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Developer Diary | Giant Bag of Goodies

Hello there, Aveebee here to introduce this week's chunky dev diary covering a variety of topics. We’ll be covering everything free going into the upcoming patch that will release alongside Trial of Allegiance, an overview of some major map changes in South America, as well as some content pack specific updates. Without further ado, let’s get started!

First up, we have Jonathan!

Bolivar Patch
Hello again everyone, now it’s time for me to show you guys some of the things for this bag of treats that I have been working on for the patch coming alongside the Country Pack Trial of Allegiance!

The Peru-Ecuador Conflict
First up in terms of what I have contributed to this bag of treats is the Peruvian-Ecuadorian war of 1941. Now, Ecuador starts with ownership and a core on Pastaza, and Peru will have to take it through war, with the option of a scripted peace if they manage to take it. Ecuador can however also secure themselves a scripted peace from this ordeal, as long as they take Loreto, which means a skilled Ecuador player can even gain territory from the conflict.
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New Formable Nations
But wait, there’s more! Now onto new formable nations (that aren’t for the main countries getting focus trees in the DLC) that are included in the patch. And for this part I’m especially looking at you Hovelax ;).

The First on up is the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, formable in-game by either Peru or Bolivia.
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The next one is the United Guianas, formable by either Suriname, Guyana or Cayenne.
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And finally for new free formable nations coming in this patch, we have Hispaniola, formable by either Haiti or the Dominican Republic.
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New Releasable Nations
Now then, we’ve arrived at the non formable ones, but instead releasable nations added alongside this patch, or at least the ones that I’ve implemented.

First up on the list we have Quebec.
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After that comes Yucatan.
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Then comes another historical Mexican breakaway state, the Republic of the Rio Grande.
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And finally we have a new island nation, which you might have seen briefly in last week's Chile Dev Diary. That nation is Rapa Nui, most often known as Easter Island.
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Canada War Effort
And now, merged into this patch is a Canadian War Effort, updating and adding a small extra amount of content for our home and native land, Canada.

To start off with, Canada has a new industrial concern available to them, that being the Canadian Pacific Railway.
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And after that comes the fact that the Canadian country leaders now start with their own unique traits.
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And there are also three new focuses available to Canada, this time with more focus on the democratic branches.
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The first two give a national spirit each.
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And then this focus allows you to gain Newfoundland and Labrador despite staying with the Allies, or even when going independent democracy.
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A few of the old focuses have also been touched up, so I will show some, but not all of them here, so you will have to find some differences on your own once the patch releases ;)

This focus now takes 35 days.
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Taking this focus when having Mackenzie King as your country leader also gives him an extra trait.
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And this focus now gives you two civilian factories.
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Oh and what’s this?
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Updated Central American Formable
The old formable nation of Central America now has two possible follow-up decisions that can give them a small bit of extra core states.

First up is Integrating Panama.
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And then you also have Integrating Yucatan.
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New American Industrial Concern
And now we arrive at my final contributions to this patch. First up we have the Union Pacific Railroad for the USA.
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New Operatives
As for the owners of La Resistance, they will also gain new operatives, such as the new American Operatives, George Musulin, Joe Savoldi, René Joyeuse, Willian G Sebold and Serge Obolensky. These operatives are unlocked for the USA through some of the various War Plans focuses.
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As for new German Operatives, there are Erich Gimpel, Johannes Sigfried Becker, Herbert Hans Haupt, Norman Baillie Stewart and Fritz Joubert Duquesne.

Johannes Sigfried Becker:
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Fritz Joubert Duquesne:
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And finally, there have also been some new Japanese Operatives added. They are Patrick Vaughan Heenan, John Semer Farnsworth and Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln.

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln:
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John Semer Farnsworth:
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And that’s all from me folks, next up Mordred Viking!

Naval Trait Rework
Hello! My name is Mordred Viking, and I have recently joined the Hearts of Iron IV team. As some of you may know, I have a bit of a thing for naval warfare in HOI, and have wanted to retouch the Admiral Trait tree for a while now.

Here’s the old version:
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There were a number of things about this tree I was not a huge fan of, firstly how certain earnable traits (the ones you need to get through use) effectively blocked the latter assigned ones. Cruiser Captain being a particular pain to get due to Fly Swatter being very slow to gain.

Further, there were a couple of traits which very rarely saw use, Mine Sweeper / Layer being most prominent. Having two traits for an area not often focused on anyway basically meant they just never got used.

Working together with C0RAX, we rejigged the positions, trying to keep traits in some kind of role order; Raiding, Escorting, Cruising, Carrier-ing, and Big-Gunning. We also increased the number of pathways to the assignable traits, meaning you should find yourself soft locked far less frequently. Fly Swatter has been made an assignable trait now instead.

And here’s the updated version:
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We also combined the mine traits into one, and it has quite possibly the best description in the game (I’ll leave you to find that for yourselves!).

Trial of Allegiance
AveeBee here again! Before jumping into the content pack specific part of this dev diary, I think it’s also worth pointing out that there will be a lot of bug fixes going into the Bolivar patch that have not been mentioned here but are no less important. We’ll be looking more at those in a later dev diary.

Amazon Rework
The Amazon rainforest is probably one of the most hostile places on the planet to get embroiled in a conflict due to the array of geographical features it includes. It is not the type of place you can sweep through with tanks or rapidly construct infrastructure to support massive infantry formations. As such, we’ve made some changes to its portrayal in Hearts of Iron to better represent the difficulty of fighting there.
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As you can see in the screenshot above, we’ve added a number of impassible regions to represent the deepest parts of the Amazon where fighting would be almost impossible. However, we have created channels through the rainforest that follow the course of the major rivers along which troops can pass.
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This creates some really fun gameplay due to the natural choke points that develop in the area. However, we wanted to make sure there were still enough provinces along the riverside to allow for encirclements and interesting maneuvers.
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These changes have made the region challenging, but definitely more interesting. Anyone who can use the terrain to their advantage will likely enjoy fighting here. For example, using supply hubs along the river to support your troops without the need for railways can make a massive difference to your success in the region.

On the topic of map changes, we have also broken down the air regions above South America to make air combat more interesting.
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Peron
Hey everyone, it’s Eilidh again. After taking your feedback into consideration, we have decided to implement a short alternate path in the historical branch where you, as the player, can decide to elect Juan Perón as the leader of Argentina. The position in this tree means that you can either choose to support the allies or go on your own conquest of South America, depending on the type of game you want to play.
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And before I sign off, allow me to show you the leader portrait we have cooked up for the man himself.
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We hope you enjoy this addition to the Argentinian tree! We appreciate you giving us feedback as we go, and whilst we cannot implement all changes in the time that we are allocated, we will do our best to accommodate!

Paraguay & Uruguay
Mba'éichapa!

Craniummuppet
here to present two mini-trees, Paraguay and Uruguay. These trees started as a side-project for me after the release of AAT, mostly to give a small treat to you guys but kinda kept growing in size as time went on from a smaller shared tree into fully separated trees with a scope target like Aussa or Iceland. (Note that much of the icons are placeholders and will get updated)

Paraguay
At the start of the game Paraguay is reeling from two costly wars - The War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War against Bolivia.

This is felt in Paraguay
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In Feb 1936 Rafael Franco will launch his coup against the government where you can pick to either let him seize control of the country or resist him. Allowing him to take power will lead you down the historical path, and resisting him will plunge you into a civil war.
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Seizing power will allow you to do various socialist and military reforms, while not a communist per-se Franco (not that one) certainly had policies that were left leaning in nature, but also had typical military dictatorship tendencies.

He didn't last long though, and got ousted by the military after pulling back troops from the Chaco region. You can keep Franco though (not that one) by not pulling back from the Chaco, which is the second alt-history choice.

Pulling back from the Chaco will lead to a revolt within the army, putting Higinio Morínigo in power
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If Franco was more left leaning, Morínigo is the polar opposite. To put it bluntly he had strong pro-Nazi sympathies,with parts of the police force and the military adopting the symbolism of the Third Reich. He also allied himself with militias, banned parties and consolidated his power.

This focus path will pivot the country from the Franco left leaning military dictatorship towards a more fascist and authoritarian military dictatorship under Morínigo.
(As an example the police chief at the time named his kid Adolfo Hirohito… )
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While starting as unaligned in this path you can eventually commit fully to fascism, or you can stay as unaligned
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One of the biggest reasons why Paraguay did not drift closer to the Axis powers was because of direct intervention from the USA. They started financing various endeavors in the country which kept Paraguay out of the war, such as favorable loans, road finance and technical assistance..

In game this is modeled by accepting American investment, whereby you won’t be able to join the Axis for the duration of the investment. Going down all the investment paths will keep you out of the Axis powers, but grant you massive boosts to the economy. How far you exploit this is up to you.


Going back to the world where Franco does not pull back from the Chaco, the alternative is war with Bolivia, this lets you keep Franco, and get some early conquest. With Bolivia conquered, you can finally get a coastline by getting wargoals against Peru and Chile, which leads to a very weird shape of a country. This is my current playthrough
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And yeah… it has an interesting shape.
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Going back to the top there is the other alternative history, the civil war route. Should you resist the Franco takeover you will enter a state of civil war where the army will rise up.
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The army will have the upper hand at the start of the war, but the Paraguay river gives excellent defense.

To win the civil war you can use the American scare of a “communist” state in its sphere of influence to increase your power. You can also use your wife's ties to France to get some aid from there.

Most powerful of all are the Marines, which will be used to break the river and win the war, or you can goad Bolivia to become involved in it which leads to a three way war that you can exploit.
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When all is said and done you can use your civil war general, José Estigarribia to purge the military and cement your rule over the country. This leads to co-rule between Ayala and Estigarribia, or you can let Estigarribia take full control. It will take a while to rebuild the country as the civil war and various other wars have likely taken their toll, but eventually it will lead to a flourishing economy
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Uruguay
Uruguay was comparatively more stable than Paraguay during the time frame, despite being under a quasi dictatorship under Gabriel Terra.

Despite this they enjoyed a rapid GDP growth and relative stability. The beginning of the period centers around industrialization and the policies under Terra.
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Around 1938 he will step down and you can pick between either the Colorados or Blancos, which are the two main parties in Uruguay, but both are democratic aligned.
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If Democracy isn’t to your liking you can instead go down to the Furhmann plan, ally with agitators like Adolfo Agorio become fascist and use it as a springboard for the Axis powers in South America. This path is now locked behind any election event and can be b-lined to at game start if so pleased.

Before asking, of course there's events for the Battle of the River Plate.
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Which will be triggered whenever a British and German ship is in the Southern Georgia Sea or in the Argentine Coast at the same time.

Shared Branches
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There are also some shared branches between Paraguay and Uruguay which will appear in both trees.
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First off, the conquest branch allows you to do a small-scale war at the start of the game for some quick conquests if you are cheeky enough. You can even conquer parts of Brazil while being in the Paraguayan civil war to bypass parts of the river line.

Uruguay has access to this as well but they target Rio Grande do Sul and Región Mesopotámica. Later you can decide whether you want to go on a crusade against imperialism, forgoing any factions but having the ability to core more land, or a more conservative approach where you can core some land but you can still join factions.
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Paraguayan version
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Uruguayan version
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A bit silly fun where hopefully it can be a challenge as well as long term goals in a playthrough.

The industrial branch focuses on the exports of the country, which mostly comprises Beef, Wool, Hides and other agricultural products.
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You can also choose to empower the landowners, upon which they will start improving your economy automatically. In this screenshot they seem really keen on adding a building slot.
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The research branch is where you get your 3th,4th and 5th slot. You require to have some industry to unlock each, with each slot getting gradually more difficult to get.
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This focus will also unlock more civs the more you have invested in the industrial focus. So if you want those slots early you might have to sacrifice some industry.

Similarly to all other focus trees in this pack, Uruguay and Paraguay will use the shared military branch. :)

Uruguay;
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Paraguay;

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These are the two trees in their totality! I hope you are all doing well and are excited for the release. Peace

Next Week
AveeBee here again, that's it for this week, hope you enjoyed it and are looking forward to Trial of Allegiance!

Next week we will be taking a look at alt-history Brazil.

See you then!
 
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Not trying to be combative, but i would really like to see your source for Captain Lindemann deciding using "der Bismarck" for some reason.
I don't have the original source to hand but it comes from the Bismarck sinking survivor Baron Von Mullenheim-Rechberg who claimed it in"Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor's Story" from what I know.
 
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As somebody who speaks German as his 2nd mother tongue this is sadly not entirely correct. But the event still is.

While "Schiff" is indeed genderless, the full formal name would be always "Das Schlachtschiff/Panzerschiff/Containerschiff xxxx". The main noun "Schiff" determines the article of the entire combined noun. However when only refered to by the name, it would have been "sie" (she). Also in the case of the Bismarck as this is also the way it is used in all German publications afaik. Not trying to be combative, but i would really like to see your source for Captain Lindemann deciding using "der Bismarck" for some reason.

The only case in which you would correctly say "... der Bismarck" is when referring to it in a different grammatical form of "Die Bismarck". Applying the genetive case (i hope my 5th grade grammer still checks out) would for example produce the sentence "Der Tiefgang der Bismarck ist 9,9 m" (The draft of the Bismarck is 9.9 m) from the neutral (and in this case feminine) "Die Bismarck hat einen Tiefgang von 9,9 m" (The Bismarck has a draft of 9.9 m).

And coming back to the to event, you'd likely refer to the ship, the "Schiff" in this case. So calling it "it" is completely correct to use.
Yes and no. "das Schlachtschiff Bismark" is correct when you write it out. When you use a abrivitation how "BB" or "SMS" it will be feminin. Nobody will say "die Schlachtschiff B..." But in germany we say most "die Bismark". Self in newspaper articel and TV reports. We say to "die Tirpitz" or "die or der Bismark Klasse" (the Bismark Class). Same with Heavy Cruiser. "Der schwere Kreuzer Blücher" vs "Die Blücher".

All Shipnames are female exept. Only in the case of things and animal names does the gender of the name usually remain the same, but feminine gender is also possible. It was Wilhelm the II order to "change" from "dem" to "die" at male names. But just as you say "Das Schlachtschiff B..." can you say "dem Schlachtschiff B..." even today when you use it in a sentence. But don't make it too complicated. In German all cats are "female = die" and all dogs are "male = der". Things only get complicated with der/die/ das Nutella.

I'm not a native speaker so I'm just going on what the German sources I've seen from the time used so don't mind being corrected on modern German grammar for it (German grammar is a mystery for me most of the time). I'm generally hesitant to use civilian sources of this stuff because of experiences from my own mother tongue since the number of times I've seen "The HMS X" used which is grammatically wrong.
 
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I don't have the original source to hand but it comes from the Bismarck sinking survivor Baron Von Mullenheim-Rechberg who claimed it in"Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor's Story" from what I know.

"Der Bismark" without context is complicatet. But i believe that he say "der Bismark" and not "die Bismark". But that has to do with the grammar articel. Maybe he talk with Genitiv or Dativ. Genitiv is most for the owner of a thing. Dativ is most for person or things they get something.

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German grammar is a mystery for me most of the time

I mean i have watch a meme where the scandinavian teacher show at the blackboard the letters a ä ae e å... and the german exchance student say every time "e". The same as i watch nordicnames and read from "gammeldansk". Gammel is not a frindly word in german.
 
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Perón should have a fascist path. He was an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler and when he was ousted he went to Francoist Spain, not the US/UK, not the USSR. He went to the last fascist country on earth.
Although it is true, Peron and Peronism had many sympathies, certain aptitudes and very similar postulates, especially with Italian fascism. It cannot be stated with certainty that they were completely the same as the Italian and German regimes were, therefore the alignment as non-aligned is fine, as is Franco in this game.
 
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I think the German approach to naval rearmament should be modified, which I think should unlock the Bismarck class battleships and put two of these battleships of this class into production.

Also the focus of destination Txecolosvaquia should unlock an improved light tank model 36 with two occupants as were the historic Panzer 38t, and in addition the Skoda company should be added German company
 
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I really like how this dlc is coming together. Very great job! Since you’ve decided to revisit Canada, will more starting generals and portraits be added with the patch? There are only four generals for Canada currently and only two of them have portraits.

It's great this patch has a mini Canada war effort, but I will keep beating this Canada needs it's generals reworked drum too every time it comes up. At least add Andrew McNaughton and Harry Crerar, Guy Simonds and Christopher Vokes would be good too. There are more, but I get that the limit is part of balancing and artists probably don't have the free time for a bunch of Canadian generals.

Percival John Montague and Thomas Victor Anderson, the Brits in SS uniforms with inflated stats, can be ditched or reworked into more relevant people as far as I'm concerned.

edit: looked them up again and they are Canadian, not British like I thought for some reason. Still no idea why PDX picked them for 2 out of the 4 though.
 
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Wasn't Panama part of Colombia before it got independence?
Yes, but it's always been kind of this weird borderland between North/Central America and South America.
 
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Which will be triggered whenever a British and German ship is in the Southern Georgia Sea or in the Argentine Coast at the same time.

How likely will this be with an AI Germany?


Also a second question: what about new Achievements? When will we get information about them? Are any planned at all? (Chile conquering whole western coastline of both American Continents Achievement pls)
 
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I like this new content for Peru, but I don't agree with some decisions. First of all, why does Ecuador start with a core on Pastaza? That region was disputed between both Ecuador and Peru, but Peru had a way bigger presence in the area. They went to war for this reason, they were the actual controller of the area even if Ecuador claimed they were also the owners of that territory. Maybe you could give that territory to Ecuador, but not make it a core until they win the war against Peru like it's done in other mods. Also giving that buff to Ecuador seems a bit excessive considering the terrain. The actual war was a stomp and Peru won the war easily, but it would be boring to just buff Peru and not Ecuador in a game. However, I think it would be more fair if you make Ecuador's bonus 10% instead of 20% and you give Peru some buffs related to paratroopers, planes or light tanks becuase those were key in the war, especially paratroopers. Also, I expected some kind of Neo Ican Empire as a new formable nation and achivement because that would be really fun to do and I have to say that I'm a bit dissapointed it won't be implemented. I know this isn't the dev diary for Argentina, but it would be a good idea to add an Argentina-Peru axis in the Argentina Focus tree like some other mods have done. The initial goal would be to split Chile between both countries and then control the rest of South America. Maybe asking for so much content for Peru isn't appropiate since you aren't giving it a new focus tree, but I would be happy with just fixing Ecuador's buffs and the new Incan Empire as a formable nation. I just hope that in the future you can give Peru the chance to receive a focus tree in a new dlc. This country has a lot of potential for alt history that can be fun to play. You could give it a monarchic path with a Peruvian, Belgian or French king, a communist path, a fascist path to join Japan due to the close relations between these countries. As for war goals, Peru has beef with Chile, almost went to war with Colombia before 1936, the wet dream of some presidents during the 19th century was annexing Bolivia and there's the possibility to revive the Inca Empire.
 
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How likely will this be with an AI Germany?


Also a second question: what about new Achievements? When will we get information about them? Are any planned at all? (Chile conquering whole western coastline of both American Continents Achievement pls)
I wonder as well. Few 1936 surface ships can reach that sea from Germany. And I don't think submarines should trigger it.
 
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I know that you touched on this briefly, but I know supply is still going to be a massive pain in the South Americas. I'd be interested to know if any of the developers are planning to improve transport planes to alleviate the supply issue. I was brainstorming earlier, and rather than increase the supply drop stats, instead add a new air mission that will 'make transport planes turn airports into supply hub/depots'. It makes more sense that a transport plane can land at these airports and simulate dropping off supplies to the front that way, plus it has always irritated me that transport planes only had one mission, but this makes sense to me. I think it would bring relevance back into transport planes and can make various front (China, Siberia, South America, Africa) more interesting as you’re not slogging through the front lines. As a final note, this has some historic relevancy during the Sino-Japanese war, with the Allied nations flying the Hump over the Himalayan Mountains and landing in Chinese Airfields to drop-off critical war material.
 
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