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Dev Diary - Recap Episode!

Hi everyone! Due to popular demand, today we are going to try to cover everything coming in Waking the Tiger and the 1.5 Cornflakes update. So if you kept up to date with diaries there will be a lot of stuff you do already know, but we also have updates on things that have changed since the diaries as well as things we simply haven't had time to talk about yet. So, grab a cup of tea and enjoy!

Chinese National Focus Trees
All Chinese factions with the exception of Mengkukuo have received new focus trees. While Nationalist China struggles to reform and fight the war against Japan, the Communists plot the great communist uprising that will sweep away Chiang Kai-Shek. The Warlords can take over China through political means or through new border wars, while just beyond the border, Emperor Puyi must choose whether to be loyal to his Japanese masters or try and reclaim his throne by himself.
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The major Chinese factions (Nationalists, Communists, and Manchukuo) are also able to approach outside factions for support in improving technology and providing support. The new focus trees also make heavy use of the decision system, with many country-specific decisions from reforming the army to infiltrating enemy territory in preparation of an uprising.

For more information, see the following Dev Diaries:
Manchukou
Nationalist China
Warlords
Communist China

Chain of Command
For Cornflakes things have changed since the last release and field marshals are now able to leading an Army Group, which is a certain number of Armies (what we had before) led by Generals. There are then places in theaters as before. Theaters are like before just a geographical organizational tool for the player and don't have a commander or the like to keep them as flexible as possible.
While the Generals still come with a soft cap for how many divisions they can efficiently command, the field marshals will now have a number of armies they can efficiently command. Bonuses from leaders trickle downwards, so you will want good people both as field marshals and generals.
Read more about chain of command in the diary here.

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Traits and Command Power Abilities
With Cornflakes we are taking a big step forward on fleshing out the Generals of the game. We are adding several new personality traits to better model them. We are splitting up the single digit skill level into 4 new skills: Attack, Defense, Planning and Logistics. This means that we can model a historic generals strength a lot better. For people with the expansion you will get a whole new screen for your commanders where you will be able to give them new assignable traits. These often give you access to Command Power Abilities. These are special abilities you can fire off from your commanders and they use a new resource called Command Power (it has more uses than this also). Read more details here.

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New Japanese Focus Tree
The Japanese Focus tree has been completely reworked to bring it up to the standards of more modern focus trees. Four main story branches have been added: Two historical ones that deal with the Japanese strategic dilemma of striking north against the Soviet Union or south against the Western Allies, and two dealing with alternate history scenarios for communist and democratic Japan.

For more information, see the relevant dev diary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi-4-dev-diary-japan-rework.1063457/

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Since releasing that dev diary, the Japanese surrender mechanic has been reworked somewhat. When surrendering to China, Japan will now sign a scripted peace that transfers all states on the mainland to their respective controllers in return for a peace.

Emperor Hirohito now has the trait “Imperial Sanction”, which raises the required world tension limit to create wargoal on China to 75%. This is to simulate his historic scepticism of foreign adventures and the low perceived threat coming from the divided and weakened China. The wargoal gained through the focus to stage the Marco Polo Bridge incident is unaffected by this.
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Japan can unlock bicycle cavalry!

Updated German Focus Tree
Germany has now received improvements and expansions to its focus tree, including new alternate history options. It is now possible to oppose Hitler and either revive the Kaiserreich or become a democracy. In the former case you can seek to rebuild Germany’s colonial empire, taking on France and Britain with the possible help of Italy and Austria-Hungary, or you can ally Britain and take on the Comintern. In the latter case, you can unite Europe in your alliance, and take the fight to the Soviet Union and any other places Communism may crop up on the continent.

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Other adjustments to the focus tree have also been made, including a revamp of the industrial tree, and additions to the naval tree, giving many more factories (including a focus switching a number of military factories into naval dockyards - the number going up the more coastline you have). All of this has been described in The New Germany diary. Since then, some new additions/changes have been made, however. The Naval Bomber focus has been improved slightly (2 research bonuses, up from 1), a new Long-Range Escorts focus has been added giving 2x Heavy Fighter research bonus, and the Fascist and Kaiserreich paths now provide options to gain cores on Alsace and Luxemburg, and Alsace only, respectively. In addition, the layout of the new German industrial tree has been inverted to make it look better, and some other minor layout changes have been made for the same reason.

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Waffen-SS Volunteers
Giving Himmler a cabinet position will allow the recruitment of historical and plausible alt-history SS-Divisions (like SS-Division Sveaborg from occupied Swedish territory) in occupied territory. These divisions will spawn with full manpower and often quite high veterancy, but minimal equipment. Their templates are locked, simulating the desire for the Waffen-SS to be organisationally separate from the Wehrmacht.

Repeated recruitment will upset the OKW Generals, who may start to plot against Hitler. Denying the SS recruitment in those territories too often will in turn anger Himmler, who may attempt a takeover.

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Decisions
One of the biggest new features is the addition of a Decisions/Missions system. A variety of these have been added to the game, allowing for quick, short-term decisions that, unlike events, allow the player total control over when they are taken. See https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-decisive-action.1053930/ for a more in-depth overview.

Some categories of decisions are the following:
  • Country-specific decisions: MEFO bills for Germany, surrender decisions for Japan, industry relocation and scorched earth decisions for Soviet Union/China, infiltration and border wars decisions for China, Mers-el-Kebir raid, Case Anton, and scuttling of the fleet decisions/missions for UK, Germany, and France, and many, many more.
  • Generic decisions/missions: Ways to improve stability/war support/research speed, object to attachés, dismantling of the Maginot line, destruction/rebuilding of the Suez/Panama canals, obtaining more building slots (mainly for smaller countries), and a variety of other benefits.
  • Resource development decisions: Create new resource deposits that were/could have been discovered at the time, or expand ones already in existence.
  • New Crisis system: Requiring player action when war support or stability get too low, or bad things will happen.
  • Ideology switching decisions: Gone are the old random events that allowed you to switch ideology - now you have total control over when and how through the decision system, but you will have to invest more political power.
  • Formable nations: Allowing the formation of new countries if you own their historical/plausible territory.
  • Many, many more.
Acclimatization
We have long wanted to simulate the problems associated with shifting troops to new fronts with more extreme weather they are not used to. In Cornflakes we adding a system that lets your soldiers slowly acclimatize to hot and cold weather and reduce those penalties (the penalties have been turned up a bit in turn!). For people with the expansion your troops will also change look when acclimatized. Here is what it looks like for winter (before to the left, after on the right).
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Read more about acclimatization in this diary and check out what desert looks like: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-acclimatization-and-special-forces.1059168/

Volunteer Air Wings
In addition to sending ground units as volunteers, you can now also send air wings in Waking the Tiger. Similar to the limit on land divisions, air wings are limited by the total number of airplanes you can send. The air wings operate from the airfields in the host country and can fulfill all the usual missions. This allows you to have your own Flying Tigers or Condor Legion.
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Strategic Air Priorities
When ordering your planes to conduct strategic bombardment, you can now set which targets they should prioritize. This does not mean they will attack those targets exclusively - bombs are not that accurate in the 1940ies, after all - but it will give you much more fine control over what your bombers hit.

You can read more about this and a few other air features in this diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...i4-dev-diary-airplanes-and-lootboxes.1052860/

Attaching Air Support to Armies
Air wings can now be assigned to directly support an army. The air wings will try to move to the closest air base (while trying to avoid overcrowding it) and conduct missions in the right air zone. Strategic bombers can not be assigned to armies as that would just be silly.
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Air Supply Mission
Transport planes can now be used to drop supplies to encircled troops (or in general to improve supply throughput in low-infrastructure areas). This will cost command power to maintain so you can’t easily do too many of these at once.
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Captured Equipment
Maintenance Support Units will now allow you to capture a certain amount of enemy equipment, starting at 5% of the equipment the enemy loses in a battle, going up as you research new technologies. Having a general with the Scavenger trait will increase this value. Note that its now also possible to lend lease equipment you capture and that its possible to destroy your stockpile. Check out this diary on all sorts of equipment features: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-2.1051941/

Attachés
You can now send attachés to other nations who are at war, for a cost of Command Power and Political Power. This gives you a fraction of the recipient’s Army/Naval/Air experience, gives you a small amount of ticking war support, and gives the recipient a planning bonus. Beware, though, because nations they are at war with may object to your attaché and demand you withdraw them. If you decline, and the objecting nation’s ideology has a lot of support in your country, you may receive a heavy backlash…

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Consolidate
It is now possible to combine understrength divisions together, when short on equipment or manpower. This is part of Waking the Tiger and can come in very useful in situations where having a few full-strength divisions is much more important than having a dozen low-strength ones. For more details: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-1.1049856/

Historical Army Insignias
To better visually separate the armies used in the new Chain of Command system, we have added a number of distinct army symbols. Germany, Britain, the US, France, and the Soviet Union have also received distinct nation-specific icons for added historical flavor. These come as part of the DLC. See more here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bag-of-tricks-3.1064427/

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Minimap & Pinging
Due to popular demand, Waking the Tiger will feature a minimap in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. In addition, we have added offensive and defensive pinging options to alert allies in multiplayer which aids communication a lot!
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Border Conflicts
Certain countries can now start border conflicts, which are a special kind of combat that does not put two countries into a full-on war. Instead, the fight will be restricted to one state between a very limited number of divisions. The winner takes the contested state (with some exceptions). This is currently used in China and to simulate the Japanese-Soviet conflicts along their shared border.

Border conflicts are started through the decision menu. The first step is to stage an incident at the shared border. Once there is a reasonable cause, you can escalate to a border war. After this, both sides can choose to escalate the border conflict to a full-scale war.
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Check this diary out for details on border wars: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...v-diary-border-wars-the-last-warlord.1060469/

Kick nation from faction
Ever wanted to kick members from your faction? Now you can, at least until you do it enough time to have the other members turn on you :)

Historical Template Namelists
As part of our quest to improve historical immersion, we have created a new system to name divisions. The system pulls from a scripted list of names. Which type of division pulls from which list is set by the player, changing a division’s template changes its name as well.
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Name lists have been provided for all nations available at game start and a large number of the releasable nations. Some formable nations also gain access to special name lists, so Austria-Hungary for example can use the old Royal and Imperial naming schemes.


Stability & War Support
National Unity has been completely removed from the game and replaced by two new values: Stability and War Support. The first represents the support the current form of government has in the population (this is connected but not too closely tied to party popularity). The latter simulates the willingness of the population to bear the hardships of war. Many laws and decisions are now tied to stability or war support, and low stability or war support while at war can quickly lead to crisises like mutinies in the army or wide-spread strikes that need to be dealt with.

The role of determining when a country surrenders is now played by a new value: Surrender Limit, which determines how many victory points need to be occupied before a country surrenders. The base value for this is 80%, but some countries may have higher or lower values (not naming any - France - names).
Get more details here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-dev-diary-stability-and-war-support.1044766/


Naval Updates
Keeping track of naval losses and kills is now a lot easier in a new detail view. There has also been some mechanics changes so check here for details: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-naval-updates.1068689/

Updated production interface
Such an awesome change! With Cornflakes we now have new filtering and drag-and-drop support and can assign more than 15 factories to a line.
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Updates and Changes to Wars
We have done a lot of changes to how wars are handled in the game to avoid problems, and we have also added a bunch of neat stuff to the war interface. Check out the diary for more info: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...iary-war-changes-and-game-difficulty.1066500/
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Refinery Techs
The techs for synthetic refineries have been split into two branches, which improve the oil and rubber output, respectively. These techs no longer increase the amount of refineries you can build in a state. There is now a maximum of three refineries per state.

Infrastructure Affect Resource Extraction
Improving infrastructure now also increase the amount of resources produced in the state. Several states with very low infrastructure had their resource output at game start rebalanced to reach the 1.4.2 level of output once infrastructure has been built up to a certain level.
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Special Forces & Techs
All special forces armies are now a thing of the past. Nations now get a % of their army (plus a baseline limit) that can be special forces. We have also added a new tech tree where you can improve your special forces and affect how many you can field.
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Read more details here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-acclimatization-and-special-forces.1059168/

Graphics!
The expansion is full of cool graphical updates with new 3d models for the different chinas and new portraits etc
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Go here to see it all: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-diary-sound-music-and-art-for-tiger.1067596/

Withdrawals
In Cornflakes you can now execute withdrawals. These differ from retreats in that the happen when the player tells the unit to retreat, not when they break in combat. A unit asked to retreat will fight its way out of the combat (while still able to regain some organization) and leave when it manages to get out. This is great on the defensive and its no longer as necessary to have godlike micro skills and retreat in lock-step and such to avoid getting overrun. We hope this will make fighting as china a lot nicer :)

Music and Sound
Waking the Tiger comes with a revamped battlesound system that sounds great and is very immersive. It also comes with 3 new music tracks.
More info here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-diary-sound-music-and-art-for-tiger.1067596/


Performance and AI

We have put a lot of effort into improving lategame performance and the AI. Read about it in more detail here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-performance-and-ai.1070758/.
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Next week its time for release (whoohoo finally!). We will also show the whole patchlog and a little bit more cool stuff…

Rejected Titles:
Previously on WAKING THE TIGER
Refuelling the Hype Train
Humble-Bragging about DLCs
Press F to pay respect to “1. Infantry Template 3” 2016-2018
It has been 0 days since the HoI team made a France surrender joke
Everyone on the dev team is now scared about compiling the patch log (You should be /Podcat)
I listened to the Cannon Fodder soundtrack during the whole writing of this beast
This diary is way too long to proofread.
 
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I hope we can upscale that minimap a little. As someone who plays on 1440p (And let us be honest that the Experimental UI scaling does not work for 1440p at all), I think that's going to end up being negligibly small.
 
Stalin's Organs are already in the game as motorized rocket battalions.

So are SS divisions as motorized infantry divisions.

How about flavored international divisions through decisions and missions by the soviets and Spanish. "Have this level of relations with this major by three months and you'll get a couple divisions."
 
Bows to Axe99, master of all things Naval. The Lexington class with their 8x8in guns could be considered hybrids, and iirc the post war Moscow class were.

Just a fan and enthusiast, not a master :). Agree the Lexingtons could be considered hybrids - early on (1920s I think) there were some people in the USN that considered using them in a cruiser role if appropriate, given the tactical situation (can't remember the details of what I read, was mentioned in passing in Battle Line).
 
I am aware of that, but in HOI I am not playing the OKW or the NSDAP. I am playing A country and when germany goes communist I would keep playing communist germany. It makes sense to me that Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht are pissing off each other and I aprecciate that detail, but I think locking the template might be a bad Idea.
Waffen-SS divisions did change over the length of the war. The same division in might look quite different in 39 43 and 45. Some went from Infantry division to mobile division to tank division. So how can I recreate that in game.

My Fear is that the devs give us the cool feature of imersive special divisions and then make it semi-unusuable by locking the template to something you may not want to use for different reasons.

It dosn't make sense to me to lock this away from the player cause the player is not the OKW (so that he can organise wehrmacht divisions but can not touch the organisation of the waffen-ss) The Player is in last consequence a nation and thous organisation of Waffen-SS units would be something a Player of Germany should be able to do (what sense does it make that you could send the to battle but not add additional brigades to them).

Locking players out of features is in 10 of 10 cases not a good design decision. If there is need of ballancing thes units out it should be achieved by other means when paternalism.

HOI 4 aimed for a more Sandbox like approach. Locking the template doesn't fit in there. If my campagin goes that way that might make me want to reorganise the SS_Division Sveaborg as an Amphibious landing Division the game should let me do so.

Again I concur with your general sentiment.

In the end it very much depends on the style of play that you prefer.
If you like min/max competitive mulitplayer, then sure being in complete control is a major factor.

But if you mainly play restricted multiplayer or single player with heavy role playing elements, then immersion becomes more interesting. And from the recent information from Archangel, it appears that the new event/decision feature will update the Waffen-SS templates when new equipment is available.
 
Again I concur with your general sentiment.

In the end it very much depends on the style of play that you prefer.
If you like min/max competitive mulitplayer, then sure being in complete control is a major factor.

But if you mainly play restricted multiplayer or single player with heavy role playing elements, then immersion becomes more interesting. And from the recent information from Archangel, it appears that the new event/decision feature will update the Waffen-SS templates when new equipment is available.

Well Single player with heavy roleplaying is the only thing I care about. And I need accsess to template modification for that.
 
They're candidates for alt-tech approaches (and could add interesting colour, as the good Markus says :)), but I'm not sure about super-weapons. They'd be incredibly expensive relative to how many aircraft they could hold, and yet (if they were represented appropriately) if they got involved in a gunfight, their capacity to launch aircraft would likely be disabled with a relatively small number of hits. They might make more sense in the 1920s or first half of the 1930s, when the range of aircraft (particularly aircraft with enough ordinance to damage a warship) was much less, so carriers needed to steam much closer to the fleets they were attacking (so a strong defensive armament if they were attacked by enemy BCs made a bit more sense) - but even then, I wouldn't think 'super weapons' per se. Note all of the above is just my 2 cents and not the final word on the subject, by all means pipe up with your angle as well :).

Well I was thinking more of a below deck airfield and canons above, making the ship necessarily higher and wider to store all the extra stuff and making sure it doesn't capsize. If you don't get attack from the front or the back your airplanes can start safely. Maybe also a a two level construction with a further platform for the heavy guns around the main body of the ship housing the aircraft carrier part and on top the AAA artillery, etc.
 
Well I was thinking more of a below deck airfield and canons above, making the ship necessarily higher and wider to store all the extra stuff and making sure it doesn't capsize. If you don't get attack from the front or the back your airplanes can start safely. Maybe also a a two level construction with a further platform for the heavy guns around the main body of the ship housing the aircraft carrier part and on top the AAA artillery, etc.

I'm no naval architect (so take this as theorycrafting from someone who's not that clued up :)) but the two issues that first come to mind with this would be the difficulties of the weight of the turrets up high (lots of weight well above the waterline creates stability issues - keeping in mind that the below-decks airfield still needs to be high enough not to be shipping water in moderate seas, so those turrets are going to be pretty high up), and that most BB type turrets are far more than just what you see above decks - see spoiler below for a diagram (a random one I've googled - but that's the kind of thing I mean) - so a turret above decks means there's not much in the way of room below those turrets.


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Another issue would be recovery of aircraft through a 'door' leading straight below decks (keeping in mind a ship's deck is usually pitching a little, and sometimes pitching up and down quite a lot). Landing on a conventional aircraft carrier can be tricky enough, but making the 'window of success' smaller would lead to far higher levels of aircraft accidents. I'm not aware of (but this doesn't mean they aren't out there - you could check the Spring Styles books (here's a link to the 1939-1945 book), there were often some more adventurous designs at the preliminary stage, before more detailed analysis pared things back to the designs that were actually built) any hybrid BB/CV designs that had the airfield (as opposed to the hangar) below decks (although there were carriers that could launch from below decks - I think at least Courageous and Glorious could launch (but not recover) from their hangars as well as the flight deck, at least early on - and some of the interwar US carriers had catapults that'd shoot aircraft out from the hangar deck perpendicular to the ship).

None of these things make it impossible, but my gut feeling is that it would be a very big ship, so very expensive, to the point it'd be more cost effective having separate BBs and CVs (keeping in mind that there's no need to armour a CV to stand up to a battle-line gun duel, but putting BB-sized guns on a CV without appropriate armour is asking for a Hood-style disaster if one of the magazines are hit).
 
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Absolutely. Never experienced a shortage in hoi3 or hoi2.
The hoi4 system at least Sometimes leavs me short of needed equipment and fighting ability.

That wasn't because the stockpile system was bad, it was because when you sank convoys, the actual resources were not lost and the AI wasn't great at convoy raiding. Stockpiles need to be a thing. Trading resources needs to be a thing. Put in some half-assed system at least so I have a baseline to mod from.
 
That wasn't because the stockpile system was bad, it was because when you sank convoys, the actual resources were not lost and the AI wasn't great at convoy raiding. Stockpiles need to be a thing. Trading resources needs to be a thing. Put in some half-assed system at least so I have a baseline to mod from.
Stockpiling system was bad cause you could stockpile from day 1.

Make stockable amount a function of World Tension (like WT^X, where X>2 so that the curve is more steep) and you no longer can build huge depots of goodies 5 years before the war...
 
Stockpiling system was bad cause you could stockpile from day 1.

Make stockable amount a function of World Tension (like WT^X, where X>2 so that the curve is more steep) and you no longer can build huge depots of goodies 5 years before the war...

Or you could use PP for that, to change stockpile levels, Like the trade laws.

Get from low stockpile/heavy civilian emphasis to military rationing and the collecting of metals.
 
DLC looks promising task for new players especially for those new Recruits i doubt there will be a lot players wich will be able to be atleast pro in 1week i guess that playstyle will change too but it will be quietly nice to see promising changes for future of Hearts of Iron IV well if thats case i think its quiet to say that new Glitches and Tactics will arrive however experince changes the game everyone need to try i seriously redoubted and i think we need more something like that DLC's wich gives us opportunity to face new tasks and Missions i guess Germany might be significantly weaker however Japan got buffed with most of it With new Chinese Focus Tree im excited to say China can be now more standable against Threat of Domination of Asia Thinking why wont the Paradox Interactive make a East Europe DLC (Finland,Baltics,ZSSR,Turkey,Bulgaria,Greece) That would been indeed for one awesome DLC Waking the Tiger i guess its better to find out on March 8th. Good Luck Recruits :)
 
DLC looks promising task for new players especially for those new Recruits i doubt there will be a lot players wich will be able to be atleast pro in 1week i guess that playstyle will change too but it will be quietly nice to see promising changes for future of Hearts of Iron IV well if thats case i think its quiet to say that new Glitches and Tactics will arrive however experince changes the game everyone need to try i seriously redoubted and i think we need more something like that DLC's wich gives us opportunity to face new tasks and Missions i guess Germany might be significantly weaker however Japan got buffed with most of it With new Chinese Focus Tree im excited to say China can be now more standable against Threat of Domination of Asia Thinking why wont the Paradox Interactive make a East Europe DLC (Finland,Baltics,ZSSR,Turkey,Bulgaria,Greece) That would been indeed for one awesome DLC Waking the Tiger i guess its better to find out on March 8th. Good Luck Recruits :)

Punctuation, good sir! It matters!
 
I'm a high school teacher and I'm taking release day off :)
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My first post wasn't nearly as funny when I read it the second time around, so it's gone. :(
 
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I'm a high school teacher and I'm taking release day off :)

I interviewed for a history teacher position at one of the local high schools and said that for World War II I would use HoI4 to teach about it. Probably not my best option, but I enjoyed it.
 
HOI Iv as a teaching tool? Really??? Naval game is not very accurate. Air game has a lot of flaws as well. No limit on size of divisions, no corps level assets and unrealistic logistics engine for land game. its very playable and I believe balanced after this DLC but as a teaching tool? How do you represent Dunkirk, Stalingrad, Coral Sea, Midway, Overlord, 41 winter offensive, Kursk?
 
HOI Iv as a teaching tool? Really??? Naval game is not very accurate. Air game has a lot of flaws as well. No limit on size of divisions, no corps level assets and unrealistic logistics engine for land game. its very playable and I believe balanced after this DLC but as a teaching tool? How do you represent Dunkirk, Stalingrad, Coral Sea, Midway, Overlord, 41 winter offensive, Kursk?

I do not think history at high school level requires this depth of details. Considering most people cannot even differenciate Cezcoslovakia from Yougoslavia, de Gaulle from Pétain, let alone put Albania or Romania on a map, I think hoi4 could actually be a feat. But the time require for a game to develop would probably be a blocker item.
CK2 or EU4 startup screen with every years showing how countries appeared/grew/disappeared is probably more useful.

Nice overview of the next release, BTW. I hope there wont be too many horrendous bugs completely ignored when reported, though :|