• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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While there are a lot of historical references to things that actually happened, we are assuming that the player wants to engage in the warfare part sooner or later.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
P1.png
P2.png
P3.png


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.
P4.png
P5.png


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.
P6.png


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.
P7.png


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.
p8-png.994155
P8.png


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.
P9.png


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.
P10.png


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
P11.png


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.
P12.png
P13.png

P14.png
P15.png


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.
P16.png


If you really do not want to deal with this at all you can lean heavily into the right and remove it completely.
P17.png


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.
P18.png


Here Sweden gets accidentally bombed by the USSR
P19.png


The USSR can apologize or deny this. In this case they deny it, allowing Sweden to respond
P20.png


Sending military aid to Finland as a response will escalate tensions with the USSR
P21.png

P22.png


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
P23.png


This is one example of one of these events where tensions might lead to war.

Military Branch
P24.png


Scrolling right we find the 3 military branches of the focus tree which will be shared between all the paths of the focus tree
P25.png


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.
P26.png


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
P27.png
P28.png


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.
P29.png


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
P30.png


Navy Branch
P31.png

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.
P32.png


As happened historically, the Italian destroyers might take a roundtrip through the world and end up in Iceland, so be aware :D
P33.png


Of course we couldn’t resist making a Vasa focus, however we hope that it is slightly more successful than its predecessor.
P34.png


While its a powerful battleship it deploys at 60% complete, so you’ll need to finish the other 40%.

Winter War
P35.png


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.
P36.png
P37.png

P38.png


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.
P39.png


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

P40.jpg

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)
P41.png

P42.png


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.
P43.png


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.
P44.png


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
P45.png


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.
P46.png


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,
P47.png


Or decentralize its command into its member states
P48.png


Here is an example of a centralized command, with Mannerheim and Helge Ljung working side by side
P49.png


In the end you can opt out of picking either Death or Dishonor, growing stronger the more member states you have.

Late Game Focuses
P50.png


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.
P51.png


This Lion looks a bit more majestic than the Gripsholm Lion. A frequent on r/badtaxidermy
P52.png


Advisors, Military and States
As always we have new awesome advisors. Here are the ones available to Sweden.
P53.png
P54.png

P55.png


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.
P56.png
P57.png


We also have the couple Myrdal which feeds off of each other if they are both in the Cabinet.
P58.png
P59.png


As for the new generals here they are. Most of their experience came as a result of being in the Finnish civil war.
P60.png


And the Admirals! Charles de Champs is definitively winning the style competition here.
P61.png


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!
P62.png
P63.png
P64.png

P65.png
P66.png


I call this one the Sardine deathtrap (The engine is in the front....)
P67.png
P68.png


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
AAT
P69.png


PRE-AAT
P70.png


France
AAT
P72.png


PRE-AAT
P71.png


Portugal
AAT
P73.png


PRE-AAT
P74.png


SWE
AAT
P75.png


PRE-AAT
P76.png


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
 

Attachments

  • P77.png
    6,5 MB · Views: 0
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 55Like
  • 21Love
  • 7
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
I also disagree on the resource nerfing. If you are a Minor country in Asia, Africa or America and is in a war against allies, you Will starve out of steel, since your convoys wont make It all the way to sweden without getting raided. Those continents also need to be balanced resource-wise.
Nerfing resources available to Germany in a regular old historical run might be fine, but it seems the ripple effects this will have haven't properly been looked at. So yes I agree more steel needs to be redistributed elsewhere in that case to offset the loss to other nations that may not be able to buy from the Allies or Soviets. And given how little resources certain continents have it seems the perfect place to start..

Edit: Hell I realised I even forgot about Hungary and Romania who already have very little steel and are reliant on buying from Germany or Vichy. If Germany doesn't have a surplus pretty much all the Axis minors are boned as far as steel goes..
 
Last edited:
  • 6Like
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
As more and more models are added to the game, will there be any consideration to reworking how they're assigned, so total remake mods can more easily use them?
 
  • 1Like
  • 1Love
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
I have a question with the Nordic Defense Council:

Why would you ever centralize? With penalties that severe there is simply no point, nor does it make sense historically, in WWII, and later in NATO, a centralized comand structure was and is critical for multiple national militaries to work together.

Are we missing some context here? Can we reduce that penalty and make it a buff in the future through things like decisions, or does it work like Army Curruption in Nationalist China and you can slowly remove the penalties via Army XP?
 
  • 4
Reactions:
I have a question with the Nordic Defense Council:

Why would you ever centralize? With penalties that severe there is simply no point, nor does it make sense historically, in WWII, and later in NATO, a centralized comand structure was and is critical for multiple national militaries to work together.

Are we missing some context here? Can we reduce that penalty and make it a buff in the future through things like decisions, or does it work like Army Curruption in Nationalist China and you can slowly remove the penalties via Army XP?
The debuffs just apply to the Nordic countries who are not leading the defense council. So it's a focus really tailored for a player led nation. Basically you the player get access to their manpower and existing Army which you should make much better use of than the AI. Seems great.

What's unclear to me is why even apply the debuff since the other countries transfer their army and manpower so they won't have anything in the field anyway?
 
  • 4
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Loving the look of this Sweden! I can see that Jämtland has been added as a state, alongside Bohuslän by the DLC's steam pictures. Would it be possible in any way for the state of Jämtland and/or its neighboring states to take on a different shape akin to the one shown so that expansionist Denmark and Norway could recreate their former borders at their greatest extents? (Lost as a result of the Torstenson War at the Second Treaty of Brömsebro).

1686763219733.png

State of Jämtland (incorporating Härjedalen) created ingame.

1686763432318.png
1686763462374.png

Expansionist Norway and Denmark.
 
  • 9Like
  • 1
Reactions:
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
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.

I agree, it is very frustrating to have excellent railsystems in place only to have my convoys travelling half around the world right into the british or indian navies.

I wish you could somehow manage trains away from supply to instead move resources on specific railways.

(Being my first post, I ask for forgiveness if I messed up the quoting or spelling)
 
  • 5
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Interesting diary, thank you.

I just wonder, as Sweden gets ”Bombing of Pajala” event, surely there will also be ”Midsommarkrisen”, right:)

And, of course we should have a ”svensk tiger”, to prevent the unnecessary information dissemination:)

IMG_0337.png
 
  • 3Love
  • 2
Reactions:
Since resource values were changed up could we expect at some point a global rework of the resource and industry values? You yourself noted how it can adversely impact the gameplay and as many mods shows properly modelling the resource values tend to only make the game more fun to engage with among other things adding replayability by making each start more unique or by incentivising and rewarding long term planing. Since the release there were so many threads on these values that there should be plenty information to work off of.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Nerfing resources available to Germany in a regular old historical run might be fine, but it seems the ripple effects this will have haven't properly been looked at. So yes I agree more steel needs to be redistributed elsewhere in that case to offset the loss to other nations that may not be able to buy from the Allies or Soviets. And given how little resources certain continents have it seems the perfect place to start..

Edit: Hell I realised I even forgot about Hungary and Romania who already have very little steel and are reliant on buying from Germany or Vichy. If Germany doesn't have a surplus pretty much all the Axis minors are boned as far as steel goes..
We will just have to see. These are just the first draft of changes, I'll see if it needs to change as time goes on. Part of this is dependant on our AI tests, part on QA feedback, and some on how the community reacts.

Germany has been a powerhouse for long, and their in-house resources has been high compared to their real life domestic resources, especially compared to the quality of ore that they actually had available to them. Bypassing a main mechanic as Germany and being able to go on free trade as well from my POV feels like a no-tradeoff scenario.

I think that Germany needs to be a major driver of the HoI4 universe, but having no resource restrictions outside of fuel I don't think is a good place to be in.

Expansionism should be a main driver for fascist, and I think it works quite well for Japan, but isn't a big enough factor for Germany.

That at least is my reasoning :)
 
  • 27
  • 4
Reactions:
Nerfing resources available to Germany in a regular old historical run might be fine, but it seems the ripple effects this will have haven't properly been looked at. So yes I agree more steel needs to be redistributed elsewhere in that case to offset the loss to other nations that may not be able to buy from the Allies or Soviets. And given how little resources certain continents have it seems the perfect place to start..

Edit: Hell I realised I even forgot about Hungary and Romania who already have very little steel and are reliant on buying from Germany or Vichy. If Germany doesn't have a surplus pretty much all the Axis minors are boned as far as steel goes..
In MP Axis minors won't be able to build as many tanks (if any at all) and italy won't be able to build a navy without trading all the civs away to the allies
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
In regards to possible lack of steel for balkan nations if Germany goes limited exports, maybe you could rearrange the Yugoslavian industry tree by removing the mutual exclusivity of Integrated Rail Network and Improve Serbian Rail Network (or even fusioning those 2) and instead make Local Self-management and Central Management mutually exclusive (and also delete Ljubljana University focus).
It would ensure that the focus Serbian Steel is taken by AI who rarely does so at the moment.

Also make the Turkish AI more likely to select the Sanayiciler focus decision Modernize Karabuk Iron-Steel factory since it is a prerequisite to select the on map decision expand Eregli Steel Works, which is usually impossible to do if you conquer Turkey.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
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.

Okay, with this you guys are effectively admitting that you are challenging ISP to see how many different ways he can do this...

These tie into late game technologies,

Timeline extension confirmed?
 
  • 2Like
  • 2Haha
Reactions: