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Developer Diary | End of Year 2023

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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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I hope for Austria & Germany DLC with great Monarchist Mission Tree + great rework of Government mechanic in 2024!!!
 
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Blimey, another year then, lol.

Congratulations for the players who wanted the Western Hemisphere to be touched!!!

Well, let's hope the devs would properly research things around when they finally comes to Southwest Pacific Area (Southeast Asia and Australasia).
 
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take our first step into an untouched continent

I hope DLC for South America or Middle East will not be released before the rework of Japan or English Commonwealth countries...

Despite being an MAJOR country, Japan has fewer focus than Iceland, and the Commonwealth focus is too old.
 
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Fingers crossed that the new face on something familiar is the US and the new continent is South America.
 
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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!
South America please!!!! The ABC and Colombia would be really interesting
 
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Holly hell please be South America
I feel like South America is all it can be

-Europe has gotten attention from like every DLC

-Asia had WTT and TfV

-Oceania was TfV

- North America was MtG, LaR (I think Mexico was LaR?) and TfV

Africa *could* be next too but it did get content through BBA with Ethiopia so South America is the only "untouched" continent
 
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I feel like South America is all it can be

-Europe has gotten attention from like every DLC

-Asia had WTT and TfV

-Oceania was TfV

- North America was MtG, LaR (I think Mexico was LaR?) and TfV

Africa *could* be next too but it did get content through BBA with Ethiopia so South America is the only "untouched" continent
It could be Africa or South America, Africa due to resources + nations that are still there, plus historically it wasn't really like how normal HOI4 represented it, but like RT56 where some colonies were puppets like Egypt, Congo, etc. Though its probably South America since its untouched like Scandinavia was...
 
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Also, all the preliminary research to what led to the 1936 world in South America has been done already by the Colossus of the South dlc team. The CK3 dlc on Persia came out around the same time period as the King of Kings dlc for EU4.
 
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I feel like South America is all it can be

-Europe has gotten attention from like every DLC

-Asia had WTT and TfV

-Oceania was TfV

- North America was MtG, LaR (I think Mexico was LaR?) and TfV

Africa *could* be next too but it did get content through BBA with Ethiopia so South America is the only "untouched" continent
In a sane world you would be absolutely right.

But the HoI4 team has a long history of trolling in these kinds of hints. And in the HoI4 files, the Middle East is defined as a separate continent.
But Turkey was included in BftB, so I think there's something like a 95% chance you are right and it's South America.
 
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