Today's Development Diary by Bratyn



Hi everyone, and welcome to another Beta Patch Update dev diary for Hearts of Iron 4 - La Résistance! The team has been hard at work fixing all manner of bugs, and today will see another update to the Beta Patch. The work is far from over, however, and you'll be able to expect continued regular updates to the Beta in the weeks ahead :)

I will first give the word to @bcareil, who will talk a little bit about error notifications for mod-users:

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We have noticed that a significant portion of our crashes occurred due to people running outdated mods with 1.9.1. Most of them were caused by invalid map data (e.g. provinces without strategic region).

Since those kind of issues will always crash the game sooner or later, we put in place some measures to try to fix the situation where it was possible (by adding the province to the same strategic region as one of its neighbor).

If we fail to get the map into a working state, the game will abort with an error message.

Note that these measure are, for the time being, rather experimental and will not necessarily fire every time they should. We will refine them until the release of 1.9.1 so that they do not conflict with any mod while still preventing starting the game in an inconsistent state.

The error message looks like this:




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Alright, back to me! I'll spend most of the rest of this Dev Diary delving into some of the more significant balance fixes and adjustments I've made to the Spanish Focus Trees, but for those of you who just want to see the patchnotes, they're right here:

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- France now starts with basic heavy tanks unlocked
- France now has engineer companies attached to leg and motorized infantry divisions as well as light mechanized divisions in the 1936 start
- France can no longer gain up to 7 research slots by cleverly losing a war
- Death Before Surrender now is a timed spirit that lasts for 900 days. This means that, if the Civil War starts the earliest it can start, the spirit will be removed at the beginning of 1939, thus simulating a collapse of morale and speeding up the conclusion of the Civil War if it is still in progress.
- Anarchist divisions now spawn with only 25% equipment (unless the player/AI went down the Anarchists branch). This should make Anarchist Spain's starting position much weaker.
- 20% Reduction to Strengthen the Regime focus requirements (80k MP instead of 100k, 800 infantry eq. and 800 support eq. instead of 1k each)

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed CTD that can occur when a carrier ship is tranferred between countries
- Added mitigation when loading a save that has invalid access rules for carrier
- Fixed CTD on missing static modifier definition
- Fixed CTD when define NIntel::MAP_INTEL_VISIBILITY_CUTOFFS was illformed
- improved performance slightly by making some adjustments to triggers (courtesy of Yard1)
- fixed some performance issues with naval invasion ai
- The game will now abort if the map contains invalid data
- Fixed CTD when accessing the airwings of a carrier that has been acquired through the annexation of a puppet
- Fixed CTD caused by event that would kill country leaders or a country that had none
- Fixed CTD when evaluating event target with an invalid state id
- Fixed CTD when an airbase with air volunteers was destroyed
- Fixed CTD that can be caused by some moded ship equipment type
- Fixed CTD caused by a task force located in a province with no sea access
- Fixed CTD that could happen when releasing a country
- fixed a ctd when \n at the end of definition.csv is forgotten


##################################
# AI
##################################
- Spanish AI will now be less disinclined to take certain advisors.
- German AI should now research 1940 fighters (after 1940 due to balance concerns)


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- it is possible to specify name & icon in create_intelligence_agency effect now
- added state_resource_cost_steel (and others) modifier that will add a resource cost for state (they can reduce state resources below zero and unaffected by transfer ratio)
- added country_resource_steel & country_resource_cost_steel (and others) which can be used in country scope to add/remove resources to country (added ones are affected by production modifiers)
- added max_planning_factor modifier
- added error log for non-existing game rule option for has_game_rule trigger
- fixed script triggers not producing correct tooltip for scripted_trigger = no
- fixed some tooltip issues with for_each_scope_loop effect and all_of_scopes & any_of_scopes triggers
- specific ideologies can now be disabled for random country leaders by setting can_be_randomly_selected = no
- updated documentation files
- Made random_list property log to log to in-game console while in debug mode
- added exclude_dlc support for game rules & options


##################################
# Database
##################################
- The Republican tree for Spain (POUM, Stalinists, and Democrats) has received various balancing tweaks and additional industry focuses, to make post-Civil War gameplay more enjoyable.
- Added a few new Carlist focuses to slightly improve their industrial situation after the civil war.
- Relocate Government to Batavia focus now also adds 70 compliance to Indonesian states.
- It is now no longer possible to avoid the Carlist/Anarchist uprisings by ending the Spanish Civil War before their timers expire. The timers will now continue until expiring, and, if the opposing faction (Republicans or Nationalists) has been defeated already, a new civil war will begin with the Carlists or the Anarchists (Franco can avoid this by taking the Fuse the Parties focus, as normal). New news events and descriptions for existing events have been added for these situations. The Civil War will now only be considered 'ended' when all factions have been defeated, or Franco takes the Fuse the Parties focus.
- France now has the correct heavy battery and secondary battery unlocked in 1936 (MtG only)
- Slightly adjusted A Great Spain and The Popular Front focus placement to be more central.
- Increased the strength of the focuses contained within the Expand Soviet Aid branch, to make these more useful and worth the repercussions. Also made them impact Communism support more.
- Reduced surrender limit offset (mninimum surrender limit) for Republican and Anarchist Spain in the Death Before Surrender spirit to 5%, down from 15%.
- Added an additional 5% neutrality support to both Safeguard the Freedom of Worship and Integrate the Requetés, making it easier for Francoist Spain to remain below 40% fascism support, in case they want to join the Allies.
- Changed the country names for Galicia and added party names for Spanish releasables


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- disabled anarchist ideology for randomly generated neutral country leaders
- Chinese Warlords should be able to become Communist
- Communists in the Government now also completes Increase Arms Production, allowing them to move down the Stalinist branch even if they started out as Republicans.
- War propaganda mission can now always be taken as long as there is intelligence network strength on targeted state
- British Coerce Spain focus no longer influences Anarchist Spain.
- Fixed a DLC check issue with base game only lend lease
- fixed historical unit leaders getting their genders randomly assigned if not specified
- fixed an oos due to random variables
- Allows Portugal to remove the Unstable Republic national spirit when taking focuses 'Join the Axis' and 'Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance'
- The Stalinist Doctrine and Anti-Fascist Unity are now only 35 days, making it possible for the Stalinists to reach Anti-Fascist Unity before the Anarchists rise up.
- fixed a broken trigger in the Expand the Burma Road decision.
- 1939 Spain start will now correctly have cores on historically Nationalist territory, and resistance will be correctly initialized on Republican states, allowing for re-coring via the decision system, as intended. Also removed cores of a superfluous Nationalist Spain tag.
- Fixed issues with the Spanish Civil War ending news events giving seemingly randomized combinations of titles and event texts. They should now properly reflect the SCW ending situation.
- fixed intel network max planning penalty not applying to enemy
- Fixed the Fascist Referendum decision incorrectly being available for the Carlists. Also made requirements more stringent for the Referendum decisions for all other Spanish factions.
- fixed two game rules not working (Volunteers freely available and Hungary set to go Communist)
- Taking any focus that removes or reduces 'autonomy' in Galicia, Pais Vasco, or Catalunya, while not controlling some of these states, will now remove or reduce 'autonomy' of these states when you take control of them.
- Updated Belarusian division names with proper spellings
- Fixed an issue where formable nations decisions category was using an incorrect asset
- Galicia should now have appropriate historical party leaders
- If Portugal joins the SCW, but their allied Spanish faction is defeated, this faction will now be recreated when Portugal wins, rather than result in a peace conference upon conclusion of the SCW.
- fixed an issue that prevented Vichy Produce Airplane Parts spirit from correctly applying to Germany
- Fixed Bulgarian Ships using generic Portuguese names for Submarines and Destroyers.
- Fixed an earlier fix for Expand Soviet Aid. It should now only bypass when having taken The Stalinist Doctrine and the civil war has ended, instead of always.
- The "Join the French" focus in the Dutch focus tree now takes new French focuses into account
- fixed some declare war pop up description issues
- France can no longer start border wars over her colonies if at war with the controller of those colonies
- Fixed an issue where, when the SCW starts, the other side did not have any cores on any of the Spanish states.Now both sides (Nationalists and Republicans) should have cores on all Spanish states upon the start of the SCW.
- Fixed an issue where Spanish Civil War factions did not have their cores initialized correctly, resulting in erroneous minimum surrender limit calculation. This resulted in Republican Spain having a surrender limit or 40%, rather than the intended limit of 15%. Together with the adjustment to the minimum surrender limit in the Death Before Surrender spirit for the Republicans, this should mean Republican Spain is much more difficult to capitulate now.
- The Iberian Pact is now bypassed if Portugal is already in a faction.
- Updated Portuguese Anarchism and Regional Defense Council of Iberia bypass and available triggers. Portuguese Anarchism should now bypass if you own their European states, ensuring you cannot get stuck on this focus as long as you do. Regional Defense Council of Iberia requires ownership of these same states.
- Ensured the Independence War news event for Spain shows the correct localization (it was referring to the wrong nation).
- Reworked AI weights on Limited Self-Rule and Lusotropicalism. Portugal AI will not choose Limited Self-Rule while ruling party is non-aligned or fascist.
- Prevent Nationalist Spain from joining factions on historical mode.
- Portuguese dynamic tags will get Portuguese Focus Tree after wining civil war.
- Swapped Porto and Guarda Region Type.
- Adjusted Portuguese population in Lisbon, Beja and Santarem states.
- Portugal AI will accept to Restore the Iberian Union if it is a puppet of Carlist Spain.
- Fixed Portuguese and Brazilian infantry division name to Divisão de Infantaria.
- Fixed bug with Purchase Ships decision, checking for the wrong DD technologies if MTG was active (which could lead to Portugal getting Basic Destroyers regardless of ITA/ENG DD hull research).
- "Continue the Public Works" and "Roads, Bridges and Dams" will add an extra building slot and infrastructure in Santarem. "A New Industry" and "Textile Industry" will add an extra civilian factory in Santarem.
- Swapped Alfredo da Silva's and Duarte Pacheco's advisor traits.
- Portuguese puppets will not get opinion penalty with Portugal upon completion of The Fifth Empire focus.
- Join the Comintern, Join the Allies, Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, Join the Axis and The Royal Iberian Alliance focuses now require Portugal to not be in a faction and will get canceled if so.
- Completing Estado Novo focus will now lock Alvaro Cunhal as political advisor.
- Fixed issue with the chance of ships revolting during Navy Mutiny event.


This will also be my final dev diary for HoI4, as I’m moving to join the Imperator: Rome team and helping them in their future endeavours :) My final contributions to HoI have focused on fixing, balancing, and slightly expanding the Spanish focus trees after the release of LaR. I'll continue to help my able colleagues (some of whom are fresh reinforcements to the team!) to continue this work until the patch comes out of beta (and long afterwards!).

The most visible changes to the Spanish focus trees pertain to a handy feedback thread written by @Iskulya. This pointed out a number of shortcomings to some of the Spanish branches, and I’ve made attempts to address some of these.

A central complaint was that many of the branches did not have sufficient industrial build-up post-SCW to make the game interesting at this time. To this end, I’ve added a number of focuses to most of the branches, with the notable exception of the Falangist and Francoist paths (which already had a good mix of industry focuses), and the Anarchist path (which also did not need this as it was designed as a long-term snowball industrial path rather than an instant-payoff one).



A new minor Carlist branch now adds civ and mil industry, as well as some more infrastructure and reducing the Recovering From the Civil War spirit by one more step. An additional focus after Encourage Local Industrialization has been added to once again add more infrastructure, but also open up access to the resource prospecting decisions that the Falange, Franco, and the Anarchists already had access to.



As it currently stands, only paths that obtain help from economic superpowers (or the Anarchists) are able to completely remove the Recovering From the Civil War spirit. It used to only be available to the Francoists (if they join the Allies), or the Anarchists, but with the new updates this has been expanded to also include the Stalinists and the Democrats, if they rely on Soviet Recovery Aid. Without this, the best any branch can achieve is now to reduce the spirit by two steps, and thereby significantly reduce its effects. Reducing it twice also removes the AI modifier that makes Spain not want to join factions, so Spains that went down these paths and reduced the spirit twice will still end up joining factions on non-historical mode. This is true for the following branches:

• Falange
  
• Carlists
  
• POUM
  
• Democratic Republic (which elects not to rely upon Soviet Aid)

The POUM-Stalinist shared branch has been fleshed out with some more mil industry, as well as a focus that reduces the Recovering From the Civil War spirit and opens up the resource prospecting decisions. In addition, taking the Communists in the Government focus in the Democratic path will now also bypass this Increase Arms Production focus, allowing for a Democratic-turned-Communist Spain to properly continue down the Stalinist finisher branch.



The Democratic branch for Spain has received the biggest re-work. A new focus after Engineering Advances adds 4 more civ factories, giving a bit of a better industrial base from which to grow. New focuses have been added after Prepare for the Next War add further mil factories, as well as opening up resource prospecting decisions. Finally, a focus in the War of Independence branch, which requires either the Allies or the Axis (depending on who you reached out to) having accepted your requests in the previous focuses, which reduces the Recovering From the Civil War spirit and adds further civ and mil factories.

It is still intended that the Democrats have the hardest time getting rid of the Recovering From the Civil War spirit, but these additions should greatly improve their post-SCW industrial situation. Concerns were also mentioned regarding the low stability the Democratic path results in - additional stability boosts throughout the tree should now help with this.

Further criticism focused on the Expand Soviet Aid branch and how these focuses were not good enough to off-set the penalty of being puppeted after the SCW. To this end, these have all been greatly buffed.



The focuses are now universally 35 days, and provide very strong bonuses for focuses of that duration. Several now provide instant industry, while others give other bonuses such as army experience, war support, and tech bonuses. They all do increase communist support, now, however. Either as drift added into their spirits (unchanged from before), or as an instant boost (new).

Some criticism that I disagreed with was that the Democrats should be ‘rewarded’ if they manage to win the SCW without expanding Soviet aid, and it was insinuated that there should be other focuses that buff the nation that would be available in this eventuality. In my view, the simple fact that you are not puppeted after conclusion of the SCW, and do not have to wage a war of Independence against one of the world’s leading superpowers, is reward enough. The design was always meant to emphasize choice of an easier time during the SCW or more freedom after it.

Additional adjustments have been made to the Spanish Civil War as a whole, as well. Some of you may have seen FeedBackGaming’s video in which he meets my challenge and finishes the SCW within two months (in one week, to be exact). I do not feel any changes are warranted to the Garrison Control system, as FeedBackGaming simply made extraordinarily intelligent use of the system, and I feel that a player should be rewarded for making smart choices in where to contest and where not to. In addition, finishing the SCW so quickly is not always a benefit, as you miss out on tremendous amounts of Army XP and many focuses that you could have taken otherwise. However, the video did illustrate many issues inherent in finishing the SCW so quickly, and these were not intended. I’ll list a couple of things I changed and adjusted, both for balance, and just as bugfixes.

I felt that Republican Spain too easily surrendered in the SCW, and after some investigation it appeared that there was an underlying issue resulting in their minimum surrender limit being much higher than intended (40% instead of 15%). I fixed this issue, and also reduced the minimum surrender limit (for the Republican side only), which is set in the Death Before Surrender spirit, to 5%. This means that they will continue to fight much longer now (you have to take almost all of their VPs to make them surrender).

To better ‘time’ the end of the SCW, the Death Before Surrender spirit has now been made timed rather than permanent, and it expires at the earliest in early 1939. This simulates a collapse in morale due to the protracted fighting, and at the same time makes it much more likely that the SCW will end in 1939 if it is still raging at that point.



Furthermore, if the player (or AI) is not going down the Anarchist path (in which case they simply receive a portion of the already-existing Spanish divisions rather than spawning new ones), the Anarchist divisions that are spawned when they rise up are only given 25% equipment initially, rather than 100%. This should make the Anarchist rebellion much weaker in these situations.

The biggest change is a complete overhaul in how the SCW end is handled. The change essentially boils down to this: the timer missions counting down to the Carlist/Anarchist uprisings no longer stop if the other side in the Civil War is defeated. The reason for this is two-fold: fluff-wise it makes no sense for a fragmented alliance to suddenly set aside their differences when their shared enemy is defeated (rather: in-fighting would get much worse), and doing it this way solves a lot of issues that cropped up as a result of finishing the SCW much faster than expected. The change itself sounds relatively minor, but it affects a lot of different things.




First off, if you defeat the other faction before the Anarchists/Carlists rise up, you are greeted by the above news event, instead of the “SCW ends” news event.



This event does not ‘end’ the SCW, and so focuses that rely on the SCW being in progress can still be taken. The actual “SCW ends” news event can then be triggered by either one of two ways: either defeat the opposing faction when the civil war ‘resumes’, or, as the Francoists, reach the Fuse the Parties focus before the Carlists rise up (shown above).



Much of the localization for these events has been rewritten to ‘make sense’ with the new situations that can arise, and some outright new events have been added as well.



Other than a series of other bugfixes, the final thing worth mentioning is that a total of 10% additional non-aligned support has been added to Francoist focuses, making it slightly easier to remain non-aligned after the SCW has ended, and therefore making it easier to join the Allies if you so choose. Careful selection of your advisors is still warranted, though, as many of them come with fascism drift!

All the changes mentioned above are in the Beta Patch as of right now.

That brings me to the end of today's Dev Diary. It’s been a great pleasure to work on a game I like as much as HoI4 for the past 3 years, and I have no doubt you all will enjoy what’s in store for the game in the future ;) Thanks for the past few years, everyone, and you’ll find me on the Imperator forums! :)

Just started playing Hearts of Iron, or got a question about how something works?

Make sure you tune in to twitch at 14:00 CET today- we'll be hosting a beginners tutorial stream, up to date for the 1.9 update!

Tune in here: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Hello everyone!

We've been hard at work fixing issues and tweaking some of the mechanics released in 1.9 and the La Resistance expansion, and now have a big patch available in beta.

If you have experienced any kind of bug, crash or glitch in 1.9, it will be worth trying 1.9.1 out, as there is a good chance that your issue has been fixed.

We've also added a quality-of-life feature for your airforce, that we talked about in yesterday's Dev Diary, allowing you to choose whether an airwing should be reinforced by older aircraft, newer aircraft or no aircraft at all.

See the full changelog for 1.9.1 here

Our plan at the moment is to update the beta with the latest fixes and tweaks each week, before pushing the patch live around the middle of April. This means that until then, the default patch will continue to be 1.9.0, while 1.9.1 is opt-in through the Steam Beta's tab in the library.

How to Download the 1.9.1 Beta

1. Right-click on Hearts of Iron IV in your Steam Library, and left-click the 'properties' option in the dialog box.


2. Once the properties window has opened, navigate to the 'betas' tab, second from the right.


3. In the betas tab, click on the drop down box and select the 1.9.1 beta. It will then automatically queue for download.


4. Play the game!


Is 1.9.1 'hot code'?

It is, yes. Being a beta means that its not been tested to the same level a released patch will be. You should be cautious about playing ironman saves on 1.9.1, in case you run into any unexpected issues that could cause you to lose progress.

Will my 1.9.0 save games be compatible with 1.9.1?

They should be, yes. We always aim for saves to be compatible between minor patches, but we can't promise that will be true in every single case. If a save is important, back it up by making a copy before loading it in 1.9.1.

Will mods that have been updated to 1.9.0 be compatible with 1.9.1?

This will depend on what precise changes have been made by a mod in question, but in most cases the answer will be yes. The changes in 1.9.1 are centered on fixing issues and tweaking values, not changing mechanics.

Why aren't you just setting 1.9.1 as the default patch?

By taking some time before we set 1.9.1 as the live patch, it gives the opportunity to do more testing and fix more bugs, so that when the patch is released its bigger and better than it would be otherwise.

Having an open beta for several weeks also gives us more opportunity to tweak the balance of mechanics based on feedback, and be more flexible about making minor improvements here and there.

How often is the 1.9.1 beta going to be updated?

We're going to update the beta around once a week. As with the change from 1.9.0 to 1.9.1, these updates to 1.9.1 should not break your save games or mods.

Today's Development Diary by Podcat:



Hi everyone, I hope you are all having fun with La Résistance! This weekend had a new active users record for HOI4 and its great to see this happen for a game thats been out now for quite a while with a very growing community still :) Since release we have been busy working on bugs reported, talking to you guys on different communities and enjoying watching influencers stream the game :)


Who doesn't love statistics?! After each release we like to dig into data and check what the most popular focus branches and nations are.

Portugal Stats
As it could be expected, the Monarchist path is the player’s favorite for Portugal, with almost 60% of the players supporting A Royal Wedding. The most popular paths after that are the Fascist one at 15% (The Fifth Empire being the favorite choice, but with a slight advantage) and the Communist one at 10.5%. Democratic and Historical Salazarist paths are far less popular (roughly 7% and 4.5% respectively).

Regarding the Spanish Civil War, 21% of the players Supported a Spanish Monarchy (aka Carlists). That being 1/3 of the total Monarchist players. It is worth noting that Carlists might not spawn, so I’m sure a lot more people were eager to support the Spanish Monarchists!

19% supported the Spanish Nationalists (but only 11% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war), 10.5% supported the Spanish Republic and roughly 7% of the players kept Strict Neutrality and let the Spaniards manage by themselves.

Involvement in Spanish Civil War:
10.3% supported the Spanish Republic
18.8% supported the Spanish Nationalists (10.7% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war)
21.1% supported the Carlists, but only 13.8% actually Joined the Carlist Fight
6.8% kept Strict Neutrality

After supporting the Nationalists:
- 4.4% followed historical path
- 14.8% went Fascist


France Stats
For France, we have a number of surprising, and some not so surprising, observations. As it turns out, our community is evidently made up of unrepentant Monarchists. The monarchist branch as a whole was played by roughly 45% of playthroughs, compared to communists and fascists at 9% and 8%, respectively. About a quarter of playthroughs stuck with the republic.

Of the people who decided to restore yet another monarchy (when did HoI become Monarchy Simulator 2020? Dan edit: with DoD ;) ), a whooping 84% decided to side with his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Napoleon VI. It’s about 5 times as many people than the people who played the communist branch in total. I’m not bitter.

The new Vichy and Free French trees have seen very little play in the past week - about as many people played either of them as decided to form the Latin Entente. Special mention goes to the 200-odd people who decided to continue on as Vichy and then decided to stop without giving Petain special powers: we see you.

Of the people who went fascist, about two thirds formed the Latin Entente. Of the communists, about 60% did not compromise on their revolutionary ideals by allying with Moscow or forming an anti-fascist coalition. It appears that there is still some revolutionary spirit left in France!


Spain Stats
For Spain, there is almost exactly a 50-50 split between Republicans and Nationalists playthroughs. For Nationalists, 40% chooses the Carlists, and 30% equally between Falange and Francoists. For the Republicans: a whopping 70% choose to go Anarchist, and the remainder is split between 6% POUM (Independent Communist), 11% Stalinist Communist, and 13% Democratic. Of these combined Stalinist and Democratic runs, over half (56%) Expand Soviet Aid. The vast majority of Democratic players (84%) thereafter do Oppose the Communists, rather than be a loyal subject of the Soviets, but almost none (13%) take Subvert Soviet Control, seeming to indicate that the vast majority of players who select Maintain the Second Republic finish the Civil War without Expanding Soviet Aid, and therefore never need to wage a war of independence. But for those who do, the vast majority (85%) have trouble stomaching accepting aid from those who helped their enemies during the SCW, and so in their war of independence against the Soviets they seek help from the Allies, rather than the Axis.

Republicans and Stalinists are far more inclined to let the Anarchist uprising happen rather than crack down on them, with only ~15% selecting the Crush the Revolution focus. Anarchists and Independent Communists, however, select the Masters of Our Own Fate focus in over 50% of the games. For Nationalists there is a similar discrepancy (though less extreme), with about 50% of Carlist players selecting the No Compromise on Carlist Ideals focus, but only 37% of Falange players selecting Eliminate the Carlists. It would also seem that Anarchist tenacity knows no bounds, with 80% of players making it all the way to the very end of the focus tree ;)

To make sure the 1.9.1 patch is as stable as possible we will be running an open opt-in beta for anyone to take part in. We had our first update on friday and it fixes a lot of reported issues. Today is the second update of it. The plan is that 1.9.1 goes live mid-April so look forward to more beta updates until then.

See the full updated patchlog on the forums: https://pdxint.at/2TmDbti

The thread for the beta patch is here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...usky-1-9-1-beta-hotfix-checksum-8eaf.1342931/

This beta also includes a cool little QoL thing we couldnt finish in time for the release, to help with airwing management and tedium of controlling airplane equipment in them.

Here is a breakdown of how it works:

• You can now duplicate selected air wings as long as there is some planes in stockpile they can use. This copies settings etc so you will only need to access the reorg window fairly rarely.
  
  
• You can set reinforcement rules for air wings in the reorg window With 4 settings to pick from:
  - Reserves - will only use equipment marked outdated
  - Regular - doesnt care, uses anything and acts like old air wings did
  - Elite - only uses up to date equipment
  - Specialized - Will never add plane variants not in the wing already giving you 100% control.
  
  
• Foreign planes will look at your equipment for reference for the auto updating. If for some reason you want to use a foreign variant and have disabled your own of same tech level you should set up specialized wings to consume those.

Make sure to let us know how you like it!

As promised we are also working on some art. We only just started so its not in the beta yet, but here is a sneak peak of a Portugese general:



See you all next week with another update, and if you or a friend is wondering about how stuff works in the new expansion I recommend checking out some of the tutorial videos we made here. Later today at 16:00CET we will also have a stream where Daniel and Björn will show some patch stuff. I'm home sick but will try to hang out on the chat a bit!

Don't forget to tune in to today's Heart of Iron IV stream!

We're going to be talking about today's Dev Diary (out in a few hours) and the 1.9.1 hotfix patch that has been available in BETA since Friday.

NOTE: We aren't pushing the hotfix live today

Expect to hear about what is being fixed and worked on at the moment, and how we intend to develop the patch going forwards.

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

STOCKHOLM - 25 February 2020 - Conquest is never easy, but the 20th Century brings new challenges. More infrastructure means more opportunities for disruption. Radio links saboteurs and freedom fighters across occupied territory. It is never hard to find willing collaborators, but it takes a lot of work to put them in place. Direct resisters, special agents, and quislings can all be found in Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance.

La Résistance is the newest expansion to Paradox’s best-selling grand strategy wargame about the Second World War. In La Résistance, your nation has new resources at its disposal. At the center of the game is the Intelligence Agency that lets you train and deploy spies to undertake special missions cracking codes, stealing secrets and assisting resistance activities in the occupied lands of your conquered allies.



Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance include:

• New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
  
• More in-Depth Spanish Campaign: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, including an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict.
  
• Portuguese National Focuses: New unique focus tree for Portugal. Restore Portuguese naval power, strengthen the overseas empire or intervene in the Civil War next door.
  
• Espionage: Use your Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and send them on special operations, or develop passive resistance to enemy espionage.
  
• Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
  
• Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once you’ve conquered your target.
  
• Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
  
• Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities.
  
• New music tracks

As usual, the expansion is accompanied by the release of a significant update available to all Hearts of Iron IV players.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158100/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_La_Rsistance/

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