Dev Corner | Faction Dynamics Part 2

[SeekTruthFromFx]

very minor gripe, but can the 'Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere' be renamed to just 'Co-Prosperity Sphere', so when it expands outside of East Asia it doesn't seem a bit weird?

Faction Dynamics Part 1 explained that there could be rules to impose geographical limits on faction membership. This faction seems like a prime case for that; it shouldn't expand outside what we now call East and South Asia (but an alt-history where East Asia is considered as extending into India and Siberia is very plausible, as per 1984's Eastasia).

Looks cool. I think Japan's goal should have something about anti-colonialism or support anti-colonial movements outside of their faction, considering that was a stated goal for them later on when they began to fight the Allies.

You'd need to be careful to distinguish between the goals Japan claimed in their propaganda and their actual goals. They were against Western colonialism, but they definitely intended to put themselves at the centre of a colonial system. Fortunately, the example Goals are seem to be hard power, geostrategic goals. It wouldn't be unreasonable to have a Goal requiring the Sphere to include a certain number of Imperial Subjects/Associates/Protectorates, provided that the Japanese NF tree was revised so that the AI released them at a plausible, sensible point.

And maybe a Churchill goal, too

Hmm. Not entirely convinced by this. Churchill was a hate figure in Nazi propaganda long before the War, but they originally hoped that Britain would stay neutral, or even be their 'Germanic' ally against Communism and America. There are alt-history paths where Churchill never takes power. More importantly, I'm not sure how you'd actually achieve this. AFAIK the game doesn't have assassinations of Characters yet. If the Goal is really the conquest of Great Britain, then won't linking it to Churchill just confuse new players?

Are you going to add Faction rules, for example:

Yes, they said that they want to do this in Faction Dynamics Part 1, including some of the cases you raise.

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).

These are UX problems. Wouldn't it better to solve them by Shift+right-clicking on the Join Request/Access icon to permanently dismiss, rather than a Faction Rule?

 

[ClunkedIt]

Will be interesting to see how faction goals react to the mess of ahistorical focuses that the AI may take.

Don't really envy the Devs trying to balance this system with an Allies faction led by Monarchist Britain facing off against a Democratic German Axis etc

Even just Greater Co-Prosperity Japan taking the Northern expansion route against USSR and not fulfilling any Chinese goals.

 

[TechGlitchReporter]

Will this be exclusive to the new DLC, or in the free update?

 

[Tyber91]

What about a regional or continental unification system within factions?
A unification goal would be proposed, and with enough influence, political power, and controlled territory, a unification event could be launched to create a new nation by annexing the required territories without having to expel countries and then conquer them and obtain their territory

 

[Wrongwraith]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to answer comments and questions today, as I haven't been available in the afternoon.

However, that does not mean I won't read through them once I am back to work. From what I have seen so far there are several good thoughts and comments, so do keep them coming.

 

[Andreu]

Faction Dynamics Part 1 explained that there could be rules to impose geographical limits on faction membership. This faction seems like a prime case for that; it shouldn't expand outside what we now call East and South Asia (but an alt-history where East Asia is considered as extending into India and Siberia is very plausible, as per 1984's Eastasia).

You'd need to be careful to distinguish between the goals Japan claimed in their propaganda and their actual goals. They were against Western colonialism, but they definitely intended to put themselves at the centre of a colonial system. Fortunately, the example Goals are seem to be hard power, geostrategic goals. It wouldn't be unreasonable to have a Goal requiring the Sphere to include a certain number of Imperial Subjects/Associates/Protectorates, provided that the Japanese NF tree was revised so that the AI released them at a plausible, sensible point.

Hmm. Not entirely convinced by this. Churchill was a hate figure in Nazi propaganda long before the War, but they originally hoped that Britain would stay neutral, or even be their 'Germanic' ally against Communism and America. There are alt-history paths where Churchill never takes power. More importantly, I'm not sure how you'd actually achieve this. AFAIK the game doesn't have assassinations of Characters yet. If the Goal is really the conquest of Great Britain, then won't linking it to Churchill just confuse new players?

Yes, they said that they want to do this in Faction Dynamics Part 1, including some of the cases you raise.

These are UX problems. Wouldn't it better to solve them by Shift+right-clicking on the Join Request/Access icon to permanently dismiss, rather than a Faction Rule?

I meant that fighting against communism was also a goal of Churchill

 

[LS512]

I suggest that it should be possible for a faction to not have any ideological restrictions. This would make it easier for factions like the Stresa Front where it is possible through focuses for a situation to exist where you can have a Democratic Britain, Allies-aligned Communist France, and Fascist Italy being in the same faction against Germany.

I am also wondering how this change in the faction system will impact current focus trees and faction related focuses. Seems to me that there would need to be an assessment of all the current focus trees for all tags and harmonise them with the new dynamic faction system. Maybe a solution could be to remove all faction focuses for all tags so that they all rely completely on the new system, or maybe keep the focuses but allow for flexibility somehow.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Will this be exclusive to the new DLC, or in the free update?

It seems to me that everything in this Dev Diary would be ideal for DLC. It's just an extra layer on top of the existing game. The only place it interacts in detail would be the NF trees, where many NFs would need revision to create historical factions, add or move Goals, etc.

 

[JAYP303]

Please add more Chinese generals. 14 million troops fought for 7 years and there were only 7 generals and 5 field marshals??? How come Chile has 32 generals and Brazil has 18, even Ethiopia and Sweden has got more.

 

[styroler]

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.

I agree with this. The first thing I thought when I saw this feature proposed is that it should be used not just to give some extra attack bonuses to a factions armies but actually somewhat direct the other nations in the war. Imagine if for example the faction leader could draw some sort of overall grand plan for the faction members to follow. Not so much assigning every front line and division themselves, but just directing all of the faction members to focus on preparing a naval invasion against a specific coast, or build up forces on a specific front line, or garrison a large region. Allow players at least to give the ai some general directives that the AI knows roughly what “the plan” is and tries to follow it. The way I see this happening is allow the faction leader or nation with the supreme commander to draw supper orders (like a supper front line, supper naval invasion order, super garrison order etc.) which don’t assign specific armies but instead assign specific faction members (or the whole faction by default). Essentially allow the player and faction leader to shape AI strategies, not necessarily telling them what to do but at least coordinating so they’re all perusing the same strategy.

This would also benefit coordination efforts so that certain types of big operations can actually be coordinated faction wide. Instead of the allies planning like 50 D-days and launching at different times whenever they’re ready, they all prepare their Naval invasions in the same area and wait for the Faction Leader to press the big “launch” button so they all start attacking at once. Similarly, you could coordinate faction Navies and Airforces so instead of factions all fighting in different locations or perusing different strategies, all of them coordinate on the same operations like Secure Naval Dominance or Air Supremacy in a specific air/naval zone or strategic bomb a region.

I think this would benefit the AI and the player. When the player is the faction leader, they would have fine control of the activities of their faction members so they’re not constantly hampered by their allies. When the ai does it, it would coordinate faction wide strategies, so instead of swing multiple small invasions you experience one massive attack launched by the whole faction at once. I think the game would really change in a fundamental but good way if such a system was implemented.

 

[styroler]

Can some sort of connection between faction goals and peace conferences be implemented? One problem with peace conferences right now is that while a lot of improvement has been made with a lot of the peace conference system, nations are functionally in a free for-all-system when they enter the peace conference, grabbing random bits of territory for no reason just for the sake of spending points. This causes border gore and in some cases leads to conferences ending with the enemy nation continuing to exist in some reduced form because the nations focused on fighting over random bits of Africa.

If factions had clear goals going into conferences (coordinated by the faction leader), then you can create a system where faction members work together in conferences and conferences with multiple factions are more competitive against each other due to conflicting goals. So for example, if the Allies have a goal to release independent democracies, then all of their faction members will focus their points on releasing nations as democracies (after first seizing core and claimed territories). If the axis countries seek to conquer Europe, they will focus to either divide or annex all of Europe between themselves (but not necessarily other regions). Faction coordination within peace conferences might be the solution to finally make peace conferences work correctly and make them more appreciated by players who want realistic post war settlements, not a bunch of random border gore everywhere.

 

[twinxor]

If Korea is going to be added as a Japanese puppet, please do it in a more interesting way than the GoE addition of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria which are just extra tags adding almost nothing to the game.

 

[Antor Seax]

Did you not realise from GoE that people don't want more tags? I would prefer it if we lost tags next update, to be honest.

 

[Slike Spitfire]

How moddable will this be and what possibilities will be available for generic faction?

 

[Andreu]

Did you not realise from GoE that people don't want more tags? I would prefer it if we lost tags next update, to be honest.

Why don't we focus on talking about the Dev Corner?

We're assuming they'll release Korea without any content. We'll see when the corresponding Dev Diaries DLC arrives.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

This is great but nothing will ever beat the ideology T R I A N G L E

 

[GothiousRex]

Will there be a faction for Italy and Austria if Italy stands up for Austria against Germany?

If so, what would its manifest be?

 

[VeeBear]

In general I like the historical Emerson, but I’m afraid the game gets more scripted / less sandboxy. It’s my biggest pain with HoI4 that Alt-history gets wild and typically boring, while historical is great but repetitive

alt history has failed in my campaign because
1: the AI implodes into stupid civil was and never snowballes again (this is less the case lately)
2: factions go crazy and the game becomes a stalemate against a world power faction

So I’m very happy factions gets a rework, but the faction goals needs some flexibility in its system and you need to be able to add more goals as the game continues. Then I think non-history would finally be as good as historical

 

[Vapiritapiri]

It's nice but will you fix battleplans being borked and artillery being 3 width?

 

[bl00dw01f]

As someone who enjoys playing alt-history a lot and often end up leading my own custom faction, I was wondering how these faction types are gonna be applied to those? Will we get generic ideology based factions for every other nation, or will we get some sort of customization? Especially when you take into account things like faction goals?