• 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.

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.

Capture1.JPG


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.

hoi4_3.jpg



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.

hoi4_6.jpg



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.

hoi4_5.jpg


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.

hoi4_131.jpg


(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:

awake_and_angry.jpg

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

romance_of_the_three_kingdoms.jpg

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

sun_tzu_reborn.jpg

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

the_people_have_stood_up.jpg

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

made_in_china.jpg

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

tojo_shot_first.jpg

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

sunrise_invasion.jpg

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

the_dragon_swallowed_the_sun.jpg

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

hail_to_the_qing.jpg

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

the_good_the_bad_and_the_weird.jpg

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.

battlecry.jpg

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

panda_monium.jpg

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

make_a_man_out_of_you.jpg

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

my_ships_dont_lie.jpg

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

i_swear_im_not_a_byzantophile.jpg

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

australia_hungary.jpg

Australia-Hungary: Annex all of Hungary as Australia

our_other_place_in_the_sun.jpg

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

monarchy_is_back_in_fashion.jpg

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
 
About the issue of historical accuracy and video games, I'll go repost my stuff from this thread:

I'd like to weigh in on this.

While I love historical accuracy, I see this as perfectly fine, and even welcome it. Alternate history is always fun, and to me this is actually somewhat plausible.

Look, my favorite type of China game is always ahistorical - the Kuomintang doesn't just keep going, they push the Japanese out of China, capture Manchukuo and win the civil war afterward, earning the Allies' appreciation in the process. That's alternate history, and it's something I love to speculate about. Alternate history has seen beautiful AARs (shout out to Porkman's lovely AAR on HOI3 China) and timelines such as Twilight of the Red Tsar, a beautiful alternatehistory.com thread that centers around Stalin surviving his stroke.

What I judge as "ahistorical" is on this - there at least has to be some degree of plausibility for it to happen. The Holy Roman Empire restoration, which is thankfully a hard to get easter egg, is totally implausible and idiotic, because the only man wanting to restore it was von Stauffenberg, and it was mostly in his head. If it was a national focus, I'd have to lobby the suggestions forum to remove it. But the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Imperial German restorations are perfectly fine - Hungary got hit with several royal coups, while Germany had, and still has, monarchist supporters, no matter how small they were compared to other parties. The Qing Empire restoration is great - it does provide me with a lovely antagonist to fight (they should stay fascist, the Qing were horrible) and it was Puyi's original motive.

Besides, this is a video game. As a history buff and gamer, I've had to struggle with my love for history over better gameplay. But ultimately, I've chosen to be flexible like Romania and accept it. Example: I was upset over the amount of automatic weapons in Battlefield One, until I realized that it had always been that way, to include rare guns and semi and full-auto weapons. It was a core part of the game, and any changes would be odd for the fanbase to face. Besides, it still makes for good entertainment, and in the end, as much as we history buffs want to forget it, video games are not a historical retelling. They are media to consume and enjoy. I think we should remember that.
 
Have you having fun conquering the world as Belgium? Is it really fun? And how can you get tired of WW2 anyway?

@Arbus with this DLC we can see a communist Japan but still no D Day.
Come on.
I don't play as belgium at all. Just because I disagree with 'Games should follow history to the letter without any kind of flexibility' doesn't automatically mean I'm in favor of complete sandbox where you can conquer the world as luxembourg. I find myself in the camp of historical plausibility as long as there is basis and enough historical argumentation for it.
 
Why isn't there an achievement for winning the civil war as nationalist china?

That's not really much of an achievement. The only reason they lost the civil war was corruption and sheer incompetence.
 
Only 19 days until we get to wake the tiger!

Waking the Tiger.png
 
In honor of Gran Colombia, here's some lovely music! (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

 
Out of interest, how is Tsar Boris remembered in Bulgaria today?

He truly was one of the best rulers in Bulgarian history (I'm not old like my fellow Jack would suggest :D), he may not have done huge conquests like the Tsars of old but he was a great diplomat and that is what people respect about him the most. He is credited with pulling Bulgaria out of isolation post-WW1 after his father Ferdinand (True Emperor of Byzantium) peaced out. During the 20s and 30s he survived countless assassination attempts and several coups, married an Italian princess, used diplomacy to stop the Greek invasion in 1925. Most importantly, the reason everybody respects and praises him today is because he wanted to restore the old borders with diplomacy and not through war (Boris fought in WW1 and knew how bad it was). Today you would be hard pressed to find anyone who has a bad thing to say about him.

His son Simeon, he's a bit more mixed. People like the idea of the last Tzar being around, but as a politician he didn't really do much. Though in hindsight, I think it was more to his crew being incredibly incompetent (and they still are to this day).
 
the story is a bit different here tho. There you are forming it for the first time while in HOI its more like leadership are refering back to the glory days for their nation as a way of strengthening their position (dictators and all that) and for those cases moving your capital doesnt really make sense


Wait, so Istambul gets renamed to Constantinople when you form Byzantium, but you cannot move your capital to... Byzantium? You are stuck in Athens forever?
 
The formable nation ability looks really good, sure to add to the flavour of many of the minor nations. I am curious though if it will be possible to form a nation if some of the territories required are owned by a puppet that I control? Will I be required to mass lend lease equipment to puppets to annex them through the puppet system? I feel like forming a nation should bring all puppet states under one banner as a symbol of the renewal of a nation. Either way keep up the good work Paradox ! :)
 
I can see where you are coming from, but I guess the real expensive part of implementing achievements is creating the art of the icons. Which is most likely not done by someone who writes code but, well, by someone who creates art for the game (like portraits and such).
I presume they use already defined interfaces ingame and an API to connect the achievement to Steam so that the actual coding for such an achievement is done in a few minutes.

Besides of that, I (and I know that I'm not alone with that) almost exclusively play for achievements. In games like HoI where there is no real goal these are my supplements for goals.

You need achievements as goals in a WW2 strategy game? Isn't like winning the war a typical goal in those games? :D
 
Can we also have releasable nations like Catalonia, Castile, Bavaria, Stan countries, Siberia, US, Mexican and Canadian states as releasable-independent nations, you know all that could give more options for puppeting nation when you conquer a certain nation.
 
Yeh it's so implausible I refuse to play real life any more.

TBH Real Life is full of those kind of things, I mean the whole Napoleon expansion to real life was completely bugged. I mean how could a single country beat up whole of Europe. and it wasn't fixed until Duke of Wellington patch. :p
 
I totally get you. Suddenly everyone find WW2 boring, they prefer silly achievements and focus trees that don’t make sense (Haiti, Turkey, Greece.. really?) rather then a more real historical approach. :(

I love ahistory just as much as real history. In fact, the best part of learning about history for me has always been the "but what if that happened instead?" thought that I have after I read about a subject. Paradox adding ahistorical routes to HoI is like a dream come true to me.

That being said, I wouldn't object to getting a better baseline WW2 experience out of the game.

The two goals are not actually in (direct) conflict.