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Developer Diary | End of Year 2023

HOI Holiday Message.png

Greetings!

With the release of the Stella Polaris Patch (1.13.6) last Tuesday it's time to wrap things up for the year.

2023 has been a busy year. The team has been hard at work since the very first days of the year, and the first War Effort patch of the year was released during the very first weeks of 2023. Before the onset of Summer holidays we managed to release 5 of those. Together with the follow up patches after the release of AAT, and the December patch, we clocked in at 9 patches, plus a few hotfixes, over the year. So expect to see more of them next year, with the same mix of tweaks and bug fixes, and occasionally minor additions.

Of course, the main story of 2023, for us, from a fan point of view, was Arms Against Tyranny and the Stella Polaris free update. The lion’s share of it was done during 2023. We started talking about the release in May in a series of “Dev Corners” and we made the official announcement on June 7th.

“What goes into a year?” you ask. Something like 4 million code and script changes I think. Or if you prefer to look at file changes, some 10000 files were touched in one way or another :O


Arms Against Tyranny Stats
After each big release we like to check out stats and take stock of things, and its fun to share this. So I hope you like graphs and numbers as much as we do!

First up, let's look at what nations people played during the first week and what path they went down:
Finland - 45%
  • Finnish Neutrality - 48%
  • Right-Wing Policies - 40%
  • Soumalainen Sosialismi - 12%
Sweden - 24%
  • The Old Enemy Stirs - 70%
  • Continue the Second Industrial Revolution - 30%
Norway - 12%
  • The Stumbling Storting - 62%
  • A Resurgent Labor Movement - 22%
  • Continue Nygaardsvold’s Government - 9%
  • Vote of No Confidence - 7%
Denmark - 12%
  • Unify the Right - 80%
  • Political Unity - 20%
Iceland - 6%
  • Not our King - 90%
  • Kingdom of Iceland - 10%

Overall people strongly preferred the more historical route for Finland and restoring monarchies as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Iceland bucked the trend. I guess ppl hate being a puppet more than they love the king ;D

Overall the top 10 played nations are (5h+ games):
Germany - 22%
Soviet - 12%
China - 6%
PRC - 6%
Italy - 4%
USA - 4%
Japan - 4%
France - 3%
England - 2%
Turkey - 2%

This ranking has held fairly stable, but its nice to see how much it evens out as we make more content (except for the big two - Germany and Soviet).

The Future
The coming year is going to be a really exciting one as we have succeeded in something we have tried to do for a long time - create a second autonomous team filled with brilliant and awesome people! This means that you can expect more stuff and a quicker pace during 2024 as we now have another team focused on delivering more national flavor and content. In fact they have already been at large for a while :)

Without revealing too much this side of the year I will cryptically say:

“Next year you will see both a new face on something familiar, and take our first step into an untouched continent”

*disappears with a mysterious hiss into a cloud of smoke*

Me and the Hearts of Iron IV team wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
 
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Hope for some fix for Italian Ethiopia endless war with Ethiopia joining allies in 1936/37 and messing up historical game play. Any way South American and some fascist tree for Argentina Chile will be nice
 
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Wrongwraith said:
Overall the top 10 played nations are (5h+ games):
Germany - 22%
Soviet - 12%
China - 6%
PRC - 6%
Italy - 4%
USA - 4%
Japan - 4%
France - 3%
England - 2%
Turkey - 2%

This ranking has held fairly stable, but its nice to see how much it evens out as we make more content (except for the big two - Germany and Soviet).
Click to expand...

It's worth noting that Republic of China (ROC) and People's Republic of China (PRC), while technically two separate nations, are two sides of one coin. You could put PRC and ROC combined at 12% and have them share the #2 spot with the Soviets.

Why do I say this? To make a point that a rework of the outdated trees might be appreciated by more players than you think. ;-)

Nevertheless, happy holidays and merry christmas to you!
 
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Wrongwraith said:
View attachment 1065203
Greetings!

With the release of the Stella Polaris Patch (1.13.6) last Tuesday it's time to wrap things up for the year.

2023 has been a busy year. The team has been hard at work since the very first days of the year, and the first War Effort patch of the year was released during the very first weeks of 2023. Before the onset of Summer holidays we managed to release 5 of those. Together with the follow up patches after the release of AAT, and the December patch, we clocked in at 9 patches, plus a few hotfixes, over the year. So expect to see more of them next year, with the same mix of tweaks and bug fixes, and occasionally minor additions.

Of course, the main story of 2023, for us, from a fan point of view, was Arms Against Tyranny and the Stella Polaris free update. The lion’s share of it was done during 2023. We started talking about the release in May in a series of “Dev Corners” and we made the official announcement on June 7th.

“What goes into a year?” you ask. Something like 4 million code and script changes I think. Or if you prefer to look at file changes, some 10000 files were touched in one way or another :O


Arms Against Tyranny Stats
After each big release we like to check out stats and take stock of things, and its fun to share this. So I hope you like graphs and numbers as much as we do!

First up, let's look at what nations people played during the first week and what path they went down:
Finland - 45%
  • Finnish Neutrality - 48%
  • Right-Wing Policies - 40%
  • Soumalainen Sosialismi - 12%
Sweden - 24%
  • The Old Enemy Stirs - 70%
  • Continue the Second Industrial Revolution - 30%
Norway - 12%
  • The Stumbling Storting - 62%
  • A Resurgent Labor Movement - 22%
  • Continue Nygaardsvold’s Government - 9%
  • Vote of No Confidence - 7%
Denmark - 12%
  • Unify the Right - 80%
  • Political Unity - 20%
Iceland - 6%
  • Not our King - 90%
  • Kingdom of Iceland - 10%

Overall people strongly preferred the more historical route for Finland and restoring monarchies as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Iceland bucked the trend. I guess ppl hate being a puppet more than they love the king ;D

Overall the top 10 played nations are (5h+ games):
Germany - 22%
Soviet - 12%
China - 6%
PRC - 6%
Italy - 4%
USA - 4%
Japan - 4%
France - 3%
England - 2%
Turkey - 2%

This ranking has held fairly stable, but its nice to see how much it evens out as we make more content (except for the big two - Germany and Soviet).

The Future
The coming year is going to be a really exciting one as we have succeeded in something we have tried to do for a long time - create a second autonomous team filled with brilliant and awesome people! This means that you can expect more stuff and a quicker pace during 2024 as we now have another team focused on delivering more national flavor and content. In fact they have already been at large for a while :)

Without revealing too much this side of the year I will cryptically say:

“Next year you will see both a new face on something familiar, and take our first step into an untouched continent”

*disappears with a mysterious hiss into a cloud of smoke*

Me and the Hearts of Iron IV team wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Click to expand...
Looking forward to hearing what the new year brings! The cryptic ending of this post combined with @Arheos recognition of the Norwegian content in AAT falling a bit short and that changes are coming leaves me hopefull for exiting news in 2024 :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
 
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There was a poll not too long ago about which major could use an update. There was a pretty widespread consensus that Japan needed it badly. That, combined with the pretty high play numbers for China and PRC, means a far East focused facelift makes a lot of sense.
 
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Does sound a lot like South America (but Antartica would be pretty cool too). It's been mostly untouched by the devs (bar a few focuses in other countries), and the exit seems to reference Brazil. What I can't quite place is the new face on something familiar. I do agree that it could be a Japan rework, but I'm just missing the connection.
 
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The Moon doesn't have tectonic plates, but this just means the whole thing is a single big continent.
So Moon DLC, Moon DLC, Moon DLC! Let's go.
 
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Wrongwraith said:
The Future
The coming year is going to be a really exciting one as we have succeeded in something we have tried to do for a long time - create a second autonomous team filled with brilliant and awesome people! This means that you can expect more stuff and a quicker pace during 2024 as we now have another team focused on delivering more national flavor and content. In fact they have already been at large for a while :)
Click to expand...
I think this is the most important news in the whole dev diary. It's good to hear you've moved beyond monthly bugfix and balance patches.
 
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I agree that we're probably getting a South America DLC next. My guess would be full FTs for Brazil and Argentina, and then maybe a generic South America FT for all others.
 
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Easy!
Familiar face=Germany. The most familiar (popular) country among the players
Untouched continent=South America

I am rather surpriced that we will get two dlc next year?
Mod makers will have busy time ahead! I hope that the Same proses that was used in Against the Tyrany aka give mod-teams a head start… they definitely will need it!
 
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create a second autonomous team filled with brilliant and awesome people!
Click to expand...
Is this in the same vein as the custodian team from Stellaris? If so this is great news, that was IMO the best thing to happen for Stellaris development
 
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my wish for the game is that an efford is made to re-balance every aspect of the game more towards realism,
if necessary also allow resource stockpiling.
Some things like army group and arrow drawing doesn't function well
 
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Svenska Super said:
my wish for the game is that an efford is made to re-balance every aspect of the game more towards realism,
if necessary also allow resource stockpiling.
Some things like army group and arrow drawing doesn't function well
Click to expand...
Every time the HOI4 team adds more realism, people don't like it. For example, air accidents. Military air warfare had a LOT of accidents and deaths and other casualties.

People love the IDEA of realism, but they don't like it when it actually negatively affects them.
 
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Wrongwraith said:
“Next year you will see both a new face on something familiar, and take our first step into an untouched continent”
Click to expand...
I'm Brazilian, only i can say is be careful with South America, Braziilian internet/game geeks tends to be too passionate abouts politics, and Vargas 30's is a very divisive figure til today, some love him with passion, and others hate him with passion.

Monarquism is just pure fantasy(i'm older i have 40, before 90's restore monarchy ideas was like a joke), but BR-internet bubbles tends to believe that was a big thing, so i don't recommend "experiments" like did with Norway monarchy, otherwise you will bring lots of hate from BR's. Brazil have the most singular history in americas becaus was once the home of only european monarchy in the new world(without be a forced puppet like mexico imperator).
 
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