The year is 1936. After 30 years since gaining their independence from Sweden, things in Norway finally seem to be looking up: Its enormous merchant marine continues to be a steady source of wealth, the meager industrial base is starting to recover from the ravages of the Hard Thirties, and there’s finally a majority government, led by Johan Nygaardsvold, who is in the process of enacting sweeping progressive reforms and will bring political stability to this young nation.

The wind may seem to be on Norway’s back, but it is merely the harbinger of the storm to come.


Hey everyone! I’m Carlo, Content Designer for Hearts of Iron 4, and in charge of the Norwegian content. I’m really excited to present to you how we’re depicting Norway in this period; It’s a fascinating country that played a huge and exciting role during World War II, and I’m sure you’ll all have a lot of fun trying to defend it. Let’s get to it. Disclaimer: All of this is Work In Progress and subject to change.

As I was saying in the prologue, the political situation of Norway is getting better, but they have let their armed forces languish, and not only for budgetary reasons: You see, Norway had declared themselves neutral, and while Switzerland hoped to stay out of the war by making itself be as annoying to conquer as possible, Norway hoped to achieve the same result with the opposite method, trying to appear so harmless and accommodating that nobody would think of invading.

I don’t think I need to tell you, dear reader, this plan failed miserably.

They made themselves so damn harmless, that when the war started, BOTH sides were making plans to invade preemptively before the other one had a chance to do so, and when it finally happened, they were caught completely off guard.

And why did both sides want to keep Norway out of the hands of the other? Well, the main reason I presume you read in Sweden’s Dev Diary, Narvik was where iron from Sweden was shipped to Germany when the Baltic ports were frozen. The second one is simply that Norway is very well positioned to launch aerial and naval operations against Britain.

This is why, if you want to change the course of history and defend democratic Norway against the German threat, it will be a challenge. Here are the starting National Spirits:


Complacent Cabinet is meant to represent the unduly confidence the Nygaardsvold government had in a future smooth sailing, and how unprepared it was for a swift reaction to war. It basically makes it harder for you to switch laws and to change the terrible Theorist you start with. Why is he so bad? Well, to represent the infamous miscommunication that occurred when the cabinet found out about the invasion. TL;DR: The government asked for a Partial Mobilization, but unbeknownst to everyone except Birger Ljunberg, this meant sending the conscription orders by post, a terrible idea when you know the enemy is at the gates. Instead of, you know, telling this to the rest of the cabinet and asking if they were sure, he just went ahead and instructed to send the orders by post [Clownemoji].



Obsolete Armed Forces to represent the sorry state of the Norwegian army at the time, ESPECIALLY the forts. That’s why we added two new modifiers so we can make a country’s forts worse than usual. Don’t worry, you can remove this National Spirit later.


The Hard Thirties: AKA country coming out of the great depression starter pack, it makes it slower for you to build and increases your consumer goods usage.


Anti-communist Sentiment increases fascism because there wasn’t a massive communist or fascist presence in the country, but the fear towards communism was one avenue fascists used to recruit.


These are just the starting National Spirits, through the Focus Tree you will be able to remove some of them, and add some new ones. Here’s the political branch for Historical Norway:


As you can see, most of the starting focuses will be geared towards building up civilian industry and improving the political situation, ignoring military buildup.


In fact, if you want to develop Norway properly, you’ll have to complete the focus Broken Gun Policies, which will lock you out of most of the military focuses, but gives you access to the central decision system for Historical Norway:


The idea is that you can develop each state individually so you can get civilian benefits out of them, at the cost of military readiness for that state. You can Develop a state up to 3 times, with increasing civilian benefits and harsher military penalties. As I said, Norway’s focus before the war was civilian development rather than military preparedness, if you started building up the military right away it wouldn’t be historical would it?


Don’t fret though, once the war starts, you’ll be able to leverage this development into military benefits to properly defend against the incoming Fascist bully. It won’t only cost you development and political power, you will also spend convoys; after all, Norway had one of the largest merchant marines in the world, so shedding it represents the economic cost of shifting towards military power.


When you convert the development of a state into military military effects, the state will go one level down in development and you will get a different benefit based on the development level:
At level 1 you will get a dynamic modifier in that state to defend it better.
At level 2 you will get a free military factory in that state
And in level 3 you get two militia divisions, plus a dynamic modifier for the resistance on that state when it is conquered.






This means that which states you develop, and up to what level, matter a lot if you hope to have a chance against Germany.

Now back to the Focus Tree!


Now you might be asking yourself “What’s the deal with this “Fascist Invasion of Norway focus to the side?”, and I say, don’t worry about it… Nothing to see here.


…


I told you already, nothing important is happening over there. Here, have this focus with a doggo.


This is the focus Preparing the Return to Norway, and it features Bamse, the San Bernard mascot of the Norwegian Free Forces. He was a crew member of the NoHMS Thorodd, he broke up fights, saved people from drowning and even a stabbing. A true, certified good boy. The focus is meant to…

Alright, alright. You win….


When the… inevitable happens, and Germany decides to invade Norway, two things will happen(Besides getting invaded). First, that focus completes and then you get an event about Quisling’s historical coup, which gives you three choices:
Try your luck. If you trust your preparations then you shouldn’t have much trouble fighting against Germany and Norway’s evil twin.
Delay the coup, at a cost that you can reduce depending on Oslo’s Development level. You’ll get the coup without the possibility of delaying it further once you hit more than 50% Surrender Progress, but if you do well enough you won’t see it ever again. Or…
You can take the coward’s way out, and betray everything you’ve been doing so far to fight on the side of the fascists. Congrats! You’re a Quisling!


Look… Listen, jokes aside, it happens to the best of us; you’re on your ironman campaign, distracted building toaster factories and reorganizing your navy and suddenly you realize you’re totally not ready for what’s about to come. If it happened to the Norwegian Government in 1940, it can happen to you. With this, you have the option of salvaging your campaign without having to go into exile, and if you prefer to go into exile there’s a small sub branch for that too; Norway has both a Historical Democratic and a Historical Fascist focus branches.


Now that the Oslo shuffle is done, let’s take a look at the Historical Fascist Branch:


I’m saving it for the alt-history dev diary but there are fascist focuses before this one, and they allow you to lay the groundwork for a fascist civil war, where you’ll be better prepared and potentially have control of more states than just Oslofjord.

If you’re going fascist from the getgo, or delayed the coup, you can complete this 7 day focus at any time and start playing as fascist (It autocompletes if you switch sides). It also adds the National Spirit Contested Leadership, to represent that Quisling, despite being liked by Hitler and some other inner circle Nazis, was not meant to be the ruler of Norway, it was just a temporary stopgap, and an overeager fascist.


That’s no problem though, because soon enough you get to make this choice between going alt-history by keeping Quisling in power, or continuing the historical path by getting rid of him, replacing him with Josef Terboven, the German administrator of the Reichskommisariat.





The difference between the two, is that Quisling’s path leans more independent, but lacks the industrial and military cooperation of the Terboven path. You’ll have another chance to bring him back later though, which is what happened historically. But you can choose to put Quisling’s rival, Jonas Lie in power, who will bring Norway closer to Germany, since Quisling wanted to emulate the German Reich but didn’t want to be a puppet of the Germans, while Jonas Lie was called at the time ‘Germany’s man’ and might’ve been content with being a puppet of the Reich.





You might be wondering, though, why would anyone not take the independent Fascist Norway path, and the answer is that Quisling has terrible modifiers:


And he gets worse:


AND EVEN MORE WORSE:


But hey, at least you get some troops and viking claims!


Besides those two branches, every ideology will have access to the common branches to build up industry and improve the armed forces. They have some light overlap, but in general they are divided between: Rearmament Branch, with general army and industrial focuses; the Independent Norway Branch, with civilian industry and tech; the Airforce branch, with bonuses to all things flying; and finally, the Navy branch, which will help your efforts trying to defend your comically long coastline.



It is important to note, that if you’re playing Historical Democratic, you will have the Broken Gun national spirit at some point, which will block you from all of those focuses except for the ones in the Independent Norway branch, so you might be a bit delayed in getting to them if that’s the case.


Now, let me go on a tangent for a bit. This is the story of Norway’s first, and for our period, only tank.


In 1937 the Norwegian government realized that they needed to start thinking about armored warfare, to prepare to fight with tanks, and against tanks, so after some thought, they approached the Swedish company Landsverk to buy a tank. The thing is, they realized tanks were expensive, and way outside their budget, so they just ordered an L-120 Light Tank Chassis, no armor, no turret. Kinda like ordering just the fries and soda, no burger. After it finally arrived, they fitted it with metal sheets as armor, and a “turret” that was basically a cylinder with a hole for a heavy machine gun. People nicknamed Norway’s only tank, ‘Rikstanken’ (The Realm’s Tank), and ‘Kongstanken’ (The King’s Tank). The whole thing is even funnier when you learn that ‘tank’ in Norwegian is the word for ‘thought’, so Rikstanken becomes a metaphor for the idea of Norway itself.

For comparison, this is what a Landsverk L-120 looks like:



And this is what the Rikstanken looked like:



Granted, that’s a particularly bad picture, but I recommend researching a bit more for yourself. It really was a wonderfully bad tank, so bad that they didn’t even use it when the country was being invaded. It’s ok though, we still love you just the way you are, Rikstanken.

Of course I wouldn’t be talking about this if there wasn’t content for it. By completing the Rikstanken focus, you’ll start an event chain that will let you buy a single tank from Sweden. Or if you want to go wildly ahistorical, you can spend a little more and buy a bunch of tanks from them, or from the Soviet Union. Another option will be accepting some political influence from Germany or the Soviet Union in exchange for a bunch of tanks, or even starting a tech exchange for developing your own tanks from scratch.




And when you do get that tank, you’ll be able to enjoy it in all its 3D glory:



Of course, this beauty will be able to tour the whole kingdom, all 11 states:

• Oslofjord
  
• Telemark
  
• Opplandene
  
• Agder
  
• Vestlandet
  
• Trøndelag
  
• Helgeland
  
• Nordland
  
• Troms
  
• Finnmark

And, if you have the boats, Jan Mayen.


With that, I conclude this Dev Diary, feel free to ask any questions. Now go and wishlist Arms Against Tyranny and stay tuned to learn all about Denmark’s historical content, it might take you longer to read it than what it took Germany to invade it, but it will surely be an interesting read!

Word has just reached us from the Requisitions office - The Grandest Lan tickets are now available!

Make sure to grab yours to join in on all the action, to view the castle, and to have a great time.

Välkommen!

That is of course not English, but rather Swedish which will be today's dev diary. This DD will talk about the branches for the military and industrial branches, as well as democratic branches.

This tree has been a collaboration between me and AveeBee. We have had a longstanding rule in the HoI team that no Swede is allowed to touch a Swedish focus tree, but apparently that rule flew out of the window as long as the Swede in question was supervised by an adult.

Normal caveats apply, there’s work in progress stuff in here, and things might change before release.


As most of you already know, Sweden was the only Nordic country that was not invaded during WW2, but in a similar way to Switzerland was pressed by both the allies and the axis which led to some dubious concessions, but Sweden remained neutral through it all.

While Sweden arguably had the superior military capabilities compared to its Nordic neighbors, it was woefully unprepared for war and was caught with its proverbial pants down on the eve of WW2 with its government preferring to focus on the welfare state rather than its military, something that would change as the war progressed. This will be a major theme for the focus tree in large.

As you might have noticed I keep saying Democratic, not Historical. That is of course because historically Sweden did not join any wars. Me and Amy decided early on that we assume that players _will_ want to get into a war sooner or later, (which is after all a key tenet of the game), which is why even under the Democratic paths you will eventually join the war. (of course the AI will have guardrails against this on historical)

While there are a lot of historical references to things that actually happened, we are assuming that the player wants to engage in the warfare part sooner or later.


At the start of the focus tree you will have the choice to pick from a total of 4 leaders. Historically this was Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp which only ruled for a few months until Per-Albin Hansson came back in the 1936 election, called the Summer Government.

You can try to keep Per-Albin which will result in a Vote of No Confidence, or you can pick Gösta Bagge which is the right leaning option




Don’t worry about losing out on Per-Albin Hansson though! After the summer is over another election will happen, and you can return him to power. If you went through the hassle of having a Fallen Riksdag you get an additional option of appointing Ernst Wigforss as a Per-Albins successor, or if you want you can continue with the leader you have.



Before I continue I need to bring up the issue of stability, or rather Hungersköld (Hungershield). During the first world war Sweden was embargoed by the entente due to iron ore trade with Germany, leading to domestic protests, riots and eventually the ousting of the current Swedish government.

The Swedish PM at the time, Hjalmar Hammarskjöld was nicknamed “Hungerskjöld”, hence the wordplay. At the onset of WW2 the fear of food shortages again loomed large for Sweden, and drove both domestic policies and was a great fear for the populace.


In the game this is represented with stability acting as a shield against such hunger strikes. Being above a % of stability protects the player against those adverse effects, and being below that threshold opens you up to the risk of getting strikes.


Riots can happen if you are at a very low stability. . While they are temporary you will not want to get stuck in an endless cycle of these. There are a few safeguards that we have put in place to make sure that players that temporarily dip under these thresholds will not immediately get these strikes instantly due to a bad RNG roll, but you do not want to stay under the limit for very long.

That leads us to another concept, Folkhemmet (The People's Home). While you might know it as the name of communist Sweden, it was actually a set of social-democratic policies that paved the way for the welfare state that Sweden has today.

The focus on this welfare state was partially why the government at the time was hesitant to spend a lot of the budget on the military, as these programs were very popular. In game this is represented with the Folkhemmet spirit.


As long as the welfare state is intact it acts as a buffer against the risk of getting strikes, but as you can see it also drastically reduces the military capabilities of Sweden.


As you progress through the focus tree key focuses will start to orient the Swedish industry towards war, but the Folkhemmet shield that is protecting you from strikes will be chipped away.


To demonstrate this is what a fully degraded Folkhemmet looks like at the moment.

To counter this there's a mix of things the player can do, such as employing advisors, picking focuses that add stability, picking decisions that add stability and so forth. We don’t specifically dictate how you handle this system, but rather hope that players will handle it differently depending on playstyle and how aggressive they want to be.

In a nutshell it is a question of “when do I rearm” and “how do I avoid the adverse consequences of those decisions”, and make sure you also do not get caught with your pants down. With those main themes explained, let's look at the actual tree



This is the entrypoint for the focus tree. The Defense Act is where you pick your leader, and just below it is the industrial branch. As you can see there's a clear divide between the focuses, and that you can mix and match some of them.



These are two examples, and as you might glean the left side is more aligned with social-democratic policies, while the right one is more aligned with right leaning policies. The right side generally leans more towards ratcheting up the defense industry, while the left one focuses more on the internal stability of the state.

Putting this into context, if you amass a larger pool of stability from these focuses, you might be able to offset the dip in stability from Folkhemmet, but on the other hand it might take longer to do so.



If you really do not want to deal with this at all you can lean heavily into the right and remove it completely.


You can also leverage your ball-bearing trade (the things that make other things spin). Something that Sweden smuggled to both the axis and allies.

As the events of history unfolds events will happen that put Sweden into contact with the great powers of the war. These are events that we nicknamed Flashpoints, which are historical contextual events that happened to Sweden during the war.


Here Sweden gets accidentally bombed by the USSR


The USSR can apologize or deny this. In this case they deny it, allowing Sweden to respond


Sending military aid to Finland as a response will escalate tensions with the USSR



If the chain of tensions reaches a boiling point it will boil over, dragging Sweden into the war as well, or not depending on how Stalin responds


This is one example of one of these events where tensions might lead to war.



Scrolling right we find the 3 military branches of the focus tree which will be shared between all the paths of the focus tree


What is a bit special though is that part of the tree is locked behind war support (or military factories if you get that far). Instead of providing stuff like military factories these focuses augment the military directly, think of them as a miniature doctrine tree.

The focus behind this “war support gate” is intended to put some additional pressure on the player to want to get war support up, tying back to the interplay of the Folkhemmet and Hungershield.


These are generally divided into a defensive and offensive play style with the left one being more oriented towards defensive oriented players, and the right one being more oriented towards offensive offensive players. (pictured above is the panic button focus)
As you progress through the focuses these spirits grow in strength as you invest more resources into them


While these cornerstone focuses are strong, they require investment in both time, and being gated behind war support. How quick you get to them is decided by how fast you rearm.


You might recognize Bofors in this example which made the popular 40 mm Anti Air gun. In this case Bofors gets a unique trait and funds for the MIO
The military branch of the focus tree is where a lot of Folkhemmet is going to be changed via focuses. It also provides some much needed funds for the Swedish MIOs




Sweden's navy tree is mainly divided into whether you want to contest the Baltic directly via capital ships or if you prefer to go the German route and focus on submarines and light surface fleet for harassment.

The top shared part deals mainly in expanding the output of the domestic industry, as well as the option to buy older ships from other countries.


As happened historically, the Italian destroyers might take a roundtrip through the world and end up in Iceland, so be aware :D


Of course we couldn’t resist making a Vasa focus, however we hope that it is slightly more successful than its predecessor.


While its a powerful battleship it deploys at 60% complete, so you’ll need to finish the other 40%.



When Finland was invaded by the USSR it reverberated through Sweden. Finland was seen as a first line of defense against the Russian threat, which has been a historic adversary of Sweden.

You are given a choice of whether to go the historic route and send volunteers, try and claim the Åland islands when Finland is weak, or get actively involved in the war. Getting involved in the war will give you a mission of taking Leningrad, and if you or Finland manages to take it the Soviet Union will either be forced to sign a white peace, or face massive unrest. Both Sweden and Finland also get the avatars of their nation to help out, for a while.


If Leningrad is lost the USSR will either be forced to revoke their claim, or face embarrassment.

As you probably know Sweden did not enter the war. But in HoI all the preparation and buildup, and later on the war itself is a key component of the core game loop. Aveebee and I decided to take an early design decision to work under the key assumption that players who play Sweden will want to get into the war.

Meaning that we have had to modify the historical path to work with the plan that Sweden will enter the war at some point. Of course the historical Swedish AI will not enter the war unless provoked.

In practice that means that the historical branch will have focuses related to events that did happen in real life, but they work under the thesis of Sweden eventually getting involved as well.


A lot of refugees from other Nordic countries fled to Sweden and were secretly trained as “police forces”. Some of these would later help liberate Norway. In game this focus puts these police forces in a separate pool that grows as more Nordic countries capitulate.

On the onset of war this banked manpower will be unlocked and transferred into the normal manpower pool. You can also expand the facilities to raise the training cap for

Beep Beep

Most important of all is the Per Albin Bus (pictured above). This is a mobile headquarters that the Swedish government planned to run away into the forest with in case of invasion. In game the bus is a state modifier that can be moved to adjacent states, reducing the surrender limit. If the bus gets captured the country leader dies. (We actually got to see this bus when we visited the Army Museum last summer)



You can move the bus as long as you control an adjacent state,which means that you can take Per Albin all the way to Moscow if you really want to for some reason.


Sweden also has access to Rangers, which are special forces that send out undercover troops to sabotage vital infrastructure behind enemy lines. Use it wisely as the casualties of these can be quite high. Very useful to blow up enemy ports in Norway.


As you eventually enter the war by trying to either Save Denmark or Norway Sweden gets a goal to liberate every occupied Nordic country. The more occupied countries the stronger this bonus becomes, with an additional bonus once those countries are liberated.



If the more careful path of building up your defensive capabilities is a bit too conservative for you there's always the option of forming the Nordic Defense Council. This involves more aggressively tackling the threats around you with the other Nordic countries' help.


It invites every Nordic to become a member state of the council, and you get to pick whether to centralize its command at the cost of its member states not being able to defend themselves as well,


Or decentralize its command into its member states


Here is an example of a centralized command, with Mannerheim and Helge Ljung working side by side


In the end you can opt out of picking either Death or Dishonor, growing stronger the more member states you have.



We also put in some late game focuses, mainly for those that want to continue the campaign after WW2 has concluded. These tie into late game technologies, the new special forces rework and finally dealing with the threat of the iron curtain.


This Lion looks a bit more majestic than the Gripsholm Lion. A frequent on r/badtaxidermy


As always we have new awesome advisors. Here are the ones available to Sweden.




My favorite one in Sweden is Ebba Margareta, which does not cost anything to hire but can get traits depending on how the player chooses to invest.


We also have the couple Myrdal which feeds off of each other if they are both in the Cabinet.




As for the new generals here they are. Most of their experience came as a result of being in the Finnish civil war.


And the Admirals! Charles de Champs is definitively winning the style competition here.



And these are the new Swedish states! My pet peeve of having Norrbotten and Lappland on the map as two separate entities has finally been solved! (sorry for the weird slicing of the image Sweden has a…weird shape). Åland now also starts demilitarizing at the start of the game (which it still is to this day).

And finally, some nice 3D models!




I call this one the Sardine deathtrap (The engine is in the front....)



Finally there’s the question of resources. During WW2 Germany was partially reliant on Swedish iron ore, especially before the fall of France. Arguably the reason why the Narvik campaign happened at all was Germany's desire to secure the Gällivare mines, and the allies desire to blow it up (under the pretense of helping Finland).

We have tried several ways to model this in game but it has been hard for several reasons. The trade algorithm runs the shortest route capital to capital, while the actual resources are located in the north of Sweden. The algorithm also really prefers land routes, which would go across Denmark, or if by sea through the Baltics and not through Narvik as was historically. Changing this is outside the scope of this expansion and while we tried other adding content driven systems on top of this nothing worked satisfactorily up to this point.

I don't rule out some abstraction for Germany controlling Narvik gaining them some IC boost, but currently we decided to sidestep it in another direction, by making Germany a bit more reliant on imports.

Germany has in game had more domestic resources than it actually had in game, leading to a problem of it never really having issues with resources, especially steel. Whatever steel it needed was either in Germany proper, or soon to be taken from France, leading to the “Free Trade Meta” we often see these days.

Part of the issue is the abstraction of coke, ore grade, steel mills into the single encompassing iron which makes this hard to properly represent. All in all Sweden provided around 43%, German domestic production 28.2% and France 12.9% to the German war effort between 1933-1943. Having buildings such as steel mills was also outside the scope of this expansion.

This resulted in an overall reduction in iron for specific countries, main targets were Germany which overall had poor iron ore quality, and France which Germany will gobble up. Germany starts with 2 civilian factories more than before to use for import as needed. Portugal also got some tungsten shifted to Sweden. Below are the main changes, with no changes in trade law from 1936 starting dates, accounting for starting infrastructure and no equipment lines active.

Germany
AAT


PRE-AAT


France
AAT


PRE-AAT


Portugal
AAT


PRE-AAT


SWE
AAT


PRE-AAT


These numbers are not final and might change depending on balance and how the AI performs.


Whole Focus Tree Above

I don't have any good ways to end this, so I'll just stop by saying-

Greetings all on this auspicious day,

As promised last week, today we have big news as well as an overview of what we’re working on for the next Hearts of Iron expansion: Arms Against Tyranny, and the accompanying Stella Polaris update.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183930/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Arms_Against_Tyranny/

After successfully evading capture and inclusion in numerous HOI expansions, we’re proud to announce that Finland and the Nordic countries will be setting the theme for the Arms Against Tyranny expansion. This is a region clearly very close to our hearts at Paradox, but also a region with significant involvement in the development of WW2. While the effects of the winter war, occupations, and policy-making of the Nordic countries are well documented on the progress of the war as a whole, domestic histories and perspectives of these countries are often overlooked in favor of more active theaters. Arms Against Tyranny offers us a chance to tell both aspects of these stories without compromising the greater strategic narrative we’ve come to expect from Hearts of Iron.

Over the next several months we’ll be introducing you to a more detailed perspective on each of the constituent parts of AAT, including deep dives into the mechanics you’ve already seen (International Markets and Military Industrial Organizations). The mechanics we’ve chosen to include here are ones which we feel augment the fantasy of playing in the Nordic area during this era, though as usual, we’ve tried to make sure that the expansion brings something for everyone.

Below, you’ll find the store-page overview for what’s coming in AAT - however beyond this summary, we will not be answering any questions on the features we haven’t produced a dev diary for.

************************************

Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny
Four Northern democracies are seemingly helpless against nearby predatory dictatorships. Despite their size, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have a chance to avoid conquest through clever diplomacy or fierce resistance. Write a new history of the Nordic countries in Arms Against Tyranny, a new expansion for Hearts of Iron IV.

This expansion to Paradox Interactive’s celebrated grand strategy wargame about the tumult of the years around the Second World War adds new focus trees and alternate histories for the northernmost nations of Europe, customization of weapons manufacturers, and new ways to take advantage of neutrality to profit your own citizens.


The Winter War
Relive the defining moment of Finnish history, defying the odds in a war against a much more powerful Soviet adversary. Though disadvantaged in air and amored forces, Finnish forces have a strong advantage on homeland defence, so you should prepare an army specifically designed for Finland’s terrain to fight invaders. Or, if you prefer, write your own history, strengthening Fascist sympathizers who want a Greater Finland or pursuing a socialist path - with or without Soviet support.

A Powerful Sweden
The richest of the Nordic nations, Sweden is well-suited to a path of vigorous neutrality and to serve as both an arms designer and arms trader. Strong unions risk crippling unstable governments unless you can provide enough work. In a world on fire, Sweden must also upgrade its obsolete forces so it can defend itself. Can the Swedish democracy avoid taking the side of its occupied neighbors, or will the government collapse in favor of monarchist or Fascist alternatives?

Norway
Relive the historical challenge of a young industrializing nation trying to stay neutral in the face of German aggression or prepare for war by quickly arming to resist the war that is coming to your doorstep. In alternate historical paths, unscrupulous domestic fascists may take advantage of domestic complacency and pursue Nordic union through betrayal, or a Communist revolution can choose to stand with or against Stalin’s regime.

Denmark
A long-standing policy of neutrality leaves Denmark unready for a continental war. Pursue the course of domestic harmony through a strong welfare state and agile diplomacy, or throw in with the democratic Allies, rearming for the coming storm. Alternate paths include chasing the dream of a united Scandinavia, reviving the old Kalmar Union.

A War Machine of Your Design
To make sure you have an industry that matches your ambitions, national manufacturers and weapons designers can specialize their craft, improving the production and research of various items through the course of the war. Military Industrial Organizations will offer new ways to streamline production lines or develop high-performance weapons systems with advantages on the battlefield.

Guns for Butter
In the new International Market, you can become an arms exporting powerhouse, selling weapons to other nations in return for civilian factory output, increasing your own industrial production at home while fueling the fires of war abroad. This is a new way for rich and advanced neutral nations to stay viable and active in a world war.

New Military Options
Many updates and changes to the design and organization of military divisions, including customization of special forces units, divisional specializations, and more.

New Art and Music
New unit art, including Finnish snowmobile brigades, and 10 new songs inspired by the key cultures in Arms Against Tyranny.


************************************

This, however, is not all! I shall hand you over to our most prolific dev-diary artiste to introduce you to our plans for AAT’s headline nation: Finland!


Hei! It is Mano de Zombi to welcome you all to a new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary!
With the beautiful Swedish summer approaching, good weather and bright sunny days have finally arrived in the North, and with them comes news about the first country to be revealed for the upcoming DLC Arms Against Tyranny, Finland!

As we have been doing in the latest DLCs, we are going to split the Finnish content into two Dev Diaries. Today, we will be talking about the historical and common branches of the Finnish Focus tree, and we will leave the alternative history for a future Dev Diary.

As usual, I need to warn you that you are about to see Work In Progress (WIP) content that might not be finalized, balanced, localized or that might contain placeholder art, and it is subject to change before release. Also keep in mind that some of the content might vary if certain previous DLCs are not active. Thanks for your understanding!

And with that said, let’s get to it!


In 1936, Finland found itself in a complex political, diplomatic, and military situation. Despite being a democratic nation, nationalism and right-wing ideology were on the rise. The proximity to the Soviet Union also made it vulnerable to aggression, and tensions between the two countries were high.

On the political front, Finland's government was fairly fragile, with several different parties (most remarkably the Agrarian Party, the National Coalition Party and the Social Democratic Party) vying for power and struggling to work together effectively.

Finland's relationships with its neighbors were strained. In 1932, the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between both countries, and it was reaffirmed for ten years in 1934, but relations between the two countries were definitely not great, leaving Finland in a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability.

In terms of military, the Finnish Armed Forces were poorly equipped and trained, with an army that was ill-prepared to defend the country's borders. Despite this, Finland had a long history of military valor and determination, and its soldiers had proven to be fiercely loyal to their country on multiple occasions.

So after putting some context into the situation of Finland by 1936, let’s see how the country looks like in-game:


As you can see, Finland still starts the game with the Sisu National Spirit.
But what is Sisu? I can hear some of you asking, well let me try to explain very briefly:

Sisu is a Finnish concept that is used to express the national character of the Finns. It doesn’t really have a literal equivalent in English, but could be described as stoicism, tenacity, resilience, unrelenting willpower, hardiness and bravery (among several other qualities). It is used to explain the fierce determination and courage of the Finns in the face of extreme adversity.
Just a curiosity, after reading a bit more deep into Sisu, I found out that apparently one can also have bad sisu, meaning that the individual is a hostile and malignant person, and one can also have too much sisu, meaning foolhardiness and stubbornness.

But anyhow, now that we have a better idea of what Sisu is, some of you might have noticed that the Sisu National Spirit in this screenshot is significantly weaker than its old version before the DLC.
Well fear not, this version of Sisu is not the definitive one, there are five stages for the Sisu National Spirit, and they are tied to the Balance of Power mechanic, this is one of the worst versions of it (a bit more info about why soon), and at its best tier, the Sisu National Spirit is even slightly more powerful than its older version.

Finland’s country leader has also changed. This is because, after delving into Finnish politics in the 30s and 40s, I realized how “unstable” the position of Prime Minister was: from 1936 to 1945 Finland saw some 11 different Prime Ministers, with some of them leaving their post to become President of the Republic while others seemed to be fairly irrelevant and last in their position for a very short time. In comparison, Finland had “only” 5 Presidents of the Republic in the same time period, including some of the most iconic and relevant political figures (like Mannerheim or Ryti) that had a huge impact on Finland's politics and fate.
So, I made up my mind and decided to represent these Presidents of Finland as the available country leaders in-game.
Worth noting that, even though Finland was historically really, really close to Germany in terms of relations and fascism was big in the country, Finland was considered by most a co-belligerent country to Germany, instead of an actual German ally and member of the Axis. In order to represent this in-game, and prevent certain issues such as having the AI naturally join the Axis, turn Fascist, and also being able to have a separate peace, in the game Finland’s historical path is represented by the Non-Aligned ideology.

Let’s take a look at the first one and see how these country leaders are also tied to the Finnish Balance of Power:


A skilled precision shooter, member of the Fascist Militia Suojeluskunta and staunch anti-communist, Pehr Evind Svinhufvud did not enjoy a huge popularity by 1936, so in the 1937 elections a coalition of centrists (Agrarian and Progressive) and social democrats voted for Kyösti Kallio to ensure that Svinhufvud would not be re-elected.

Among Svinhufvud’s traits, you can see this slightly weird “Personal Agenda” trait. All Finnish leaders have a Personal Agenda trait, although what this agenda is differs from leader to leader. As you might have guessed, this is directly tied to the Finnish Balance of Power, which is called “Public Trust”:


The Public Trust balance of power represents the trust of the people in their president, and how this affects the Finns and their means to overcome harsh times. It ties together the balance of power with the “Finnish spirit” (Sisu) and the Finnish leadership (country leader).

As mentioned before, Svinhufvud didn’t enjoy that much popularity by 1936, so the Balance of Power starts fairly low in the Low Public Trust side.
Low Public Trust will grant small Stability, War Support and Political Power Gain penalties.
High Public Trust, on the other hand grants Stability, War Support and Recruitable Population bonuses.

Besides this, there are 5 ranges in the Balance of Power, and each of them will provide a version of the Sisu National Spirit, so the higher the Public Trust on your leader, the more powerful Sisu you will get (note that, at its worst, the Sisu National Spirit doesn’t give you any penalties, it just become very weak).

When any of the items in the country leader’s Personal Agenda is fulfilled, the Balance of Power will move towards the appropriate side on a weekly basis. In the case of Svinhufvud, eliminating all communist and democratic support will push the Balance of Power towards High Trust over time, while losing control of a core state will do the opposite.

Last but not least, there are some decisions (and focuses) that will help you push the Balance of Power to either side. Some of them will even allow you to replace your leader, like Motion of No Confidence (which costs significantly less the lower the Public Trust is, so good in combination with Organize the Opposition, which will decrease Public Trust). As you might have guessed already, the decision to Form a Military Government, available when at war with a major country, is the way to put Mannerheim in charge of the country.




You will be able to change your Non-Aligned leader not only via Balance of Power decisions, but also via certain events. Svinhufvud’s term as President will end in 1937 and you will get an event in which you can decide if you want to re-elect him or not, Kallio will die at some point around late 1940, and if Mannerheim was appointed as President during war, there will be an event allowing him to resign in favor of Paasikivi, for free. You can still keep Mannerheim if you want and make him resign later on, at a cost, but as you will notice when you look at his Personal Agenda, that might not be a great idea. Here you have the different Non-Aligned leaders available to Finland:





And since we are already talking about Finnish characters, let’s jump into Finnish advisors, starting with a list of political advisors, most of which need to be unlocked in the Focus Tree. All the political advisors potentially available to a Non-Aligned Finland are shown with colored portraits below:



There are many more advisors but we’ll see them next time since they are exclusive to the alt-history branches.

When it comes to military advisors, as you can see below there are some new additions and many new portraits!



When it comes to Unit Leaders, Finland now starts the game with a fair amount of Generals to choose from. As you will see, most of them have a lot of terrain-related traits, and in general a rather high value on their defense skill, this is to represent the adaptability and competency of the Finnish army during the wars, especially utilizing terrain and weather conditions in their favor against drastically larger and better-equipped enemy forces (especially during the defensive Winter War).



The new Veteran Jaeger trait is used to represent officers who, during World War I, volunteered to train in Germany as Jaegers during the Great War and the civil war in Finland (this was one of many means employed by Germany to weaken Russia during the Great War).
Jaegers were highly trained, among other skills, in guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations behind enemy lines, and as you can see, in-game the trait provides huge bonuses towards gaining certain traits, including terrain ones, which will help your generals getting the key trait “Adaptable”, which can in turn really make the difference when defending against a much bigger enemy!

Does this still feel like not enough Finnish generals for you? Got you covered, throughout the focus tree you will be able to unlock many more generals:


And even though Finland was nothing close to the mightiest naval power even in the Baltic, Finland now starts with Ragnar Hakola as Admiral and can unlock Svante Sundman as an additional admiral early in the Naval branch, in case you want to go for some sort of naval run with Finland (hey, who am I to judge?).


Regarding Industrial Designers, Finland has now 5 of them, including a new Mining Company that will help with the lack resources:



Now let’s take a quick look at the Finnish Military Industrial Organizations and how Finland interacts with the MIO feature.
To keep things as short as possible, I won’t be going into any details about what an MIO is, (for more information about the feature you can check the MIO Dev corner here
We will take a look at how MIOs look like in-game, so please keep in mind that this is still very much WIP (especially UI) and various things will definitely change before release.
Here you have the list of Finnish MIOs, featuring more generalist MIOs for ships, aircraft and tanks (the tank one is actually not historical, but still a possibility if you want to focus on tank development as Finland), and dedicated infantry equipment, guns and motorized MIOs:


All of these MIOs contain several unique traits, some specific to the MIO itself, some specific to Finnish MIOs, most of which will be unlocked by different focuses in the focus tree (will go into some examples later):



MAP CHANGES (States, VPs & railways & Supply hubs, Infra, Åland)
And before getting into the Focus Tree, I need to show you guys some map changes in Finland:


Here you can see that there are several new states, closer to the regional administration during the 30s/40s (which, by the way, changed significantly in some areas in a matter of a few years. Maybe you also noticed that Åland is now a demilitarized state at game start.

A significant number of victory points have been added (most of which are low value), and some VPs, railways and supply hubs have been repositioned to more accurately represent their real location.


There has been some resource adjustment and, most importantly, infrastructure has been drastically reduced in most states, to better represent the real situation of roads and communications in most Finnish regions in the 1930s. Don’t worry too much about the infrastructure, since Finland has the means to improve that infrastructure and to deal with low supply areas and winter attrition, so these changes will potentially cause more harm to any enemy forces attempting to invade Finland from the East/North, getting away from their own supply lines.


And finally it is time to take a look at Finland’s Focus Tree. Quite modest in size, but hopefully with a good amount of flavor and interesting gameplay mechanics, something a player can enjoy while focusing on the actually important stuff: surviving the war against all odds!


First of all let me tell you that, as some of you might have hoped for, there is a significant amount of short focuses all over the Finnish tree, which will hopefully make it feel more dynamic and engaging.


Check out the rest of this DD on the Forum!

Today marks the 7th Anniversary of Hearts of Iron 4! It has been a blast to share the game with you all these years, and what better way than to make a video including your moments~

We've all had our hard fought wars, our toughest battles, that one sneaky encirclement to win a war, but we want to hear from all of YOU!

What are your favourite moments and memories of HOI4? Make sure to fill out the form below with your answers, screenshots and videos, and we'll make a compilation video celebrating your moments :)


Share your moments here https://pdxint.at/43EV3l3

We're intercepting a coded message from our Office of YouTube Intelligence. We need your help to decode it!

Head on over to YouTube to help us decode the message

Greetings all!

Today we’ll be taking a dive into one of the fundamental building blocks of HOI4: division design, and some changes we’re making to it. This dev corner might be a little less grand than previous dev corners, but division design remains extremely important to the HOI experience, and is a part of the game that’s remained more or less untouched since release.

Those of you with exceedingly long memories may remember in my early roadmap for Hearts of Iron that I mentioned a desire to have doctrines better affect how the player is incentivized to design their divisions. The first step of making this possible is by adding another dimension of choice to support companies.



Here’s a look at one of Germany’s starting templates. Ordinarily, engineers would grant a bonus of 5 entrenchment at their most basic level: here, we’re getting 2 (Ed: 2.25 actually… we’ll fix that in post).


And here, in a little more detail - is the breakdown of why. Here, Engineers no longer begin by applying a flat bonus of 5 entrenchment - instead, their initial stats will grant a bonus of 0.25 entrenchment per Leg Infantry battalion in their division.


As you can see, this bonus is not applied to the cavalry battalions I have so wisely placed in my infantry division. We’ll go into the rationale behind this specific change later, but suffice it to say the following:

Support companies can now confer multiplicative or additive bonuses to line battalions of specific categories within their own division.

While it may seem like a small change, this allows us to better represent the effects of certain doctrinal advancements or technologies, and adds a completely new dimension to consider when choosing support companies.


As you can see above, Engineers will be changing a bit. They’ll retain the flat entrenchment they gain from tech, but by moving entrenchment more towards a per-battalion balancing value, we’re able to flatten the efficacy of entrenchment and devalue it slightly for org-wall playstyles. Entrenchment itself is a multiplicative stat of course, so we take care to ensure that the upper end does not move too far ahead of what was previously achievable.

The neglected child of the support company family is finally getting some new tools. Recon has always been an underperforming support company, and these changes aim to augment the value of tactical reconnaissance on the battlefield. By default, mounted recon, motorized recon, and armored car recon companies will now confer a [10%] soft attack bonus to all battalions matching the Artillery category.

Note: we’re making the choice to stress the benefits of recon on artillery rather than general infantry here for game balance reasons.

Light Tank recon will confer a [10%] Hard Attack bonus to all Armored battalions.

Recon also gets some other new toys, some of which we’ll cover in doctrines, and others in a later diary on some New Cool Stuff (™).

A slightly left-field modifier here, Field Hospitals now increase the strength (HP) of all infantry battalions within their division by [10%]. This results in proportionally less manpower (& equipment) loss per damage received.

These now increase the breakthrough of all infantry battalions by [5%].

A support company with low usage outside of specific garrison templates, we wanted to give these slightly more utility within line divisions. These will now increase the base org recovery rate of all infantry battalions by 20%.


We’re still working on exactly how these will look, but here’s a sample of what we have planned:


Dispersed Support: Signal companies grant 10% defense to all Artillery battalions in division


Airland Battle: Standard recon grants 10% air attack to anti-air battalions in division


Mechanized Wave: Armored Car recon grants 1 max organization to all Leg Infantry battalions in division.


Central Planning: Logistics Company adds 5% defense to all infantry battalions in division

As mentioned above we have more planned for these, but this should serve as an indicative sample of what is coming. These changes are intended to add an extra dimension to consider when building division templates, accentuating the value of interdisciplinary coordination. They also give us an opportunity to equalize the value of some underperforming support companies in a slightly more realistic way than flat stats.

Of course, the production value of your bonus-granting support companies will be weighted more favorably towards larger divisions - this is something we’re keeping an eye on, but broadly speaking we’re happy with this direction.

As well as being a significant balance change (and modding tool) these changes were necessary for a new small feature we’ll show off in a future diary. I’ll leave you guessing until then ;)

Speaking of dev diaries, we will call you to arms next week for something special… stay tuned, and save the date!

/Arheo

We've just gotten some fresh Intel on Turbo Larps' NEW event.... the Grandest Lan - HOI4!

This year will see HOI & EU at the awesome Czocha Castle in Poland, which boasts stunning views and is rich in history!

Sign ups begin on June 15th, so make sure not to miss it.

Check out the Trailer HERE

Don't miss our new General LoFi video over on the HOI YouTube Channel! After all, even the most battle-hardened General needs to take it easy every now and then~

Plus these tracks are bound to help give you a tactical advantage on the battlefield 😉

How many references can you find?

Make sure to check out The Video

Generals!

This is a minor hotfix patch regarding a bug we found with BBA's Medal system.

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# Bugfix
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- Available medal icon no longer shows up if BBA is not owned