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HoI 4 Dev Diary - Formable Nations and Achievements

Hello, and welcome back to another dev diary! We are on the home stretch, with only two more issues to go before release! The team is working very hard to squash the last bugs and tweak the almost-possibly-partially-final values.


Today, we will talk about Achievements and Formable Nations.


Formable Nations have already been teased by some ill-advised clicking on stream. We won’t tell you just how you can get the infamous form_hre decision, but rest assured: it is quite a journey. And no, the trigger that was accidentally shown on stream is no longer quite so accurate...


The historical purists can also rest assured that they won’t see the decision pop up if they follow the historical path, and the AI is set to never go down this path.

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The goal of the Formable Nations system is to give players a goal to work towards and enhance the sandbox gameplay. The formable nations have proven quite popular in other titles such as EUIV and the economics-simulator-that-shall-not-be-named. The implementation was fairly simple on the mechanics side: if you are one of the countries that can form a nation and control the required territories, you can activate a decision to form that nation. This gives you a cosmetic tag and cores on the relevant territories.

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We have a few fairly plausible formable nations like the Baltic Federation, Scandinavia, or the United Netherlands, which are pretty easy to do. We also have a number of somewhat less historically accurate formable nations like, say a reborn Roman Empire (which Mussolini may or may not have been aiming for), and finally the really far out ones like the Byzantine Empire.

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We envision these latter ones to be a late-game thing, after you have already achieved dominance over your region, when you want a little extra flavor for that world conquest. We’ve also attempted to ensure that all world regions have at least some possible formables.

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Again, the AI is set to never take these decisions in historical mode, and the territory requirements are such that only the more plausible and easy ones would likely ever be taken by the AI.


Currently, you need to control the territory directly, but future iterations might also allow you to form nations diplomatically.


Your reward is a new name and country color and a new flag. We had a lot of fun coming up with alternative history flags for a lot of these countries. For some, there are some additional goodies like custom namelists.

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(This particular one is also available if you form Austria-Hungary through the Hungarian focus tree)

We’re not going to spoil the full list of countries that you can form - you can find them out yourself in just a few weeks.

And if forming a new nation isn’t enough of a challenge for you, Waking the Tiger also comes with 18 new achievements:

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Awake and Angry: Reconquer all of China and Manchuria and force a Japanese surrender.

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms - as China, puppet and then annex Yunnan and Guangxi Clique.

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Sun Tzu Reborn: As Any Chinese Nation, have fully upgraded/promoted field marshal to Level 10.

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The people have stood up!: With Mao as your leader, win the Chinese Civil War.

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Made in China: As Communist China, have over 100 military factories

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Tojo shot first: As Japan, nuke a core territory of the US before the US develops nuclear weapons.

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Sunrise Invasion: As Japan, conquer Mexico then Europe before 1945.

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The Dragon Swallowed the Sun: As Manchukuo, break free from Japan and annex your former Overlord without being in a faction.

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Hail to the Qing: As Manchukuo, restore the Qing dynasty.

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The good, the bad and the weird: As Manchukuo, have max level infrastructure in every owned state and generate at least 15 units of oil.

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Battlecry: As a warlord, conquer all of China and Japan.

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Panda-monium: As a warlord, be at war with all chinese nations simultaneously.

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Make a man out of you - Have at least 1.000.000 manpower queued up for deployment.

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My ships don't lie: Form Gran Colombia and have 20 capital ships

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I swear I’m not a Byzantophile: As Greece, Form Byzantine Empire.

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Australia-Hungary: Annex all of Hungary as Australia

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Our Other Place in the Sun: As Imperial Germany, conquer a Caribbean island.

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Monarchy is back in fashion: As Germany, bring back the Kaiser and ensure that Italy is controlled by Victor Emmanuel by killing Mussolini.


That is all for today. Next week, we will take a closer look at the nuts and bolts of the game and talk a little about what our AI programmer(s) have been doing in these past weeks. On stream, Daniel and Gabriel continue their run of “historical” Germany, so tune in at 16:00 CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


Rejected Titles:

Providing a sense of Pride and Accomplishment

Stealing Victoria II game mechanics for fun and profit, mostly profit

Dan Lind’s Disney Song Singalong

Google Search History: Byzantium Tank Division Names

We use only the finest memes for our achievements

Proud to announce the Shakira/Sabaton collaboration project
 
Also Byzantium should be formable by Romania,

I disagree: Byzantium has a very distinct "Romano-Greek" vibe exclusive to Greece. Romania should be able to restore the Latin Roman Empire though, like Italy.
 
I disagree: Byzantium has a very distinct "Romano-Greek" vibe exclusive to Greece. Romania should be able to restore the Latin Roman Empire though, like Italy.
Except the roman empire the Italians can form is very much the western roman empire (and will most likely have formation criteria relating to that) the romanians are tied to the eastern roman empire ergo Byzantium.
 
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Can you add something for Poland ? For example option to rebuild Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth woluld by nice. And option to put annex as national terytory, prowinces where Polish where minority like: Silesia, Pomerania, Zaolzie and some eastern territories.
 
Cheers for the DD Archangel, and the extra info Podcat/Bratyn :D. I think I'm forming a very positive opinion of Waking the Tiger :D (that's the best pun I can manage :p).

Stealing Victoria II game mechanics for fun and profit, mostly profit

Global canned goods market for HoI4 confirmed?! o_O

Hail to the Qing

Love it :cool:

Battlecry

Quality gaming reference is quality :cool:

My ships don't lie: Form Gran Colombia and have 20 capital ships

Love it :). A decent ask this, what with Colombia's largest warships during the period being their two Antioquia class destroyers.

Antioquia DD small.jpg
 
So if formation of a country involves direct control, does that take us back to situations where we may have to release and reconquer a subject territory or find a way to destroy an ally to meet the condtion?

The sad thing about achievements is that unless you allow shadow achievement tracking (i.e., non -ironman tracking for the player's own private interest and game paths) ) then your achievements are simply a taunt to players wise enough to know how game wrecking Ironman is in a game that as yet still can can go awry any time by finger faults and other human failings if not due to feature design.

@Archangel85 On that vein, any chance of that smart undo key for misclicked orders and other desktop operations with troops and army finichky army control mechanics. - that can save minutes to hours of rework (sometimes mitigated by a recent autosave).
 
Instead of an SS/Wehrmacht rivalry, Japan has an Army/Navy rivalry. I don't know about the collaborative divisions. I can't really think of any historical examples.
Burmese, Indian and Chinese units existed.
 
Bring on the AI dev diary or diaries. The AI has lots of issues to overcome to make the game playable with all these changes. I want to see how @SteelVolt and his team have met the challenges.
 
EDIT: How can some people be against the harmless inclusion of an *option*?

Indeed, how could anyone be opposed to an 'option', like the option to form a new tag.

If you get your option to turn off the option, then I want an option to turn off the option to turn off the option. How could anyone be against that??
 
They do not. The decisions are named in a flavorful manner. All descriptions point out the fact that these nations are being formed for propaganda purposes, and that for certain regimes the ability to point to a great empire in the past and to claim to be the (spiritual) continuation of that empire may well be of incredible importance for popular support for the government. The Kalmar Union decision is named such to illustrate what the government portrays itself as the continuation of. The names for the actual state are different.

Scandinavism was at its top in the 1850:s though (and kept on throughout the first world war), and had no references to Kalmar Union then either.

"National Liberalism", "Nordic Free State Union" or "United States of the North" were things drafted for more peaceful unions for sure, but "Three Crowns for Three Kingdoms" or "The union of the three kings" would probably work better and make some more sense.
 
edit2: I found it:
"The society's basic objective was a revival of the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as the capital, not the formation of a national state."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence#Filiki_Eteria

I will copypaste my answer from another thread about the same exact quote.

Now, I am no expert in the Greek War for Independence, but I see several problems with your source. Firstly it's Wikipedia, which is publicly editable, making it possible some random byzantophile just added that to support their argument. Secondly, the source that say that they were uninterested in a national state is singular and not possible for me to see. This of course does not necessarily disprove your argument, but it makes me less able to see your argument fully.

More problematic for your argument though, is that firstly the Filiki Eteria were an organisation more than a hundred years old when the HoI4 starts. This organsiation was long dead. Secondly, according to this book the organisation never rose to more than a couple of hundred people, who in turn never seem to have been in a leadership position from what I can see. I seriously doubt they could put out enough influence to be able to influence the new state. Thirdly, the same book I linked to above never mentions a wish to start a Byzantine empire, but several times that they wanted to start "a Greek state". I actually can't find any references to this proposed Byzantine restoration from a quick googling.

Once again, this does not necessarily state that it was not true, I am no expert on this area, but the main point of the Greek war of Independence seems to have been the establishment of a Greek state rather than a Byzantine restoration. Both the constitutions of 1822 and 1823 seem to allude to a Greek state rather than a Byzantine restoration (and mentions specifically that the Filiki Eteria had no part in it, further suggesting that their influcence already was spent). Sorry for using Wikipedia myself after criticising you for it. I am but a humble hypocrite...

Thus I still do not think it is at all plausible for a Byzantine empire to be rescurrected.
 
I will copypaste my answer from another thread about the same exact quote.

Now, I am no expert in the Greek War for Independence, but I see several problems with your source. Firstly it's Wikipedia, which is publicly editable, making it possible some random byzantophile just added that to support their argument. Secondly, the source that say that they were uninterested in a national state is singular and not possible for me to see. This of course does not necessarily disprove your argument, but it makes me less able to see your argument fully.

More problematic for your argument though, is that firstly the Filiki Eteria were an organisation more than a hundred years old when the HoI4 starts. This organsiation was long dead. Secondly, according to this book the organisation never rose to more than a couple of hundred people, who in turn never seem to have been in a leadership position from what I can see. I seriously doubt they could put out enough influence to be able to influence the new state. Thirdly, the same book I linked to above never mentions a wish to start a Byzantine empire, but several times that they wanted to start "a Greek state". I actually can't find any references to this proposed Byzantine restoration from a quick googling.

Once again, this does not necessarily state that it was not true, I am no expert on this area, but the main point of the Greek war of Independence seems to have been the establishment of a Greek state rather than a Byzantine restoration. Both the constitutions of 1822 and 1823 seem to allude to a Greek state rather than a Byzantine restoration (and mentions specifically that the Filiki Eteria had no part in it, further suggesting that their influcence already was spent). Sorry for using Wikipedia myself after criticising you for it. I am but a humble hypocrite...

Thus I still do not think it is at all plausible for a Byzantine empire to be rescurrected.

Well, try this one and look under the header "Great Idea" or "Megali Idea" - https://www.britannica.com/place/Greece/Building-the-nation-1832-1913

Admittedly old, but not as old as the Kalmar Union :p

It was during the debates that preceded the promulgation of the 1844 constitution that Koléttis first coined the expression the “Great Idea” (Greek: Megáli Idéa). This was a visionary nationalist aspirationthat was to dominate foreign relations and, to a significant extent, to determine the domestic politics of the Greek state for much of the first century of its independent existence.

If the expression was new in 1844, the concept was deeply rooted in the Greek popular psyche, nurtured by the prophecies and oracles that had kept hopes of eventual emancipation from the Turkish yoke alive and real during the dark centuries of the Tourkokratia. The Great Idea envisagedthe restoration of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire, with its capital once again established in Constantinople, which would be achieved by incorporating within the bounds of a single state all the areas of Greek settlement in the Middle East. Besides the Greek populations settled over a wide area in the southern Balkan Peninsula, there were extensive Greek populations in the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (Istanbul), itself; along the shores of the Sea of Marmara; along the western coastal region of Asia Minor, particularly in the region of Smyrna (İzmir); in central Anatolia (ancient Cappadocia), where much of the Greek populace was Turkish-speaking but employed the Greek alphabet to write Turkish; and in the Pontus region of northeastern Asia Minor, whose geographic isolation had given rise to an obscure form of Greek that was not understood elsewhere in the Greek world.

The Great Idea, the liberation by the Greek state of the “unredeemed” Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, was to be achieved through a combination of military means—an ambitious objective for a state with such limited resources—and a far-reaching program of educational and cultural propaganda aimed at instilling a sense of Hellenic identity in the very large Greek populations that remained under Ottoman rule. The University of Athens (1837) attracted people from all parts of the Greek world to be trained as students and apostles of Hellenism.
 
romanians are tied to the eastern roman empire ergo Byzantium.

They were not connected to the ERE in *cultural terms*, arguably the greatest factor. Romania's Latin culture is actually its major factor of national identity amidst a Slavic landscape.
 
Shouldn't he get the Latin Empire ?
The latin empire never called itself the latin empire it was a term used by the greeks to label it as not the true roman empire. In fact they used the term Frankokratia, the frankish occupation.

Byzantium? Wouldn't they call themselves the "Roman Empire"?
In 1936 the term Byzantium for the greek east rome has been around for many centuries.

More problematic for your argument though, is that firstly the Filiki Eteria were an organisation more than a hundred years old when the HoI4 starts. This organsiation was long dead. Secondly, according to this book the organisation never rose to more than a couple of hundred people, who in turn never seem to have been in a leadership position from what I can see. I seriously doubt they could put out enough influence to be able to influence the new state. Thirdly, the same book I linked to above never mentions a wish to start a Byzantine empire, but several times that they wanted to start "a Greek state". I actually can't find any references to this proposed Byzantine restoration from a quick googling.
That wasn't the question though and if you have an issue with what wikipedia claims then take it up with their sources, until you do that wikipedia has a source which most other pages on the internet does not.

They were not connected to the ERE in *cultural terms*, arguably the greatest factor. Romania's Latin culture is actually its major factor of national identity amidst a Slavic landscape.
FIrst of yes they are they were always subjects of the eastern empire granted the last latin subjects of the eastern empire but still of the eastern empire. Their land was never part of the western empire.
Secondly they are tied to the east by realpolitical terms, essentially they have already made the claim to be the sucessor of rome, their path to proving the validity of that claim would be by accomplishing goals similiar to what greece would have to do to prove it's legitimacy as a roman sucessor, the reconquest of constantinople, and other important places of the eastern empire, not taking far away rome.
And that's not to mention the fact that they are Orthodox which means they are tied to the ecumenical patriarchy in instanbul, at least they were under the ottoman empire because the ottomans bundled all orthodox under the patriarch of constantinople.
Sure they would likely not use the term byzantine, since byzantine specifically refers to the empire after it's latin elements loses power, but that could simply be a name shift thing, the byzantine empire formed by romania becomes the roman empire (and event has it decide if to change it to eastern roman empire if a western version is formed, or if to contest the claim of these western usurpurers and point out that there is only one roman empire and that it is ruled from constantinople).
 
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Will the formable nations mechanic include the Franco-British Union? So we don't have to rely on an AI event option? Like a Decision for the UK that if France has almost surrendered and your in the same faction (basically the same requirements as 'Defeat') you can enact it. (And an option to form it by force).

Can we please get some Fascist/Commie paths for UK? Mosley had a real chance of taking power, and Hitler was a big fan of the UK, and really really wanted them as allies, in fact he wanted a British Alliance far more then he wanted a Italian or Japanese one. It's really annoying the the UK doesn't have a fascist path, at the least Germany should have a focus or two dedicated to improving relations/fascist sympathies in Britain. Dear god a lot of pre-war Nazi propaganda was aimed at Glorifying Britain and they even made studying the British Empire and extolling it's virtues a lesson in school! It just seems very stupid to have certain things in the game and not this, something that would have had an absolutely massive impact on entire World, and it's not even mentioned at all.

The UK could also have a minor Go with the USA/Go with Japan focus bit, there was a fairly strong Anglo-Japanese alliance during the late 1800's early 1900's ('The Britian of the East') that was abandoned in favor of going with the US, with the US's 'splendid isolation', that could be a path to rekindling the Japanese Alliance. This could lead to an Antagonistic British-German relationship racing to Ally Japan, or a German-British Alliance extending to Japan (potentially at the expanse of Italy). Could be a cool scenario of a British-German-Japanese alliance facing off against a France-Itallian-America one.

The UK definitely needs to have a 'reclaim the 13 Colonies' focus.

These nation formation requirements a rather......byzantine

Achievement Ideas!

Kitty, Go Back to Sleep - Annex the various Chinese states.
MuLAN Party - Play as China and Annex Japan in a MP Game.
We'll Hire Only the Best - As the US have every political advisor slot filled
The First Order - Use Command Power for the first time
I Don't get Nice, I get Norse - Form Scandinavia
I love the smell of Saigon in the Morning- As the US, have an acclimatized division in Vietnam
Chef Mussolini - As Italy use transport planes to drop supplies
Austria Chows Down - As Austria reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire
I'm So Hungary - Unite the World as Hungary
Kaiserreich! - As Germany restore the monarchy
Mao Golong - As Communist China own Long Island (New York)
Fanny-Pack - As communist Argentina use transport planes to drop supplies
Fann-tastic - As Communist Argentina annex all of South America
Belgian Lives Matter - As Belgium Unite the World.
Operation Kraut Kontrol - Declare War on The German Reich when they have caused more then 50% World Tension
I Bought My Winter Boots - As Germany have a Cold Acclimatized Division
You're Finnish-ed - As Finland Annex the Soviet Union.
Nor-way Jose - As Norway annex Mexico
I ate the Last Danish - As Hungary annex Denmark
Dutch Oven - As the Netherlands have a Hot Acclimatized Division
Napoleon Dynamite - As France Deploy a Nuke.
Remove Baguette - Annex France
Command and Conquer - have fully upgraded/promoted field marshal to Level 10 and annex another nation
Red Alert - As the Soviet Union cause 100% World Tension
Tiberius Wars - Reform the Roman Empire
 
The UK could also have a minor Go with the USA/Go with Japan focus bit, there was a fairly strong Anglo-Japanese alliance during the late 1800's early 1900's ('The Britian of the East') that was abandoned in favor of going with the US, with the US's 'splendid isolation', that could be a path to rekindling the Japanese Alliance. This could lead to an Antagonistic British-German relationship racing to Ally Japan, or a German-British Alliance extending to Japan (potentially at the expanse of Italy). Could be a cool scenario of a British-German-Japanese alliance facing off against a France-Itallian-America one.
Or just to Germany retaining it's ties to China instead. Perhaps Germany getting ties to China and the US while the UK goes ties to Japan. That said it should perhaps be for "fascist" britain since we're talkign about allying another fascist country and taking a more imperialistic approach to the period.

The UK definitely needs to have a 'reclaim the 13 Colonies' focus.
That should definitely be a fascist branch thing.