Dev Corner | Faction Dynamics Part 2

[De Soble]

This looks like it will be a nice injection of historical flavor to the faction system.

Not sure if this was intentional. but wasn't "Guardians of Peace" the name for the group of North Korean hackers that attacked Sony Pictures after James Franco's movie "The Interview"?

There is a Steam account registered to North Korea. Perhaps Mr. Kim is a fan of Hearts of Iron?

 

[Magaan_625]

Revork or at least tweak Pernament Revolution for Trotsky, so it's something more than just getting war goals. This could do wonders coupled with new faction mechanics.

 

[styroler]

Hi. One question I have is will any of the independent formable factions from focuses have any specific faction goals? For example will the independent communist factions from the UK, Spain, Mexico etc. have the goal of defeating the Soviet Union and subjugating Stalinist countries? Will the Latin American alliances have the goals to unify their respective continents and hemispheres? The Balkan Factions have some sort of defensive oriented goals?

The one problem with all of these have been that the formable factions have always felt bland and generic. Some of these clearly have narrative potential and could impact the world in a game where they form, but the mechanics behind them have usually resulted in them instead being un utilized and just a vehicle for their faction leader to do a World Conquest. I love this direction but I do hope that these efforts reach minors too and not just major nations who were already mechanically designed to achieve these goals anyway.

Also, will it be possible for generic created factions to get generic goals somehow. I know that this would be difficult since they’re meant to be dynamic, but I would be cool if these factions could kind of set their own goals like for example a faction created by a bunch of minors in a defensive war creating a faction oriented around staying independent.

 

[Roblogez]

Are there still going to be generic factions that you create with the "Create Faction" screen and if so will you get to pick your own goals? And will the other focus tree factions like the Baltic Entente and the Czech Entente/Little Entente have their own goals?

 

[j0nathan800]

I like how there is now a reason besides control of the Suez to fight in North Africa now.

I'm still interested in the Supreme Commander aspect and from what the GUI says, it might be a stat boost for all armies in the faction which I think is alright. Will general traits also apply to all armies and if so, would it be at full or partial strength?

 

[Rachidelson]

Political oriented goals like stopping fascism as the Allies could give them an actual incentive to go after countries with a certain % of fascist support, something that is sorely lacking in game while it was a big part of the war irl. Also, the Axis maybe should get more ways of boosting fascism in neutral nations that they want on their side. These faction mechanics in overall could be a way of diminishing the over reliance on focus trees for everything.

 

[Louco doido]

I hope this remake at least makes Denmark stop joining the Chinese United Front.

 

[zbrojaF]

Ok this is epic. keep working guys

 

[Zenbeast]

Diplomacy has been in need of a face lift for a while, I'm glad it's getting some love.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

will conovy raiding finally count more? i tried to play as a minor nation and raid convoys as it to help my allies, i sank thousands of ships (and technically even more men with it but the game ignores that) but it didnt gave me any war participation

You might want to check my brief opinion exchange with the game director on that about here.

 

[Treviranus]

I'm going to miss the days of Vichy France joining the Co-Prosperity Sphere, or a suicidal Estonia joining a Benelux-Faction, but this all looks really great.

 

[WILF_UK]

Are you going to add Faction rules, for example:

Only Faction leader can invite/approve new countries to join the faction, removing the current mechanic where certain countries join your faction even if you don't want them to. This tends to apply more to the Allies but can also happen when the Allies attack another country (e.g. Iran). Similarly with governments in exile, I should not have them imposed on me, I should be able to choose if I want to host them.

Only Faction leader can request a member to join the war, removing the scenario where you don't want to call your puppets into a war but one of your other members then calls them in anyway. This might also hopefully remove the Allies spam of countries calling you to arms when you don't want to join their war (e.g. USA not joining allies but when allies and USA both at war with Japan, I get so much spam requests to join the war, grant military access, etc.).

Have a faction request for military access, port access, etc. to also reduce spam from countries requesting access (particularly when I decline as USA and face spam from so many allied nations).

Appreciate some of the above are not Historical but players should be free to play the game the way they want, at least to a certain degree short of resorting to console commands and not forced down a truly historical route or a path selected by the devs (removing true choice).

Assuming faction goals/buffs are selectable rather than imposed, presumably there will be some in game currency or time based rule to acquire/assign these and prevent you just selecting every option, or some negative debuff if you fail to achieve a given goal within a specific time period.

For players not interested in the new faction mechanics, can this be set to some kind of auto rule so it works similar to the current process without player interaction needed? I love having new complex mechanics added and tend to micro manage things but not every player likes having more things to do/learn/worry about.

 

[Andreu]

How do the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Axis coexist? Is Japan first in one and then integrated into the other? Or can you be in several compatible factions at once?

Will Bukharin's Comintern be like Stalin's?

Are there alternative (or not so alternative) scenarios in which, for example, the Allies, to preserve their interests/goals, ally themselves with fascist countries to halt the spread of communism around the world?

 

[Colombiano1492]

If you missed the previous Dev Corner, check it out here.

Reinventing Faction Dynamics Part 2​

Generals!

Welcome to another Developer Corner. Let’s start with a reminder, or clarification, so you have a better idea of what kind of feedback we’re looking for.

Dev Diaries give you a clear preview of what’s coming very soon.

Dev Corners are our way of involving the community earlier in our design and development process so we have a chance to listen and tweak. This obviously means there is less detail to share, because we don’t (want to) have it all nailed down yet. It’s also possible that things we discuss here aren’t all meant for the next DLC.
Now that that’s all cleared up, settle in, read it all and give us your honest, and friendly, feedback.

Now on to @Wrongwraith :

The first dev corner about all things factions got a bit too long as I tended to talk about more things than I had originally intended to. But it felt that I had to try to cover a lot of things in order to explain what I was talking about. To compensate for that, this one will be a bit more focused.

I wanted to talk about the different factions - what makes them different? Basically giving a little bit of an insight into the working day of a game designer.

What we have tried to do is to decide on a theme for a faction; and design a Manifest, and select a set of Faction Rules that relate to that theme. We want to have Goals that are more or less strategic in nature. You should be encouraged to act; and to act in a way that makes sense according to the theme wherever that is possible.

Just to say it one more time: This is very much an iterative process. The final result, whenever this feature actually makes it into the game, might be totally different.

To explain what I mean I will give a few examples and show you a few more screenshots (sorry, but they still very much have placeholder UI elements - and not at all pretty).

Designing the Axis​

Let's start with the Axis…

Germany starts the game as the leader of the Axis; nothing new there.

Thinking about the Axis, and especially the two major powers there - Germany and Italy - it is all about conquest and expansion. Subsequently that quite naturally becomes the theme for this faction. How do we measure conquest then? In HOI terms it is probably the amount of controlled territory that is outside your core nation.

Some of the bonuses you get from high fulfillment of the Manifest then also relate back to the conquest of territory, like non-core manpower, and resistance to occupation.

View attachment 1328080
The Axis faction window - and no, it won't look like this when it is ready.​

The Axis goals then, are as follows:

• Secure the Resource Supply - Faction members control resources enough to ensure they can be at war with the world for some time.
• A European Bastion - Get European Continental countries to either join your faction or capitulate / become part of you.
• Secure North Africa - Control key areas in, and on the way to, North Africa to ensure the safety of the core Axis territory of continental Europe
• An Armored Fist - Deploy enough armored units so that you are ready to take on anyone who opposes your expansion plans.
• The North Atlantic - stop any enemies from gaining control of the North Atlantic in order to disrupt any attempts to block you off from world trade and to disable support for enemies in Europe.

The Axis countries weren’t very good at cooperating with each other, so it is for this reason that the faction starts without any of the more cooperative features unlocked.

What about Japan​

How does this then contrast with e.g. the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Here the theme is more centered around creating the prerequisites for expansion in Asia, ensuring that the Japanese industry has enough resources, and on creating puppets to establish control over the region. It is a very Japan-centered faction (at least if you play the historical version)

The manifest is about securing vital resources. The goals revolve around ensuring this is possible - and securing the necessary puppet countries.

Coastal security for example is about securing the sea zones around Japan and along the Chinese Coast, down to the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Secure the Oil Supply is a step on the way to fulfilling the manifest. Align China basically means creating Chinese puppets in China or conquering the country altogether. And so on.

View attachment 1328081
Faction Goal: Coastal Security through naval dominance


The Allies​

The Allies on the other hand have a slightly different set of goals:
They start with just a few, and then they can get a few more through focuses and/or events, but this is what it looks like relatively early on:

View attachment 1328082
Allied Goals​

• Arteries of trade Focusing on asserting dominance over critical sea zones around the world
• Guardians of peace - try to ensure world peace
• Atomic Race - ensure that no one else gets an atomic bomb before we do
• Imperial Glory - Keep key parts of the colonial Empires under control even in times of war.

Stalin vs. Trotsky​

We are looking at different themes for a Stalin-lead, Communist block versus one led by e.g. Trotsky. Where the Comintern under Stalin’s lead would be more focused on border security for the Soviet Union and its allies and securing key strategic locations, the Trotskyist one should be more about spreading the revolution - supporting communism in other countries and/or forcibly converting them.

The Chinese United Front​

The theme for the Chinese United Front is resistance to occupation and unity. Thus the manifest is about territorial integrity - uniting and liberating China. The goals connect to this in various ways; like trying to control the coastline for as long as possible, organizing the resistance to occupation, but also things like building the industrial capacity to be able to stand up against the Japanese - or any other aggressor.

On Feedback & Dev Corners​

This would be all for this time. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think makes the historical factions different from each other. What other factions and goals would you like to see?

We hope you do like these glimpses into what we do. We at least appreciate the feedback we are getting, having gotten some really good feedback on factions, naval dominance, and coal/energy already.

Can we get Amin Al Husseini back as leader of Palestine after the last two updates fascist Palestine leader has become generic

 

[Coach Bud Kilmer]

Will be interesting to see how this interacts with ai_strategy.

If this system does anything I hope it helps the AI mass its forces at the critical fronts.

 

[Colombiano1492]

If you missed the previous Dev Corner, check it out here.

Reinventing Faction Dynamics Part 2​

Generals!

Welcome to another Developer Corner. Let’s start with a reminder, or clarification, so you have a better idea of what kind of feedback we’re looking for.

Dev Diaries give you a clear preview of what’s coming very soon.

Dev Corners are our way of involving the community earlier in our design and development process so we have a chance to listen and tweak. This obviously means there is less detail to share, because we don’t (want to) have it all nailed down yet. It’s also possible that things we discuss here aren’t all meant for the next DLC.
Now that that’s all cleared up, settle in, read it all and give us your honest, and friendly, feedback.

Now on to @Wrongwraith :

The first dev corner about all things factions got a bit too long as I tended to talk about more things than I had originally intended to. But it felt that I had to try to cover a lot of things in order to explain what I was talking about. To compensate for that, this one will be a bit more focused.

I wanted to talk about the different factions - what makes them different? Basically giving a little bit of an insight into the working day of a game designer.

What we have tried to do is to decide on a theme for a faction; and design a Manifest, and select a set of Faction Rules that relate to that theme. We want to have Goals that are more or less strategic in nature. You should be encouraged to act; and to act in a way that makes sense according to the theme wherever that is possible.

Just to say it one more time: This is very much an iterative process. The final result, whenever this feature actually makes it into the game, might be totally different.

To explain what I mean I will give a few examples and show you a few more screenshots (sorry, but they still very much have placeholder UI elements - and not at all pretty).

Designing the Axis​

Let's start with the Axis…

Germany starts the game as the leader of the Axis; nothing new there.

Thinking about the Axis, and especially the two major powers there - Germany and Italy - it is all about conquest and expansion. Subsequently that quite naturally becomes the theme for this faction. How do we measure conquest then? In HOI terms it is probably the amount of controlled territory that is outside your core nation.

Some of the bonuses you get from high fulfillment of the Manifest then also relate back to the conquest of territory, like non-core manpower, and resistance to occupation.

View attachment 1328080
The Axis faction window - and no, it won't look like this when it is ready.​

The Axis goals then, are as follows:

• Secure the Resource Supply - Faction members control resources enough to ensure they can be at war with the world for some time.
• A European Bastion - Get European Continental countries to either join your faction or capitulate / become part of you.
• Secure North Africa - Control key areas in, and on the way to, North Africa to ensure the safety of the core Axis territory of continental Europe
• An Armored Fist - Deploy enough armored units so that you are ready to take on anyone who opposes your expansion plans.
• The North Atlantic - stop any enemies from gaining control of the North Atlantic in order to disrupt any attempts to block you off from world trade and to disable support for enemies in Europe.

The Axis countries weren’t very good at cooperating with each other, so it is for this reason that the faction starts without any of the more cooperative features unlocked.

What about Japan​

How does this then contrast with e.g. the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Here the theme is more centered around creating the prerequisites for expansion in Asia, ensuring that the Japanese industry has enough resources, and on creating puppets to establish control over the region. It is a very Japan-centered faction (at least if you play the historical version)

The manifest is about securing vital resources. The goals revolve around ensuring this is possible - and securing the necessary puppet countries.

Coastal security for example is about securing the sea zones around Japan and along the Chinese Coast, down to the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Secure the Oil Supply is a step on the way to fulfilling the manifest. Align China basically means creating Chinese puppets in China or conquering the country altogether. And so on.

View attachment 1328081
Faction Goal: Coastal Security through naval dominance


The Allies​

The Allies on the other hand have a slightly different set of goals:
They start with just a few, and then they can get a few more through focuses and/or events, but this is what it looks like relatively early on:

View attachment 1328082
Allied Goals​

• Arteries of trade Focusing on asserting dominance over critical sea zones around the world
• Guardians of peace - try to ensure world peace
• Atomic Race - ensure that no one else gets an atomic bomb before we do
• Imperial Glory - Keep key parts of the colonial Empires under control even in times of war.

Stalin vs. Trotsky​

We are looking at different themes for a Stalin-lead, Communist block versus one led by e.g. Trotsky. Where the Comintern under Stalin’s lead would be more focused on border security for the Soviet Union and its allies and securing key strategic locations, the Trotskyist one should be more about spreading the revolution - supporting communism in other countries and/or forcibly converting them.

The Chinese United Front​

The theme for the Chinese United Front is resistance to occupation and unity. Thus the manifest is about territorial integrity - uniting and liberating China. The goals connect to this in various ways; like trying to control the coastline for as long as possible, organizing the resistance to occupation, but also things like building the industrial capacity to be able to stand up against the Japanese - or any other aggressor.

On Feedback & Dev Corners​

This would be all for this time. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think makes the historical factions different from each other. What other factions and goals would you like to see?

We hope you do like these glimpses into what we do. We at least appreciate the feedback we are getting, having gotten some really good feedback on factions, naval dominance, and coal/energy already.

Is it possible to rename a current faction, such as if you are the axis and want to rename it to “Neuordnung“ which was a historical name for the German faction… or to rename the Italian faction for instance to “fascist international” which was a proposed name for an Italian alliance

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

There are some interesting ideas in this post and I will reply later with detailed comments on them.

But the point of these Dev Corners is to give feedback at an early stage, before the path of updates and DLC is set is stone. And my biggest piece of feedback is that neither Dev Corner on Faction Dynamics has addressed the biggest issue with it, one which regularly has me on the edge of ragequitting. For me, the elephant in the room is the interaction between factions and frontlines (the Battleplanner), or rather the lack of it. So this is really feedback for Arheo. (But @Wrongwraith please don't switch off when I mention the AI. You might think "that's a Programmer problem, and I am a Content Designer", but I will come back to you and a specific point from this post.)

The Faction Frontlines problem
At the moment, every AI member of a faction seems to consider itself responsible for every frontline the faction has. In 1940, the Allied side of the Western Front is a confused mishmash of Belgian, British, Dutch, and French units. You can somewhat defend that as historical. But what's neither historical nor optimal is the France or The Netherlands pulling their best units out of that front to help out somewhere in Africa. When the Allies launch D-Day, it's fun to see American, British and Free French units pour across the Channel or North Sea together. But because each faction member AI is making entirely independent decisions, they can and often are clustered in one part of the line while another is weakly defended. This is especially bad in situations of low supply; sometimes none of the invading AIs seem to build up ports (is this because they only consider their own forces?). It's also very common to see frontlines in stalemate, because each side has ~three faction members who are each maxing out the supply, resulting in units that can't win battles or move fast enough to occupy territory after they win. This is suboptimal when those ~three faction members are AIs; it's infuriating when the human player is one of them and your plans are being blocked by your own allies. Garrison orders are also affected. Just yesterday I saw a small Pacific island that was garrisoned by both British and US AI armies ( including a precious motorized division!). Because faction members are constantly shuffling units between an unnecessarily large number of frontlines, far too many divisions are at sea where they can be sunk. I thinkthe dev team have tried to mitigate this by using the area_priority modifier in the AI_strategy files, but while I'm grateful for the work put in on this, it's a mitigation not a solution.

Could Expeditionary Forces be used?
If PDX are looking at faction dynamics, by far my top priority would be a feature that allows one faction member to take charge of each front. There are different ways to do this, and some possible solutions are already partially implemented. The Border Avoidance Mod allows human players to use the front_unit_request modifiers to exclude faction members from certain states or countries, which also mitigates the problem but requires constant human intervention. But another possible solution has been dormant in the game since Man the Guns: human Faction Leaders can request Expeditionary Forces from other faction members. So if I am Britain fighting in the Balkans, I can incorporate Canadian and Greek units into my frontlines, where the Battleplanner can assign them appropriately and I can stop them getting in the way of any manual orders. But it's only a temporary fix, because the Canadian and Greek AIs will promptly try to refill their own Balkan frontlines. And AI Faction Leaders rarely, if ever, request Expeditionary Forces. If AI Faction Leaders used this feature (or something similar) so that only a single AI was operating on each frontline, you'd still see a historical mishmash of units from different tags, but I think there'd be an immediate improvement in AI performance (from better allocation of units on that frontline, and fewer units transferring back and forth). And I also think in the long run it would improve AI performance even more, because it would greatly reduce the complexity of the problem that PDX's Programmers are facing when they try to make incremental improvements to the Battleplanner (it changes an NvN problem into a 1v1 problem).

However, any solution to this problem requires a decision about which Faction Member should take charge of each frontline. For all-AI factions, it could just be the Faction Leader. But obviously that's unacceptable for factions with human players, who want to control our own units. As in real life, the allocation needs to reflect historical and political circumstances. And again, HoI4 already has a helpful tool baked in with National Focus trees. If Germany takes the War with the USSR focus, then it's launching a historical Barbarossa, so it would make sense for the German AI to controlling AI divisions on the Eastern Front. The Faction Goals proposed today also fit into this, perhaps by using NFs to allocate Goals to particular faction members (so the Italian AI takes responsibility for North Africa's frontlines and the Secure North Africa Goal). So this, Wrongwraith, would be where you and the other Content Designers, could come in. Making a pass over all National Focuses to allocate frontlines would be your area, not the Programmers. It would be a huge job, but it would be a huge contribution to the AI. And I think it would be the kind of feature that would sell DLC.

Supreme Commander?
I am far from the first person here to point out this problem and suggest a solution along these lines. This kind of solution is often described as 'having a Supreme Commander', similar to how the Allies had Supreme Commanders for various fronts. And that brings us back to today's post, where the UI shows a Supreme Commander for each Faction. Given that the Commander Skills are shown in the UI, this appears likely to just be some way to boost those attributes. This might be a good idea in itself, but I don't think it's what I've seen discussed in most of the threads here pleading for a Supreme Commander. If we get a 'Supreme Commander' feature that does not address the problem with faction frontlines, I'll be very disappointed, and I think other players will be too.

 

[DarthZandrus]

One of the Axis's goals should be “Against Communism”

It should also be "Against the West"/"Against Democracy"

 

[VeeBear]

Maybe this is off topic, but I would love to have a built in SWOT diagram that the AI uses

For example if Germany is having a strength with Uboats and Convoy raiding then the UK needs to counter this weakness by protecting trade and hunting Uboats.

I believe a SWOT strength, weakness, opportunity, Threats would work sour great for Countries, but now I’m thinking this should be a faction feature?

In general I just want more dynamic gameplay it’s tiresome to make the same build over and over because the AI never understands which upgrades it needs to counter this. For example the Uboats never being contested

 

[rhuan]

I would like that some leaders were made the party leaders, and not just for specific countries, like i said in a suggestions post right here https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...peted-changes-ideology.1786033/#post-30484966