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Developer Diary | Historical Sweden

Välkommen!

That is of course not English, but rather Swedish which will be today's dev diary. This DD will talk about the branches for the military and industrial branches, as well as democratic branches.

This tree has been a collaboration between me and AveeBee. We have had a longstanding rule in the HoI team that no Swede is allowed to touch a Swedish focus tree, but apparently that rule flew out of the window as long as the Swede in question was supervised by an adult.

Normal caveats apply, there’s work in progress stuff in here, and things might change before release.

Historical Context
As most of you already know, Sweden was the only Nordic country that was not invaded during WW2, but in a similar way to Switzerland was pressed by both the allies and the axis which led to some dubious concessions, but Sweden remained neutral through it all.

While Sweden arguably had the superior military capabilities compared to its Nordic neighbors, it was woefully unprepared for war and was caught with its proverbial pants down on the eve of WW2 with its government preferring to focus on the welfare state rather than its military, something that would change as the war progressed. This will be a major theme for the focus tree in large.

As you might have noticed I keep saying Democratic, not Historical. That is of course because historically Sweden did not join any wars. Me and Amy decided early on that we assume that players _will_ want to get into a war sooner or later, (which is after all a key tenet of the game), which is why even under the Democratic paths you will eventually join the war. (of course the AI will have guardrails against this on historical)

While there are a lot of historical references to things that actually happened, we are assuming that the player wants to engage in the warfare part sooner or later.

Start
At the start of the focus tree you will have the choice to pick from a total of 4 leaders. Historically this was Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp which only ruled for a few months until Per-Albin Hansson came back in the 1936 election, called the Summer Government.

You can try to keep Per-Albin which will result in a Vote of No Confidence, or you can pick Gösta Bagge which is the right leaning option
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Don’t worry about losing out on Per-Albin Hansson though! After the summer is over another election will happen, and you can return him to power. If you went through the hassle of having a Fallen Riksdag you get an additional option of appointing Ernst Wigforss as a Per-Albins successor, or if you want you can continue with the leader you have.
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Hungershield and Folkhemmet
Before I continue I need to bring up the issue of stability, or rather Hungersköld (Hungershield). During the first world war Sweden was embargoed by the entente due to iron ore trade with Germany, leading to domestic protests, riots and eventually the ousting of the current Swedish government.

The Swedish PM at the time, Hjalmar Hammarskjöld was nicknamed “Hungerskjöld”, hence the wordplay. At the onset of WW2 the fear of food shortages again loomed large for Sweden, and drove both domestic policies and was a great fear for the populace.
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In the game this is represented with stability acting as a shield against such hunger strikes. Being above a % of stability protects the player against those adverse effects, and being below that threshold opens you up to the risk of getting strikes.
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Riots can happen if you are at a very low stability. . While they are temporary you will not want to get stuck in an endless cycle of these. There are a few safeguards that we have put in place to make sure that players that temporarily dip under these thresholds will not immediately get these strikes instantly due to a bad RNG roll, but you do not want to stay under the limit for very long.

That leads us to another concept, Folkhemmet (The People's Home). While you might know it as the name of communist Sweden, it was actually a set of social-democratic policies that paved the way for the welfare state that Sweden has today.

The focus on this welfare state was partially why the government at the time was hesitant to spend a lot of the budget on the military, as these programs were very popular. In game this is represented with the Folkhemmet spirit.
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As long as the welfare state is intact it acts as a buffer against the risk of getting strikes, but as you can see it also drastically reduces the military capabilities of Sweden.
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As you progress through the focus tree key focuses will start to orient the Swedish industry towards war, but the Folkhemmet shield that is protecting you from strikes will be chipped away.
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To demonstrate this is what a fully degraded Folkhemmet looks like at the moment.

To counter this there's a mix of things the player can do, such as employing advisors, picking focuses that add stability, picking decisions that add stability and so forth. We don’t specifically dictate how you handle this system, but rather hope that players will handle it differently depending on playstyle and how aggressive they want to be.

In a nutshell it is a question of “when do I rearm” and “how do I avoid the adverse consequences of those decisions”, and make sure you also do not get caught with your pants down. With those main themes explained, let's look at the actual tree

Industrial Branch
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This is the entrypoint for the focus tree. The Defense Act is where you pick your leader, and just below it is the industrial branch. As you can see there's a clear divide between the focuses, and that you can mix and match some of them.
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These are two examples, and as you might glean the left side is more aligned with social-democratic policies, while the right one is more aligned with right leaning policies. The right side generally leans more towards ratcheting up the defense industry, while the left one focuses more on the internal stability of the state.

Putting this into context, if you amass a larger pool of stability from these focuses, you might be able to offset the dip in stability from Folkhemmet, but on the other hand it might take longer to do so.
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If you really do not want to deal with this at all you can lean heavily into the right and remove it completely.
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You can also leverage your ball-bearing trade (the things that make other things spin). Something that Sweden smuggled to both the axis and allies.

Flashpoints
As the events of history unfolds events will happen that put Sweden into contact with the great powers of the war. These are events that we nicknamed Flashpoints, which are historical contextual events that happened to Sweden during the war.
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Here Sweden gets accidentally bombed by the USSR
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The USSR can apologize or deny this. In this case they deny it, allowing Sweden to respond
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Sending military aid to Finland as a response will escalate tensions with the USSR
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If the chain of tensions reaches a boiling point it will boil over, dragging Sweden into the war as well, or not depending on how Stalin responds
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This is one example of one of these events where tensions might lead to war.

Military Branch
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Scrolling right we find the 3 military branches of the focus tree which will be shared between all the paths of the focus tree
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What is a bit special though is that part of the tree is locked behind war support (or military factories if you get that far). Instead of providing stuff like military factories these focuses augment the military directly, think of them as a miniature doctrine tree.

The focus behind this “war support gate” is intended to put some additional pressure on the player to want to get war support up, tying back to the interplay of the Folkhemmet and Hungershield.
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These are generally divided into a defensive and offensive play style with the left one being more oriented towards defensive oriented players, and the right one being more oriented towards offensive offensive players. (pictured above is the panic button focus)
As you progress through the focuses these spirits grow in strength as you invest more resources into them
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While these cornerstone focuses are strong, they require investment in both time, and being gated behind war support. How quick you get to them is decided by how fast you rearm.
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You might recognize Bofors in this example which made the popular 40 mm Anti Air gun. In this case Bofors gets a unique trait and funds for the MIO
The military branch of the focus tree is where a lot of Folkhemmet is going to be changed via focuses. It also provides some much needed funds for the Swedish MIOs
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Navy Branch
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Sweden's navy tree is mainly divided into whether you want to contest the Baltic directly via capital ships or if you prefer to go the German route and focus on submarines and light surface fleet for harassment.

The top shared part deals mainly in expanding the output of the domestic industry, as well as the option to buy older ships from other countries.
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As happened historically, the Italian destroyers might take a roundtrip through the world and end up in Iceland, so be aware :D
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Of course we couldn’t resist making a Vasa focus, however we hope that it is slightly more successful than its predecessor.
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While its a powerful battleship it deploys at 60% complete, so you’ll need to finish the other 40%.

Winter War
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When Finland was invaded by the USSR it reverberated through Sweden. Finland was seen as a first line of defense against the Russian threat, which has been a historic adversary of Sweden.

You are given a choice of whether to go the historic route and send volunteers, try and claim the Åland islands when Finland is weak, or get actively involved in the war. Getting involved in the war will give you a mission of taking Leningrad, and if you or Finland manages to take it the Soviet Union will either be forced to sign a white peace, or face massive unrest. Both Sweden and Finland also get the avatars of their nation to help out, for a while.
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If Leningrad is lost the USSR will either be forced to revoke their claim, or face embarrassment.

Democratic Branch
As you probably know Sweden did not enter the war. But in HoI all the preparation and buildup, and later on the war itself is a key component of the core game loop. Aveebee and I decided to take an early design decision to work under the key assumption that players who play Sweden will want to get into the war.

Meaning that we have had to modify the historical path to work with the plan that Sweden will enter the war at some point. Of course the historical Swedish AI will not enter the war unless provoked.

In practice that means that the historical branch will have focuses related to events that did happen in real life, but they work under the thesis of Sweden eventually getting involved as well.
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A lot of refugees from other Nordic countries fled to Sweden and were secretly trained as “police forces”. Some of these would later help liberate Norway. In game this focus puts these police forces in a separate pool that grows as more Nordic countries capitulate.

On the onset of war this banked manpower will be unlocked and transferred into the normal manpower pool. You can also expand the facilities to raise the training cap for

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Beep Beep

Most important of all is the Per Albin Bus (pictured above). This is a mobile headquarters that the Swedish government planned to run away into the forest with in case of invasion. In game the bus is a state modifier that can be moved to adjacent states, reducing the surrender limit. If the bus gets captured the country leader dies. (We actually got to see this bus when we visited the Army Museum last summer)
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You can move the bus as long as you control an adjacent state,which means that you can take Per Albin all the way to Moscow if you really want to for some reason.
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Sweden also has access to Rangers, which are special forces that send out undercover troops to sabotage vital infrastructure behind enemy lines. Use it wisely as the casualties of these can be quite high. Very useful to blow up enemy ports in Norway.
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As you eventually enter the war by trying to either Save Denmark or Norway Sweden gets a goal to liberate every occupied Nordic country. The more occupied countries the stronger this bonus becomes, with an additional bonus once those countries are liberated.

Nordic Defense Council
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If the more careful path of building up your defensive capabilities is a bit too conservative for you there's always the option of forming the Nordic Defense Council. This involves more aggressively tackling the threats around you with the other Nordic countries' help.
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It invites every Nordic to become a member state of the council, and you get to pick whether to centralize its command at the cost of its member states not being able to defend themselves as well,
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Or decentralize its command into its member states
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Here is an example of a centralized command, with Mannerheim and Helge Ljung working side by side
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In the end you can opt out of picking either Death or Dishonor, growing stronger the more member states you have.

Late Game Focuses
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We also put in some late game focuses, mainly for those that want to continue the campaign after WW2 has concluded. These tie into late game technologies, the new special forces rework and finally dealing with the threat of the iron curtain.
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This Lion looks a bit more majestic than the Gripsholm Lion. A frequent on r/badtaxidermy
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Advisors, Military and States
As always we have new awesome advisors. Here are the ones available to Sweden.
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My favorite one in Sweden is Ebba Margareta, which does not cost anything to hire but can get traits depending on how the player chooses to invest.
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We also have the couple Myrdal which feeds off of each other if they are both in the Cabinet.
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As for the new generals here they are. Most of their experience came as a result of being in the Finnish civil war.
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And the Admirals! Charles de Champs is definitively winning the style competition here.
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And these are the new Swedish states! My pet peeve of having Norrbotten and Lappland on the map as two separate entities has finally been solved! (sorry for the weird slicing of the image Sweden has a…weird shape). Åland now also starts demilitarizing at the start of the game (which it still is to this day).

And finally, some nice 3D models!
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I call this one the Sardine deathtrap (The engine is in the front....)
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The Resource redistribution
Finally there’s the question of resources. During WW2 Germany was partially reliant on Swedish iron ore, especially before the fall of France. Arguably the reason why the Narvik campaign happened at all was Germany's desire to secure the Gällivare mines, and the allies desire to blow it up (under the pretense of helping Finland).

We have tried several ways to model this in game but it has been hard for several reasons. The trade algorithm runs the shortest route capital to capital, while the actual resources are located in the north of Sweden. The algorithm also really prefers land routes, which would go across Denmark, or if by sea through the Baltics and not through Narvik as was historically. Changing this is outside the scope of this expansion and while we tried other adding content driven systems on top of this nothing worked satisfactorily up to this point.

I don't rule out some abstraction for Germany controlling Narvik gaining them some IC boost, but currently we decided to sidestep it in another direction, by making Germany a bit more reliant on imports.

Germany has in game had more domestic resources than it actually had in game, leading to a problem of it never really having issues with resources, especially steel. Whatever steel it needed was either in Germany proper, or soon to be taken from France, leading to the “Free Trade Meta” we often see these days.

Part of the issue is the abstraction of coke, ore grade, steel mills into the single encompassing iron which makes this hard to properly represent. All in all Sweden provided around 43%, German domestic production 28.2% and France 12.9% to the German war effort between 1933-1943. Having buildings such as steel mills was also outside the scope of this expansion.

This resulted in an overall reduction in iron for specific countries, main targets were Germany which overall had poor iron ore quality, and France which Germany will gobble up. Germany starts with 2 civilian factories more than before to use for import as needed. Portugal also got some tungsten shifted to Sweden. Below are the main changes, with no changes in trade law from 1936 starting dates, accounting for starting infrastructure and no equipment lines active.

Germany
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France
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Portugal
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PRE-AAT
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SWE
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PRE-AAT
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These numbers are not final and might change depending on balance and how the AI performs.
View attachment Focus Tree.png
Whole Focus Tree Above

I don't have any good ways to end this, so I'll just stop by saying
 

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You can add a historical focus to the end of the Cold War tree. That is, maintaining neutrality. The game should not end with World War III, but with multilateral disarmament and transition to the Cold War. After defeating one of the factions, when the other two factions have nuclear weapons, the AI should start deleting divisions, reducing the level of mobilization and switching to civilian production.
 
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I don't understand what this free trade meta the devs are reffering to. Are they reffering to the fact that most Germany players pick Free trade as their first PP choice? because changing germany's amount of steel wont actually affect that much since most players go back to limited exports in 1939/late 1938. If the free trade choice is reffering to something else, i don't know about it.

Personally I don't think i'm bothered at all about the steel changes for 3 reasons:
1. I'm sure the new MIO's will give some help back to Germany, for example resource penalty production
2. They aren't completely removing the steel for nothing, Germany now starts with 2 more civs at gamestart.
3. Need Steel? Just invade Sweden. If you invade early, ba-da bing ba-da boom, you can now trade 1 civ for 80 steel from your puppet. Invade and they join allies? just make sure you collab government them.
How about Democracies? They also need steel and have more debuffs than Germany. How do you balance all that?
 
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The point clearly seems to be to more realistically map the steel production globally to where is was in reality.

Not every country or region is endowed with equal natural resources. Or for that matter the industrial capacity or educated workforce to properly consume them and produce material suitable for military use.

There is probably a global resource rebalancing that needs to happen. As years ago when many of these arguments were originally brought up it was found the distribution in game deviates from the reality in 1936-45.

but I guess I still maintain that if you’re playing some historically irrelevant minor in LatAM, Africa or Asia—or even Europe, why do you have an expectation of consuming a portion of the global steel supply far beyond what said nation was consuming or even hypothetically able to consume in reality?

I suppose ultimately our visions of alt history are different. When I think of alt history in LatAM in 1936 I think of choosing coffee or bananas to plant—not building a world conquering combined arms army and blue ocean navy in 3 years.
It's fundamentally still a game, not a history simulation which sometimes people seem to forget. When you're essentially locked out of the most vital resource of the entire game to really do anything you're not really playing the game. Last I checked games were supposed to be fun, not scrambling to find any last nation with ~8 steel to buy that hasn't already been snatched up by somebody else because you wanted to play the wrong ideology in your sandbox. I'm pretty sure most people prefer actually doing meaningful things rather than shuffle around their trade screen every few months to try to find some forgotten morsel of steel that hasn't already been traded away.

Also I guess Mexico, India, China, Austalia, NZ etc. are all historically irrelevant based on your statement since all of them have fuckall steel to work with, which is fine if you stay in your nice box in the Allies I guess?
 
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How about Democracies? They also need steel and have more debuffs than Germany. How do you balance all that?
Buy from the US? Or France before they fall? Or even the Soviets? Like jesus not like you have a lack of partners to trade with unlike when you're at war with half the world
 
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This looks so great. Especially love the idea of being able to evacuate your head of state. Can't wait to see what you're doing for Norway now.
 
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Buy from the US? Or France before they fall? Or even the Soviets? Like jesus not like you have a lack of partners to trade with unlike when you're at war with half the world
Play France: with a crippled economy you're buying and can't build anything anymore. Balance... I don't say it's impossible to win, but seriously starting with 33 CIV and 3 Research slots and not being able to overcome this until mid-game is already a serious handicap.
 
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Play France: with a crippled economy you're buying and can't build anything anymore. Balance... I don't say it's impossible to win, but seriously starting with 33 CIV and 3 Research slots and not being able to overcome this until mid-game is already a serious handicap.
I mean, even for France with the nerf you still have enough steel to last you well into the midgame, only resources I find myself lacking as France is rubber and oil. But yes I agree France is pretty handicapped. I'm more concerned where Italy, Hungary, Romania etc. can scrounge any extra steel when they're already depleted if Germany has none to spare now
 
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I mean, even for France with the nerf you still have enough steel to last you well into the midgame, only resources I find myself lacking as France is rubber and oil. But yes I agree France is pretty handicapped. I'm more concerned where Italy, Hungary, Romania etc. can scrounge any extra steel when they're already depleted if Germany has none to spare now
We'll have to see the balance. Even without building up mechanized + tanks, 5 armies fully equipped is the minimum to resist the onslaught, need enough resources for that at the very least.
 
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We'll have to see the balance. Even without building up mechanized + tanks, 5 armies fully equipped is the minimum to resist the onslaught, need enough resources for that at the very least.
They still have more steel than the UK, I'm pretty sure it's doable because by the time you're running low you ought to have civs to spare in that case unless you're trying to build a huge navy at the same time.
 
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They still have more steel than the UK, I'm pretty sure it's doable because by the time you're running low you ought to have civs to spare in that case unless you're trying to build a huge navy at the same time.
I want to see. But again, I need ability to have more CIVs, otherwise I must stay passive way longer.
 
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You can move the bus as long as you control an adjacent state,which means that you can take Per Albin all the way to Moscow if you really want to for some reason.
Of course I want to.

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Also this needs to be an achievement.
 
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How about Democracies? They also need steel and have more debuffs than Germany. How do you balance all that?
France wasn't nerfed as hard as Germany in steel production, France starts as a democracy so they get some civs from trade right off the bat (and it usually only goes up the longer the game goes on) as to your complains about france's debuffs you'll find I completely agree that they are nerfed too hard just to basically be food for whoever invades them. France always loses to Germany, Always loses to non-democratic U.K, the only reason they don't lose to Italy is because AI Italy is just as bad as them.
 
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Hey so glad you guys are doing Scandanavia! I'm sure this expansion will be great. Just a few questions.

Are you guys going to do a focus tree for Reichskommissariat Norway for this expansion? And will you allow Reichskommissariat Norway to build New Trondheim as the Nazis wanted (Perhaps implemented as a decision)? Will each nordic country have its own Nazi party / fascist party with a corresponding focus tree?
We will have dev diaries further up about the alt-history paths of the countries ^^
 
In the current game, Sweden occasionally embargoes Germany.(This may directly anger players who play as GER and then invade Sweden).In the case where imported resources are required in AAT.Is there a certain way for Germany to prevent Sweden from embarking on Germany?If Sweden really wants to embargo Germany, how will Germany react to Sweden?
 
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In the current game, Sweden occasionally embargoes Germany.(This may directly anger players who play as GER and then invade Sweden).In the case where imported resources are required in AAT.Is there a certain way for Germany to prevent Sweden from embarking on Germany?If Sweden really wants to embargo Germany, how will Germany react to Sweden?
If I understand the little man with the even smaller mustache right, the answer is war.
 
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@CraniumMuppet what are the chances that Sweden will profit off its new resource deposits when it can't sell out its already existing ones due to this bug? Is it getting fixed?

Also, this below. Please give us at least a glimple of hope that you're set to resolve it despite the initial setback.
If you’re not going to fix the over abstractions and lack of player control over trade routes when you are doing the dlc that addresses narvik—then when, if ever?

the convoy, trade and resource elements of the game are some of the most over abstracted parts. And they have real strategic implications that often change the way players look at the strategic picture vs what actual belligerents in history had to consider.

We have tried several ways to model this in game but it has been hard for several reasons. The trade algorithm runs the shortest route capital to capital, while the actual resources are located in the north of Sweden. The algorithm also really prefers land routes,
No "algorithm" should allow resources to simply teleport from one end to another, land routes longer than say 1000 km should either cost trains (attrition damage) or be outright prohibited in favor of convoys.
 
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@CraniumMuppet what are the chances that Sweden will profit off its new resource deposits when it can't sell out its already existing ones due to this bug? Is it getting fixed?

Also, this. Please give us at least a glimple of hope that you're set to resolve it despite the initial setback.
We are aware of the issue.
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Currently the plan is to have Germany getting a buff to industry if it controls Narvik, and if the UK invades Narvik it can do plan r4 and blow up the mines and then peace out Sweden

I tried other bolted on top content driven systems but it either turned out to be one of:
1. Pressing button minigame
2. Over convoluted code that was very brittle and full of edge cases and I didnt like any of the solutions
 
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