Apr 1, 2021
Hearts of Iron IV - Midgeman
Malta focus tree
Hello everyone!
So this is a first for me, my brand own dev diary! Well... in fact, I am in a bit of an odd situation. I fell asleep one day in the office about a year ago and no one came in the next morning. The building was put in lockdown during COVID so I haven’t been able to get out and I cannot contact anyone from the team.
I am running low on cash and the only way I can afford to eat is by having uber eats delivered takeout via drones, so I need you to buy this otherwise I have to resort to hunting spiders in the office.
First of a bit of a backstory since this might come as a surprise for some of you, it sure did for me. At first I thought it was a data anomaly but I have to finally admit...that it's not.
Ever since Malta was introduced as a playable nation in MtG we have seen a steady increase in players who are real hardcore about playing the island state. In fact most of you reading this are, 84% in fact.
Why are you all so crazy about Malta? I have no idea and I am no data guy but to me this signal is pretty clear and I can no longer ignore it. As such I have decided to completely shift gear from our 5 year plan to a huge Malta focus tree. You heard it right here folks, I am finally delivering what you want and no longer will you be bound by your shackles of torment!
Obviously I cannot detail everything in one single dev diary. I need to hurry up to check out my spider traps for food, but there are some new unique features that are implemented specifically for Malta, so broad strokes will be covered in this diary, with more in depth path walkthroughs next time!
Economy 2.0
Malta now begins as a proper colony of the UK ingame instead of being annexed by them. While the domestic industry will be limited by physical size the country can establish shipping lanes between other countries which trades sandstone. This was a brilliant invention of mine where I realized that Malta was pretty much completely void of industry and needed something that everyone wanted!
Everyone? Yup, to make sure Malta gets the proper starting economy every construction and building you make now will require sandstone, which you have a monopoly on. It will therefore be very important to establish close ties with Malta, or your industry will hit a (sand) stone wall.
As more shipping lanes are established and countries buy more of your sandstone you get IC output in return. More sandstone can be mined via events, focuses, decisions and by scuttling your own houses to mine their stone, at the cost of taking a stability hit.
Beware though, if you push your trade routes to everyone at once too fast you risk getting the worst malus of all, tourists. They will arrive in great hordes and block your island, making deploying divisions impossible, and slowly erode all your precious sandstone as they walk around to take in the island’s sights.
With the power of blockchain technology and adaptive AI I have tied the amount of tourists arriving to real world tourism data, so you better get all achievements before summer!
Repeatable focus sets and building vertically
As you know, Malta has limited land resources and while land reclamation is possible it is quite expensive to do so. Luckily we have the solution - instead of building horizontally we are building vertically!
Malta will be able to build several different levels of its country, like a skyscraper. Every level has a set amount of construction slots allotted to them and the player can construct buildings in these slots using the IC gained from the precious sandstone trade. Every new level also requires more and more sandstone, so the player will need to balance foreign trade and plopping another piece of tower onto the Maltese masterpiece.
Graphical representation of Malta getting its first layer of new ground
Every level also has a special set of focuses, and I am very proud to let you know that every level up until level 3000 has a unique set of focuses. After that, every level has a randomly generated set of focuses up until int.max (2,147,483,647). If anyone ever reaches that level I know that you are cheating and the game will therefore erase your system32 folder.
As you build more and more levels the lower levels become impossible to bomb by the enemy, as it is protected by the level above it, like a roof.
Of course it gradually becomes harder and harder to build vertically, so every new set of focuses completed will take more and more sandstone.
I hope that this will please all of you that like to hunt achievements, eventually you will be able to literally have enough levels to reach the moon! (yes I did the math on how many levels you would need to reach it)
A Corsair state
Some of you will gain quite a wealth via the sandstone trade. If you reach a certain threshold before the fall of France you will be given the opportunity to straight out buy the French fleet instead of it being sunk and scuttled.
This unlocks the first alt-history branch, as you are now a minor powerhouse and with your newly gained armada you will get the choice to transcend into what every HoI player has ever wanted - a pirate state!
A pirate state is a new type of country in which you will transcend beyond the confinement of merely existing as a country with borders and cities, you are now a ruler of the high seas.
Your fleet now serves as your main hubs of recruiting, building and handling politics. Even if the enemy should capture Malta itself you will not capitulate. Instead your capitulation is tied to the brethren court.
Your admirals are now part of this brethren court, with each admiral of your navy serving as a military leader. If all ships in their task force get completely destroyed, you lose the game and capitulate. You can no longer change the admirals of your navy, and naval composition is done automatically depending on the whims of the court itself and the traits of the brethren (A brethren with a submarine fanatic trait will only use submarines for example).
Here you can see your specific brethrens traits, how much loyalty they have towards you, how much loot they have and you can even build some industry that travels with your ships. You can also transport divisions in these task forces which act as raiders if they are close to land.
While you can no longer edit your fleets, every year the brethren court meets in a secret location. If one court member fails to attend in time he or she can be ousted by another one of your admirals, which can lead to wide scale mutinies.
Here you can use saved loot to bribe other leaders of your court to reshuffle ships, oust brethrens or create new task forces if need be.
As corsairs you capture ships instead of destroying them in combat. When you would normally enter a “naval battle” you now enter a “boarding battle” where your crew tries to capture the enemy ships. If you have diver divisions you can also try and capture submarines.
If a crew's loyalty drops below a certain threshold they will rebel and take a part of the fleet away and form their own pirate coven .This uses a very complex algorithm designed by me which follows
no loot -> :( = mutiny
A note from Podcat, Game Director
So hi everyone, this diary is something that actually alerted us to CraniumMuppet being locked into the office. When we found him he was passed out under a desk where he seemed to have created some kind of weird court with the local wildlife. He seems a bit confused and groggy but should make a full recovery.
An accurate representation of the office when we found CraniumMuppet
So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!
You can read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/39AzaJk
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