Developer Diary | Italy #1

[ManoDeZombi]

Will irregulars be exclusive to Italy or will some other countries like the Soviet Union or Chinese warlords have them?

Only BBA nations will get access to the new battalions.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Venice is still called Venice instead of Venezia

Totally unacceptable. Fixed

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Will there be Italian music pack too? I'd love to get one!

More details on this on the future!

 

[C0RAX]

Will Albania get a unique focus tree?

Not in BBA, for now they only get annexation.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

How many more impassable borders have been added? There is a tiny snippet of it in the Venice-Istria-Slovenia picture

We'll talk about the Alps and impassable terrain more next week!

 

[ManoDeZombi]

View attachment 850317View attachment 850320

It seems to me, or does this focus use a Soviet KGB building image?

It is indeed the Lubyanka!
We've added a fair amount of new generic icons and for this one I thought that this building was one of the most iconic and probably easy to recognize

 

[ManoDeZombi]

I know you mentioned you would touch on it in the future but are the BoP stuff a scripted gui or a hard coded one?

More on this in the future. For now I'll just say that is fairly moddable, especially when it comes to the graphics, some of which (icons for sides, for example) you can change dynamically.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Are the Commanders shown already all the new Generals? I am hoping that Prince Amadeo, Duke of Aosta is added as well.

Oh, there are many more, but many of the new portraits are not ready yet. Here is a small tease of one of the generals you can get via focus, Mr. "Barba Electrica"

 

[C0RAX]

The balance of power mechanic looks cool. I noticed that Ethiopia also had a similar mechanic on the Steam store page. Any chance this might be expanded to several countries outside this dlc? I recall that there was a plan to expand internal politics for nations. I guess it might not reflect how every country worked, but could be used for say the rivalry between the army and navy for Japan or the SS and Wehrmacht for Germany.

Also while Albania isn't receiving a focus tree, is it still possible to play as them without only existing to serve Italy? Considering the historic partisan movement in the country perhaps there can be some decisions related to breaking free from Italy or resisting occupation entirely.

While it is not implemented for BBA the BoP can be used for anything you want, including non civil political situations such as the army vs navy issues of japan or SS vs Wehrmacht and where some of the identified use cases when I was designing the system initially.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Are Dev Diarys back to being weekly again?

Yup!

Very nice diary , very good job !
I want to ask tho, does Italy have no interaction for the Dodecanese ?
Also the island of Chios in Greece is misspelled as Samos (In the in game map i mean) , that needs to be changed imo.

There is none for now I'm afraid. Depending on time we might add something there but it is unlikely.

I read the post carefuly but I still cant figure out; can we bring our precious Vittorio in charge from the beginning or we have to wait for Mussolini to fail?

Don't wanna spoil the alt-history DD, you'll have to find out in a few weeks!

The balance of power mechanic looks cool. I noticed that Ethiopia also had a similar mechanic on the Steam store page. Any chance this might be expanded to several countries outside this dlc? I recall that there was a plan to expand internal politics for nations. I guess it might not reflect how every country worked, but could be used for say the rivalry between the army and navy for Japan or the SS and Wehrmacht for Germany.

Also while Albania isn't receiving a focus tree, is it still possible to play as them without only existing to serve Italy? Considering the historic partisan movement in the country perhaps there can be some decisions related to breaking free from Italy or resisting occupation entirely.

There are no plans to implement the Balance of Power feature to non-BBA countries for this DLC.

Might I suggest a Pact of Rome focus/foci below Italy First? It would be a nice alternative way to protect Austria against Germany whilst still allowing actions against the Allies. Right now I feel that the Italy First branch is bit bland as it mostly made up of wargoals and its most interesting option seems to just be inviting Spain.

I thought about something like that in the past, but decided against it for a reason that honestly I can't remember right now, I can give it a second thought, but no promises. Also keep in mind that some parts of the Foreign Politics Branch are fairly WIP so there still might be a few tweaks and changes to spice them up.

How does Italy's Stresa Front focus interact with France's Stresa Front focus? Does one nation completing the focus lock the other nation out of it?

Very WIP for now, but the idea is that the completion of the focus in one country will unlock/bypass the focus in the other country.

Would you consider reshaping Kosovo and splitting Macedonia into two states to allow for a more historically accurate Italian occupation of these areas?

It is very unlikely that we make any more map changes for this DLC.

I'm slightly worried regarding impassable terrain, When fighting in North Africa and Australia there were some big issues regarding how the frontlines and attack plans behave when provinces are captured, issues that actually don't exist when dealing with water if I may add, can we assume that the behavior as a whole is being looked on?

We will talk about that in the next dev diary, I have not implemented the impassable province borders but as far as I'm aware Frontlines cannot be drawn across impassable borders, as usual.

how much oil we talking about "At the leftmost part we have the Albanian sub-branch, in which you will send an ultimatum to Albania just like usual, but then you can also slightly boost the oil extraction there," 10 20 also will prospecting for oil increase the amount or will it stay the same as it is currenlty?

For now, very little oil (2 iirc) + synthetic refinery. Again, WIP values that might change before release.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Are you going to update the states that Italy had before and after Treaties of Rome(1941)? States are not correct in the current version of the game. (I am talking about Zara and surrounding areas, Split and few islands that became Italian)

Very unlikely that we make further map changes in Dalmatia for this DLC.

I have litteraly finished to read the biography of Amedeo ( an incredible story ) and the fact that he is finally in the game is indeed a dream! Plus why they can't just call the civil war Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of South as it was called?

So, the alias in script is actually the acronym for Regno del Sud, but I moved away from talking about that, since the idea is that if the Allies invade from the North, the Kingdom of Italy will spawn around that area, and not in the South

I think there's room to further penalize the Regia Marina in that national spirit, specifically on the topic of submarines. Admiral Mario Falangola wrote in 1941 a scathing report on the capabilities of Italian submarines after comparing them to their German counterparts. It's a very interesting read. It also killed Falangola's career. I summarized of this in a suggestion some time ago.

Can't make any promises, but I will def take a look at this! Thanks for sharing!

Asking the real question here:
There will be a weekly DD from now on?

Yup

That's cool! I might sound a little dumb saying this, as I am 99% sure it is just a joke from the developers, but please don't name the Mussolini missions as Missiolinis while in game. Also, the Balance of Power thing is really cool, any plans for a long term rework of, let's say, Germany, with all of these new mechanics? Great DD.

Hmmm... We'll see about Missiolinis, the name is kinda catchy
When it comes to other countries, no plans for this expansions, but not totally out of the table for the future!

 

[ManoDeZombi]

If I trigger the Italian civil war while playing France leading the Little Entente, will I get the non-aligned Kingdom of Italy tag as my puppet? This question goes for multiple scenarios:

1. UK joined the Little Entente, but is not the leader.
2. UK is leader of the Allies and fighting Italy too.
3. UK is leader of the Allies but are not fighting Italy.

Yes. There is certain criteria for assigning the overlord for the Kingdom of Italy, being a player (instead of AI), and being a faction leader takes priority.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Will there be a focus tree to get rid of the monarchy and proclaim the Italian Social Republic without a civil war? Historically, one of Mussolini's goals after his victory in Ethiopia was to get rid of the king

There is, Capo Supremo. Still a bit WIP though but you get the idea

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Why the historical 1943 Kingdom of Italy path is dlc-only and the Italian Social Republic "non-historical" path is base-game ? Or else I didn't understand anything.

You normally commit to a path when you go through a political focus branch. If the war goes badly and you have a civil war, you are still Mussolini (the path you comitted to). If you end up losing the Civil War, then it's game over.

Being able to "change sides" is just a bonus we added for BBA, since you also have the alt-history branches unlocked with the DLC.

Will the propaganda system from NSB be added in for Italy? I remember something about expanding its use for other majors when it was announced, and Italy certainly had its fair share of propaganda.

Unfortunately not.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Why are you making it the Italian names, but the vast majority of other areas in the world will have English names instead of their native names? If you're adding the native state and city names for Italy, shouldn't you do it for the rest of the world as well? I don't know, I just think it's a bit weird how Italy has Italian state and city names while Germany has English city names (but for some reason they have German state names).

I worked on Soviet Union, and we make it consistent for Soviet Union.
I'm workign on Italy, and I'm doing the same for Italy.
Trust me I have plans and I'm very thorough, whenever I work on the rest of the world I'll give the same treatment to the rest of the world.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Looks great! Can't wait to challenge the med with superior Italian naval dominance.

Quick query; in the screen vs capital ship choice of focus, one gives a bonus to Heavy Cruisers and the other gives a bonus to Light Cruisers. Aren't these the same tech in man the guns?

They are in MtG but they are not without it. The effect is valid for both. The big difference (with MtG) is the doctrine bonuses for different trees.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Just wanted to ask why Latium and not Lazio, and point out that it's "Starace" and not "Starache".

Need to do a final pass on this yet, but thanks for pointing it out, It'll be fixed!

Like, I can understand that we cannot divide Istria into 30000 states, but how Trieste things will be managed? In a peace treaty where Yugoslavia gets Istria, giving to them also Trieste is a bit simplistic; maybe I could propose splitting Trieste province into two and giving the city itself to Veneto State and the strip of land that's today's Slovenia coast leave it to Litorale state. Or Create another state for just Trieste or for the whole Friuli... there are many ways to fix this problem. Also, the Trento and Alto Adige/South Tirol border seems a bit odd (in real life it's different), so maybe you could twerk it up.

Honestly that entire region caused me many headaches when I was working on map changes. I decided on this map version for various reasons, among them the big concern of increasing state count that for the sake of increasing it, which leads to a very inconsistent concentration of tiny not-so-valuable states that can build a huge ton of AA and stuff like that, creating big unbalance.

I really like new mechanics (BoP and missions), and how they complete the narrative of the Focus Tree but looking at the Tree itself seems like it's lacking something. In the end, I hope it gets some more focus (for example I would change how Stresa front works, maybe with the guaranteeing of Austria put before (and maybe linked also to the possibility of creating a Pact of Rome) or giving also the chance to fail the guarantee of Austria (Germany ignore Italy's guarantee but Italy doesn't retaliate in fear and shift even more to allies), so Germany possibilities wouldn't be cut at the start of the game. Or also the fact that Mussolini declared himself the protector of Islam, so maybe some decision or focus regarding that would be cool.
I hope in the alt path there is at least a Democratic (I don't know if with a republic or a constitutional monarchy), a communist (maybe with the choice of being aligned to Moscow or not) and a monarchist path (with the chance of being aligned or not to the allies or the chance to make Vittorio abdicate in favour of Umberto).

All of these are just ideas (Hoping they can help you)! Thanks again for the DD and the time.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, it is always welcome and useful!

Awesome. However (and I might be called particularly annoying for this, but it IS my job as a proofreader in Italian), please not some Italian mistakes based on the screenshots:
- the name of the politician is Achille STARACE, not Starache
- why are all States name in Italian, but Latium is still called Latium? It would be Lazio (yes, even back then)
- "Culto al Duce" doesn't make much sense in Italian, it would be "Culto del Duce"

Thank you! Noted for fixing in the near future.

will the player be able to form Italian East Africa as a dominion and separate Tag or the region will be directly controlled by italy as in vanilla?

Still WIP and not 100% guaranteed, but the plan is that you can form the Italian East Africa tag, potentially after conquering Ethiopia and reaching certain compliance.

 

[C0RAX]

View attachment 850401
I know it's not the focus of the dev diary, but I can't help but notice that all occupation laws have been reworked in terms of manpower requirement and resistance target reduction.

well spotted. a small but important improvement we have made.

 

[ManoDeZombi]

Lavoro Fantastico, @ManoDeZombi!

I do have some questions:
1. Regarding the Superesercito and related Focuses: Does that mean I (as Benito Mussolini) will HAVE to go to war against a Major Power? What if I wanted to take it slow and build up my industries and military first, unlike the IRL Mussolini? Or will it be possible to skip them and rush to the bottom while playing "neutral" at first?
2. Will Japan also get the Midget Submarine tech? Both Italy and Japan are quite notorious for using them.
3. Aside from losing the Balance of Power, will there also be a minimum percentage of Victory Points so Italy gets plunged into a Civil War even if BoP is neutral?

Again, great job Paradox Team. <3

1. For now yes, the military reorganization only happened after Italy faced an actual major power in the war.
2. Japan is not getting the midget submarine hull for now. Maybe in the future.

So just to clarify, the Irregular and militia new unit types are part of the free update and not apart of the DLC? Ontop of that will we have other means for countries to enhance their respective militias/Irregular troops? in so far as focus bonuses or decision events wise? I can see a fair number of countries that would probably have some means and basis to prioritize around militias at various stages in the game. Including german Volksturm, UK home guard, soviet units i'm sure etc.

They are part of the free update, yes. For now exclusive to BBA countries, but I would personally like to expand into other countries in the future, can't make any promises though.

Great DD! I am not sure if it has already been reported, but there is a spelling mistake. The name of the advisor was Achille Starace, not Starache

Already reported and noted, thanks!

I see an intriguing lack of the Roman Empire. Did you decide to remove it, keep it as a decision, or is it now a dedicated alt-history path?

You will have to wait for the next Italian DD in a few weeks

 

[PDX_Danne]

Bruh, still waiting, @ManoDeZombi and @Paradox_Danne. If there's something that has already answered then i'll be looking for it myself but otherwise pls, especially the boldened ones. Thanks

Sorry for the late reply! We're all hands on deck, finishing up everything before release

A lot of what you've asked here is answered in the second Dev Diary, which talks about the alternative paths you can take; https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/developer-diary-italy-2.1534554/

What I can say is that there is a lot you can do even if you decide to puppet some African nations. And you can indeed create the AOI!

There's a bunch of new cosmetic tags. I'll just share this one (which is alt history, but what the heck!):