww2 after all). For HOI (no matter the version really) we have always strived for a balance where Germany defeats the Soviet Union if the allies do not take pressure off by invading. This ensures that all of the big sides need to be active and if played by a player you need to step up. Now before we jump to the 10 pages of comments discussing if this is a realistic target... It is, for gameplay I think. History wise I am personally convinced that the Soviets would have beaten Germany on their own. It just would have taken a lot longer and been much costlier, and there isnt much point in playing the UK or USA if Soviets will just take care of Germany on their own (now now, please keep reading the rest of the diary before we start arguing what-ifs :p).

Anyways, in 1.7 the allies seldom pulled off invasions well enough, and pretty much only if they got lucky in italy or punched up through greece or something like that. Firstly we have made a bunch of improvements and bugfixes to wierf parts of the invasion logic for the AI that makes them perform better. The biggest impacts came from limiting the AI from shipping troops back and forth across the globe and simply getting them to buffer up its forces in specific allied territories. USA specifically here will now station troops ahead of time in UK so that when its time to do invasions they are already in the neighborhood. We have also improved prioritization of different fronts to make sure AI gets the importance of Europe and when landings have been made successfully.

One of our most important tools when working on high level AI stuff and history tuning is the "History Logger".

This is a tool that we developed to observe AI gameplay. When enabled, it collects & dumps data on how game progressed during a particular run and its output looks something like this when run through a web interface:



Other than showing country borders, it can also show many other other details for a selected country such as diplomacy status, army/navy mission/air mission positions, orders, taken decisions/focuses/ideas, executed operations/operative missions and many other things. On top of that, the things are logged using log effect will also appear in these logs so you can have custom logs in your effects if you want. Here is an example from USA:



The lines are invasion orders and red heat map is the army of USA. You can already see that USA successfully invaded southern France and has invasion plans for Northern France and Denmark.

And here is an example to things that are logged. Logs are filtered by country tag ENG and "operation" and here we see all operations that are executed by England.



We use this tool every day in our nightly automated tests. Everyday we run a bunch of AI only runs with history logger is enabled and at the end the day we get an email like this:



Our nightly tests inform us if the game is crashed or not, if there are some tests that are failed and if there are performance issues. In this particular example in one of the machines Germany was not able to beat France. When we check history logger output for that particular run we see the following:


(Green: Germany. Red: Enemies. Blue:Allies. Yellow: Potential Enemies. Heat map is the army position for Germany.)

In this run we see that Germany is attacking low countries way too early, before Poland falls and the front north west front is prepared. This allows France & England to be better prepared and push through. The fix was to add extra safety checks (we had broken some old ones too in an unrelated change a while back) for how the AI wants to feel prepared for this push.

This tool will be included so modders can take advantage of it which we think is going to be super good for anyone doing balance, ai or total conversion mods. There will be more info on that as well as some more details and info on how to set up the tests in the friday diary :)


We have done some changes to operative recruitment. Rather than being a timer on actual operatives recruitment time the system now is tied to the actual slots you have



This was needed because the old system was pretty confusing in practice, and giving more operatives from events, or historical operatives would really mess with the progression of the system so UK could gear up its agency way too fast.

Operations have also had a bunch of changes. The more visible one is the addition of the Outlook indicator



This breaks down risks and the potential for better rewards on an operation. Both can be affected by agency upgrades and Operative traits. A 10% risk means that there is 10% something goes wrong. This usually means that the operatives will need to go into hiding for a while to avoid local investigations, or have suffered an injury, or more rarely, have been captured, killed or turned to the other side. When operations end you'll get to find out as risk trigger generally when trying to extract from the operation area.

We have also added some new ministers for nations. Having an Illusive Gentleman will be a good choice for those who want to go all in on making the strongest Agency possible



You can also see that UK will get access to all programmers hero Alan Turing if they develop a cryptology department. He is more of a UK special though.


Hello everyone, Mano de Zombi here!
As many of you have already noticed, there have been some changes to the Portuguese Focus Tree since my last DD before Christmas, and today I’d like to talk a little bit about them.

Let’s begin with the National Spirit Unstable Republic:



The previous stability penalty (a flat 10%) has been changed to a -0.5% weekly stability penalty.
Salazar’s trait has also been changed from a flat stability bonus to a 0.5% weekly bonus.

As you can see, one stability modifier counters the other. The reason behind this is that while Salazar is in power, his Unstable Republic will be roughly under control. Stability might not increase but it will not decrease either (after all, even with some difficulties, Salazar historically managed to keep the Republic under control for decades). But once you start tweaking your politics, you can find yourself in a tough situation where low stability might not be easily recovered, putting your country on the brink of civil war before changing your government. More on this later in the diary.

Now let’s take a look at the final focus tree:



As you can see, there are some new focuses (12 to be precise), for a total of 122.
During Christmas I worked on a design for the historical Salazarist branch, as well as a bit of reworking and additions to other branches. Big kudos to Pedro, the original FT designer, who helped me a lot and provided me with incredibly useful documentation!

The Military branch looked quite small so we decided to include three more focuses. This branch has also seen some changes, so let’s take a quick look:



Army Organization, Metropolitan Army and Corpo do Estado Maior will each grant some Army XP. In addition to that, Army Reorganization will remove Unstable Army National Spirit and add a small stability penalty(-5%).

To the left, Metropolitan Army also grants two research bonuses, followed by a production bonus under Standardization. The defensive focuses have not been touched, you must still choose between heavy fortifications in Lisbon or a light fortification line along the coast. Finally, Portugal has two focuses that provide research bonuses for special forces.

Tropas Paraquedistas is based on the Parachute Rifle Battalion, a group of 12 Timorese soldiers trained in Australia during World War II to be launched in the rearguard of the Japanese forces occupying Portuguese Timor; as you can guess, this focus gives a research bonus for Paratroopers.

Regimento de Comandos is a reference to the (later) historical Portuguese Commando Regiment (a special forces unit prepared for counter-guerrilla operations) formed in the early 60s, as a consequence of the Ultramar War; it will provide two research bonuses for special forces, as well as a National Spirit that will slightly increase your special forces limit.

To the right, we have Corpo de Estado Maior, which improves army leaders and makes them cheaper, followed by Staff Wargames and its two research bonuses for land doctrine. Finally, Field Maneuvers will add more Army XP and an additional research bonus for land doctrine.

A final note on this, if you support a Spanish faction during the Spanish Civil War, you can access a focus that also gives you some research bonuses (different bonuses depending on the faction you support):







Moving on to the political branch, you can see that some focuses have changed names. This is to clarify that they are related to the Spanish Civil War:



You may also notice that Securing the Free World is now available only through Allow Free Elections (aka Democratic path). This focus will guarantee the independence of every European minor country with a democratic/non-aligned government and not in a faction, as well as allowing you to create your own faction. It makes sense to have it as a democratic focus, since Communists have their own ways to deal with factions.



I would also like to clarify the requirements for the following focuses:

Protect Chinese Civilians: Will grant a wargoal against the owner of Guangzhou, the state surrounding Macau. This focus is available by completing either The Popular Front Bloc, They Need our Help or Allow Free Elections.

Intervention in Spain: This focus grants a wargoal against Spain if their ideology does not match Portugal’s. It is available only through They Need our Help and Allow Free Elections.



Regarding the change of ideology, throughout the different political branches (be it Communist, Democratic, Fascist or even Monarchist) you will always find something like this:



As you can read in the lower red tooltip, if you attempt to change your government through the Focus Tree, you better make sure that stability is high enough, otherwise you could find yourself in the middle of a messy and unexpected Civil War (hmm… This sounds familiar to me…).

You will find something similar in the following focuses:







Now let’s talk about the historical path (cool new icons in the branch courtesy of our freelance artist @Indyclone77, who also made all the Portuguese Focus and National Spirit icons, event pictures, and plenty of other 2D assets... Big kudos to him!). We have added a new sub-branch by which Salazar will slowly strengthen his regime, eventually turning Portugal into a powerful nation, capable of dealing with great powers late-game:




The National Spirit Estado Novo represents the Salazar regime and has several levels now, being improved by different focuses along the branch.

You get it when you complete Estado Novo focus, providing a small bonus in consumer goods and civilian factory construction speed.



Strengthen the Regime represents Salazar dealing with all kinds of dissidents (historically, Communists were specially persecuted and oppressed, but there were also other groups, such as fascist-syndicalists). You will have to invest some manpower and equipment to strengthen the secret police, but you will get some Non-Aligned support, and your Estado Novo will get small bonuses.

Upon completion of Appease Monarchists you will get the support of most monarchists and will unlock a couple of Monarchist-related advisors (shared with the Monarchist branch). Historically, Salazar’s strategy was to co-opt the Monarchy supporters into the government and leave the restoration of the Monarchy open for the future. Among other benefits, this focus will add a small daily PP and a weekly stability bonus to Estado Novo.

Concordat with the Holy See: The Concordat of 1940 was an agreement between Portugal and the Vatican, which basically prevented the Church from interfering in the political affairs of Portugal. In-game, you will get a nice amount of PP and Estado Novo will get a bit more daily PP and weekly stability.

National Gold Reserves: During the War, Portugal played an important economic role (it was more complex than the simple “they sold tungsten to Germany”, but I'll leave that for another day). In-game this focus will give Portugal a National Spirit with some economic bonuses, as well as better trade relations with Germany and the United Kingdom. Keep in mind: you have to be at peace to complete this focus!

By completing Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance Portugal will join the Allies, gaining access to the focuses shared with the Democratic Path.

Proudly Alone is the final focus improving Estado Novo and finally removing Unstable Republic. From here Portugal can choose to leave behind the historical approach and go into the offensive against Japan or any major or neighboring Communist nation.



Last but not least, The Capital of Espionage focus: There were countless agents and plots in Lisbon during the war, from double agents and traitors who cooperated with former enemies to spies who gathered information on trans-Atlantic shipments for the Germans. This is represented in-game with the following National Spirit:



Regarding Refuse the Naval Blockade focus, it is now available not only through the Fascist path after National Syndicalism, but also through the Monarchist path after Return of Duarte. Now the Kingdom of Portugal can take revenge on the United Kingdom and finally connect its Angolan and Mozambican colonies (Mapa Cor-de-Rosa).



For those of you concerned about not seeing any custom tech sprites during the streaming a couple of weeks ago, I can confirm that there are Portuguese tech sprites, but unfortunately they were not hooked-in on the build we used for the streaming.



And that’s all from me, as you can see Portugal has gone through a lot of work during the last months and I hope you enjoy playing the different paths once the DLC is released!

For the next dev diary you won't have to wait a whole week as on Friday we will be showing off a bunch of stuff for modders as well as post the full 1.9 patchlog in preparation for La Résistance release next week.

Don't miss the stream today where we will continue our playthrough as Germany.

Tonight we also have an AMA on reddit where you can pop in and ask us questions.

Today's Development Diary by YaBoy_Bobby



Join me as I recount some of the highlights from my recent prerelease testing playthrough of LaR in this After Action Report (AAR) where played I as the UK.

Phase 1: The buildup

When playing the UK in singleplayer I don’t really like trying to hold France, as I feel doing so kinda ruins the pacing of a historical playthrough. So I spent all my time from game start only building civilian factories with about 85% of my mills making aircraft. I also began establishing my intel agency in late 1937. I focused on improving my intel generation and code-cracking ability first so I could give some force multiplication to my rather small army.



Phase 2: Naval Dominance and Focused Defense

At the start of hostilities, I began cracking Germany’s encryption and used my airforce in the Mediterranean in conjunction with a large part of my navy. I figured it wasn’t worth sacrificing too much air strength against Germany in France at this point. I had just switched to building military factories from only building civilian factories, so I could not afford to use my more limited airforce recklessly. I also set up the majority of my operatives to set up intel networks in Germany.

I attempted to recruit mostly “seducer” trait operatives as they have a lower chance of being caught. In the process, I got some interesting seduction experts.



Most of my rather small army was deployed in Egypt to hold the Suez. With air superiority and an intel advantage over the Italians, Holding Egypt was a great success. I was able to recruit the famous Nancy Wake and I decided to send her on a Roman holiday to help me get more intel on Italy since I would be fighting them in Africa for the foreseeable future.




Phase 3: Battle of Malta

After the Italian navy was largely defeated, I infiltrated the Italian airforce to help get a more clear idea of how close I was to breaking it. At this point, the Italian airforce started port striking my Mediterranean Fleet in Malta. After looking at their plane counts in the intel ledger, I built up some radar in Malta and deployed the airforce to intercept the Italians in the region. Baiting them to bomb my exposed, and no longer as useful, fleet worked as phase one of my plan to break the axis airforce.



Meanwhile, In Germany and occupied France, my intel networks had become rather strong and were providing good info on the state of the axis. I had at this point also infiltrated the German civilian govt’ and army to open up further options for operations and to get a more clear picture of their strengths.

By late 1940 I had broken both the German and Italian ciphers and had weakened both the German and Italian airforces by fighting in favorable conditions where I had a large radar advantage combined with my passive cracked crypto advantage. Having enemy ciphers broken increases interception efficiency as well as adds to air detection.

Phase 4: Battle of Greece

At the end of 1940, Greece was invaded by Italy and Germany. By this point, I had a significant intel advantage, was close to matching axis airpower, and had a large and equipped Free French volunteer force. I decided I would turtle southern Greece as long as I could and brutalize the axis in the air in the process. I scrambled a large part of my North African forces to Greece and deployed the majority of my airpower. At one point my defensive line was nearly broken. I was able to save it by activating my broken ciphers on Germany, giving myself a temporary 30 day combat. Before the buff expired I was able to get some extra forces in and save Greece.



By mid-1941 I had overtaken the axis in the air and southern Greece looked more and more secure. I decided it was time to start boosting resistance in France and laying the groundwork for eventual liberation. I also was well on my way to cracking the new Italian and German ciphers.



Once the ciphers were cracked again and my tac bombers were no longer needed in Greece, I decided to start harassing the Germans with a strategic bombing campaign in their homeland. With my Intel levels, I was able to track how my bombing campaign was impacting Germany. I had also begun targetting resource-rich areas in France with targeted sabotage operations to further put stress on the German war machine.



Phase 5: Yugoslavian Uprising

Over the course of the next year, America and Vichy joined the war and a fight for North Africa broke out again. With Intel and Air advantage pushing Vichy France back was pretty easy. During the North Africa campaign, I noticed that Croatia was barely keeping occupied Yugoslavia under control. So I sent some of my Operatives to support the resistance there, pushing it over the edge and causing a full-scale uprising. Many of the Axis forces in northern Greece were then cut off and annihilated.



After a great victory in Yugoslavia, I dedicated my operatives to building a massive spy network across all of Germany. This resulted in several captured Operatives, as they are more likely to be discovered in large and powerful networks, but I decided it was worth it to keep my intel on Germany maxed and the mainland set up for my Arrival.

Phase 6: La Resistance and D-Day

By mid-1942 the French Resistance, due in no small part to my support, had become disruptive. It was not fully rising up in rebellion but was strong enough to disable strategic redeploy in northern France and was providing constant attrition to local Axis forces. This combined with local spy network buffs, general intel advantage, air superiority, and ongoing fighting on the eastern front made securing my beachhead in France very smooth.



After setting up a plan to drive the Germans out of France, I once again fully utilized my code-cracking for a 30day buff and battle planned the Germans back into their homeland. By late 42 The Axis was all but broken and crumbling on all fronts. The combined Allied air, land, and intelligence efforts proved to be too much and everyone was Home for Christmas of ‘42.

I hope you all enjoyed my war story! See you next time.

Make sure to tune in to today's La Resistance preview stream.

We'll be playing as Germany with the full suite of new mechanics available, to show how all the new things fit in to a normal game.

Live at 16:00 CET over on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Hi Everyone,

We've just released a tiny patch to resolve a security issue tied to the way LUA libraries were loaded for mods.

Savegames should be unaffected but as always- back up before loading them!


Full patch notes can be found here

Don't forget to tune in to today's World War Wednesday, where Portugal and its new focus tree will be showcased to you all.

We'll be live over on Twitch at 16:00 CET

If you missed last week's stream, it can be found here:

Today's Development Diary by Podcat



Hi everyone! Release of La Résistance is closing in and we are busy fixing, testing and polishing. Today its time to present all the new achievements we are adding, so that the achievement hunters among you can start planning :)

Without further ado, here is all 20 of them (I apologize in advance for all the young whippersnappers who wont get the movie and tv show references ;) ):

One King, Two Crowns

As Bourbon Spain, hold all Spanish and French core states.


We will Rock you

As Spain, own Gibraltar.


Well, I didn't vote for you

Win the Spanish Civil War as the anarchists.

...our chief weapon is surprise

As Spain, have at least 5 spies and stage 5 coups against other nations.

Die, Perfidious Albion!

As Fascist France or Vichy France, occupy all of Great Britain.

Second Time’s the Charm

As France, occupy Moscow while Napoleon VI is your country leader.

Tour de France

Occupy all of mainland France while having at least 20 fully equipped Bicycle regiments.

Go ahead, Macau my day

As Portugal, create a collaboration government in Macau and have it own all Chinese states.

BFFs

As Portugal, join the same faction as Great Britain.

Warszawo, walcz!

Stage the Warsaw uprising and succeed.

Play it, Sam

Have a spy network of at least 50% strength in Casablanca.

Spies Trade

As India, become the spymaster for the Allies.

You Will Never Kill Me Alive

Have one of your spies take a Suicide Pill.

Why Die For Danzig

As Germany, have France turn fascist while at war with Poland.

I SEE EVERYTHING

Get over 90% intel in each category on a major without using code cracking

Shaken, not stirred

Successfully stage a coup in any nation using a spy with the Seducer trait.

Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once

Have a French and British spy work together on the same Operation

Man of a thousand faces, every one the same

Have the same spies be captured twice (so needs to be successfully rescued)

Turing Complete

Fully decrypt all nations in the axis

Don’t die for your country

The challenge from PdxCon 2019 - As Germany in 1939, occupy all of Poland and France without taking more than 475 in casualties. No paradrops allowed!

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See you all next week when we will be doing an AAR writeup of what its like playing as a spymaster of your faction. Also, don't miss out on our stream at 16:00CET today if you want to see LaR in action.