Developer Diary | Historical Norway

[CarloPDX]

I wanted to hear more about the doggo

Here's bamse taking a shower

 

[CarloPDX]

Ok thanks for reply. And is AI allowed to install Terboven or is it restrictrd from doing that for optimalisation purposes?

No, Historical invaded Norway is now a separate country with Terboven as leader (Then Quisling later)

@CarloPDX Would you please eloborate on the whole going-into-exile tree branch? Since it is part of the historical stuff. Even if it doesn't amount to much, it seems odd that you would show us Quisling and yet not the other side of the conflict.

There'll be some stuff to trade convoys for benefits from your host country, stuff to build extra resistance and annoy the invaders, and general "Getting our country back" stuff

I hope this doesn't mean no monarchy path.

I would like to have a Monarchist path for Norway, yes.

 

[CarloPDX]

Will there be a focus or some decision allowing us to extract the oil in the North Sea? It would be fun to run an alt history scenario where Norway discovers oil in the North sea in the 1930s.

Sorta... I'll leave it at that

 

[CarloPDX]

Btw what about the Norwegian heavy water production during the war? Which was sabotaged by the allies. Will that be represented? And is there a communist path for Norway?

There's a communist branch for Norway.

 

[CarloPDX]

I like that one of the foci is just, print more money. I wish I could just print more money.

You can totally print more money if you want. Anyone using it as legal tender is another story

 

[CarloPDX]

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Am I missing something here? Whats the point of resistance decay speed? It's a nice flavour and I guess helps represent norway resistance... but you gonna have norway cored, I assume. There's nothing in the dev diary saying you wont have norway cored and that you gonna face population resistance, welp, if forms a "Reichskommisariat" it will have cores in all of norway anyway. Unless something was changed about them (which it should), this feels pretty pointless.

Will the AI norway choose that path on historical?

I guess I forgot to mention, the historical fascist path will have forced resistance. The alt history fascist, since you started as such, laying the groundwork for fascism, will not face resistance. So as happened historically, the RK will face resistance from the population.

AI in historical will switch to fascist, it's easier so we don't have to account for having an expansion with Government in Exile or not.

 

[CarloPDX]

Quisling's degraded portrait is literally based off of a prison mugshot of him.

Yeah! Good catch =D

 

[CarloPDX]

I am really sorry but this is the worst-looking country update I have seen yet with HOI4. All the worst PDX design indulgences condensed. Pointless, boring mini-games. Creatively-lazy national focuses centered around memes more than historical plausibility or immersion, e.g. claims on Ireland based on... vikings. Technically can't we already do that - what's the benefit of having a focus to make a claim? Clicking decisions to bring my nerfed forts to normal status does not sound like fun tbh. And knowing also that these features will not be QC'd at all prior to release and will remain bugged-out through multiple patches doesn't help.

To be more constructive, Paradox could gain a lot by taking a page from past successful focus trees; e.g. Mexico or Spain. Which better walk the line between historical what-ifs with off-the-wall craziness and without too much mini game nonsense. They're also.... fun. In a way that Switzerland and Bulgaria are now decidedly NOT.

As a longtime HOI fan, the last expansion, BBA, fully turned me off from new DLC - I hesitated to buy that but, when I did, immediately felt burned. These updates further cement my decision to just stick with a modded version of what we have now.

I'm really sorry that you feel that way. The truth is, we will never be able to make content that pleases everyone, and if we went the Spain and Mexico route, there would be plenty of people who wouldn't like that either. Our design philosophy has changed over the years and it reflects both player response and the preferences of the team. For example, I also enjoy the Spanish focus tree a lot, but I know a lot of people who don't because of how precise you have to be with your timing and preparations, and based on how complicated the scripting it, and how much we've had to fix things with the SCW that randomly brake each expansion, I would never dare to attempt anything like that.

I really hope you can find content you like this expansion. At least for the historical part, I kept it as tame as possible and you can just ignore the viking claims and all that.

 

[CarloPDX]

If I have read between the lines of the dev diary correctly (and I'm not sure I have, so Carlo may correct me), I think the context is that the alternative to the Quisling Coup is fighting Germany as an Allied Norway. Given Norway's military weakness (in-game as in real life) against a major Power, that is likely to be a quick route to government-in-exile if you have Man the Guns or Game Over if you don't. So taking the Quisling Coup route means that your play-through lasts beyond 1940.

This approach to Norwegian content makes sense given the assumptions. But I am disappointed. I would have preferred to see an approach that made the historical outcome (Norwegian government-in-exile) playable and enjoyable. I suspect it would have been just a few lines of code to make the Government-in-Exile mechanic available to (a) only democratic Norway for Arms against Tyranny owners, as well as (b) all countries for MTG owners. Then we could have had really interesting content based around Norway's merchant marine, the Telemark heroes, etc. As a naval-focused player, I really would have liked a mechanic that made the merchant marine a powerful weapon for whichever faction got Norway's support.



This is an important question where we could do with some clarity. In historical mode, Germany is currently scripted not to invade Norway until it's defeated France.




I'm really pleased that you haven't added a Balance of Power just because it was possible. Just because a mechanic exists doesn't mean it should be applied to every country. There are countries where it would make sense to add it (e.g. Japan's Army vs Navy infighting) but Norway isn't one.



I agree, there surely need to be some checks here to reconcile the two NF trees.



I notice that there is a focus to invade Ireland. I do hope that you have added some script so that the AI is likely to choose this if ENG takes Withdraw from Contested Territories, abandoning Northern Ireland, and very, very unlikely to take it otherwise. It would be wholly unrealistic for the UK to sit and watch Norway to conquer the Irish Free State (southern Ireland) if it's still an Irish state itself. It would be very, erm, brave (by which I mean stupid!) for Norway to declare war against an imperialist UK.


I don't mind if devs do Jan Mayen meme content in their personal dev time. But I'd be disappointed if it's part of the core plan for the paid DLC. It's very easy for modders to just add in polar bear generals or whatever, but neither of the two attempts on the Steam Workshop have proved popular (literally not a single upvote). I can't imagine many players actually want their play-throughs ruined by an unstoppable single-province AI nation.



You are both right. According to Wiktionary, tanke is "thought". That's not the same word as tank, a slang word for "tank", since they are spelled differently in dictionary form and in the plural. But they are very similar words and they are spelled identically in the singular definite, so "the national tank" and "the national thought" (in the sense of "the national ideology") might both be spelled Rikstanken.

BTW there are two languages called Norwegian (Bokmål which is almost identical to Danish and Nynorsk which is quite different), but in this case my points apply to both.

You are correct about the exile thing.

Thanks for the feedback

 

[CarloPDX]

I think we might have a new contender for "hardest country to play that doesn't use generic focuses".

I think Ethiopia still holds that title. Or at least that's my intention

 

[CarloPDX]

Will there be any new impassables in this update?? It feels like there should absolutely be some following the Scandinavian Mountain range that straddles the Norway-Sweden border and some in western Norway.

I mean everything is possible, but so far we are not making any mountains between Norway and Sweden. In BBA, the impassableness of the alps played a role historically, so it made sense, but in this case it's a bit harder to justify.

Thinking about it, I'm a tad bit disappointed tbh. Expected there to be more events like the Altmark incident and maybe more gameplay revolving around trying to remain neutral, like you have to with Switzerland (edit to add: though I suppose that choosing between industrializing and preparing for war gives us that). Also I expected NORTRASHIP to play a much bigger role, like with a decision that handed Britain a large number of convoys if Norway was invaded by Germany. Maybe it's just me. And don't get me wrong, I think this DLC will be incredible.

Nortraship will play a role in exile, you can leverage your convoys for bonuses and such.

I think you should add the UK and possibly France as options for tank sellers. After all, they were the largest tank exporters at the time, with France selling FT-17s to almost everyone and the UK selling the renowned Vickers 6-ton B as well.

Germany makes sense because of their armor focus, but they notably did very little exporting of tanks due to needing them themselves.

IIRC if there are no nordics left somehow, you will get the option of buying from the UK

@CarloPDX

Will Einar Gerhardsen be available as a late-game leader of democratic Norway? Historically he replaced Johan Nygaardsvold in 1945 just a few weeks after liberation.

I did know about him taking over after the war but somehow didn't think about adding him. I'll see what I can do

Hi Carlo or any other PDX Dev that might read this. Long time player and History Teacher here. I wonder how your development of Norway's Secret Agent rooster is looking. I am curious since i saw you added a focus for XU which i wrote a bit about in my master thesis which was WW2 in Norway related. Sadly there ain't many portraits of the XU members since their policy of conduct was: Do the job and keep quiet + XU never kept a record of their members. Leading many of them to bring their story of XU work with them to their grave. Reason i am writing this is because of a humble wish to add the following person to Norway's agent rooster: Kasper Skjeggenes. Now why this particular person? Well, according to the few surviving war documents that got verified from the leadership of XU. The leader of XU itself stated in the papers he was perhaps their greatest agent, never got caught and never lost a shipment. The man owned around 7 different cars in order to not draw suspicion and he covered his own costs. He refused to be compensated for his economic expenses after the war since it went to the service of the nation. He was active from the beginning of the war to the end. He transported both people escaping the occupation regime and intel over to Sweden while bringing guns, radios etc. that the resistance cells needed back from Sweden. He even managed to infiltrate the German Oberkommando in Norway by presenting himself as a super friendly collaborator and German friendly person. If you made this far, then thank you for reading.

This sounds fantastic, I'll see if I can add him, sounds like a cool character to have!! Thanks so much for your input!! If you have any extra material on this feel free to link it and I'll give it a read, always love these kinds of things. The one I was planning to add was Lauritz Sand

I sincerely hope that the devs adds the historical states of Jemtland and Bohuslen which used to belong to Norway.

View attachment 998528

I will keep my mouth shut about this, you do not need to know what's on the other side of the viking claims. You may or may not find out soon

Provided you keep the same formables such as Scandinavia and the Nordic Empire, will this new state be required for it? Particularly for the first one - at the moment you literally need no ships to form it, while the Nordic Empire is always far trickier because of those distant lands, and when at war with other minor regional powers (UK, Germany) it's usually those islands being the main obstacle.

I will also appreciate you thoughts on VPs Historically Norway surrendered pretty much on its ports being captured, which atm is not what it takes ingame.

Nah Jan Mayen won't be required for most of those things. Thanks!!

 

[CarloPDX]

I'm really happy to finally see the Norwegian focus tree, I was really looking forward to it, and I can say that I'm really pleased with what I see, the way it was implemented with one goverment going down a path and the collaborationists going down the other is a rly good way to represent the situation, hopefully it won't be too bugged tho, also the quisling portrait change is something I really love

I just have a few questions/complains(?)
as I understand, these are the historical paths, both the democratic and the fascist paths are built in a way so that you have to capituilate or collaborate, will there be a democratic side on which u can go down if you manage to actually defend against germany instead of capitulating and then liberating yourself?
also I would have hoped to see a path where u keep Josef Terboven in power instead of having to go back to Quisling or go for Jonas Lie so that it would maybe give you even more bonuses in exchange for even less autonomy?
also the "get rid of Quisling" and "bring Quisling back" names for the focuses are a little weird, idk what else would fit better but these two names reminds me of those two focuses from kaiserrieich "ally tibet" and "we don't need tibet anymore"

I shouldn't be telling you this but, I have plans for an alternate Democratic path that goes with the allies asap. Whether I can manage the time to make it we'll see but that's the intention.

The way I see it, you can just stay with Terboven if you want, and focus on the shared branches which are still available to him.

For me, the point of those two names is to highlight the ridiculousness of the whole thing and how stupid Fascists actually are. We tend to represent fascism as one of the most efficient ways to access every system and resource, but the truth is that they were a bunch of bickering buffoons and would take the worst decisions possible on a whim. So the fact that it's weird is part of the experience.

 

[CraniumMuppet]

On the other hand, Sweden has a lot of stuff in its tree, even the game mechanics are going to change (resources...) because of that country.

Not necessarily because of Sweden, but because of Germany. I put it in the Swedish DD because every change needs to be championed by someone and I happened to be the one working on both Sweden and the resources.

The values from that DD has already changed internally and I'll probably post more updated resources in a future DD

 

[CraniumMuppet]

Ah ah, then it's a rework of Germany we're going to have !!! Yeah !!! You made my day

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[CraniumMuppet]

I agree. Its encouraging to see that the devs watch the discussions, and particularly seeing that one of the two creators of the Swedish content, that seems to be shaping up really nicely, joins the thread. Interestingly, reading the Swedish DD, I find the introduction to the Swedish historical background to be strikingly similar to the Norwegian one, though perhaps presented in a somewhat more respectfull manner. This is encouraging, because it would indicate that there is a lot from the Swedish content that could be (partially) adopted into the Norwegian one.

@CraniumMuppet Seeing that you are two developers working on the Swedish content, and that a lot of effort seems to have been put into creating really interesting solutions to similar problems, is there any chance that what is being developed for Sweden somehow spills over on the Norwegian content so that it isnt nescesarry to "reinvent the wheel"? Or perhaps that some of the supervision you outlined receiving for the Swedish DD is extended to the development of the Norwegian content?

Not sure exactly what the question is here, or what reinventing the wheel means in this context?

Outside the resource changes and the initial Norway landings I am in no way knowledgeable about the inner politics or economics of Norway at the time