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HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!

Hi everyone! Today we'll be talking some more about the continued post release work as well as share some cool numbers we have gotten from our telemetry system about how people play.

1.5.2 Patch
Work has continued on the patch and it should be getting another updated opt-in beta any moment now Right now we are aiming for release on monday, but of course that may change depending on testing.

MEFO bills has seen some further balancing work based on feedback. They now give 5% consumer goods as well as a bit lowered cost and also bonusing refinery construction.

We have also added a cool little thing. Its now possible to change the 3D model representation for your divisions (like you could change the icon before on a template). We also let you preview the 3D models in the tech tree for technologies unlocking equipment etc. In multiplayer it works like the icon selection so you can't trick your enemies.

upload_2018-4-4_15-51-21.png


Other than that there are a couple of bugfixes and balance work. Check out the beta patch thread for details. The full changelog for 1.5.2 so far is this:
################################################################
######## Patch 1.5.2 "Cornflakes" ########
################################################################

##################################
# Feature
##################################
- Now it's possible to view the 3d models in the division designer and in the tech view. Also in the division designer, it's possible to choose a preferred 3d model to be used by that template.
- Free Battleships DLC that never really worked, has been moved into the base game.
- Holding shift now creates army group fronts without creating sub army fronts

##################################
# AI
##################################
- Garrison order improvements
- Fixed AI not using its military factories to their fullest when it is not in need of equipment. Now it will produce stuff as long as it has enough resources
- an AI chinese warlord that is at war with Japan will now be very eager to join the united front.
- Added AI strategies to the Baltics and Finland to make them more eager to join Germany's faction if Germany has chosen "Safeguard the Baltics" and/or "Support the Finns".
- Improved air AI to be less inclined to move air wings around frequently.
- Made german AI focus more on non-civilian construction between 1937-40
- Some improvements for naval leader assignment to reduce reshuffling.


##################################
# UI
##################################
- War support and Stability modifiers are now displayed as numbers instead of %
- Listed save games now has proper "hover mouse over" effect
- Fixed army insignia positioning.
- New portrait of Von Lettow-Vorbeck for GER.
- The colored background on army groups along the bottom of the screen now intercept mouse clicks, not letting them click through to the map and select stuff.
- Popup windows for declaration of war, peace, and a few others will now auto-close after timeout when running a hands-off or any other case with human AI turned on.
- Added a confirmation pop up while assigning every unit in army to a different army's front orders
- Added drag & drop to reorder theater groups & pinned regions
- Added drag & drop to reorder armies & army groups
- Soviet scorched earth tactics decision now has a tooltip showing the effect
- moved check for low popular support in PRC tree to a scripted trigger to make bypass tooltips more appealing
- Scorched Earth decisions are now hidden if they would have no effect
- When choosing divisions to use as volunteers, the interface should now keep selection when game is running. Would previously deselect all, as the interface was refreshed.
- Tooltip for creating ocuntry leaders with traits look similar to how traits are displayed in the country view.
- Added timer icon showing that low efficiency can be due to air wings recently arriving in a region.
- Added an explanatory tooltip to Manchukuo seize arms decisions.
- "Field marshal traits now go red if assigned to command an army. Added tooltip that explains it when the trait is hovered.
- Added an advisor tooltip to "The Unthinkable" option.
- Fixed some trait squeezing problems in combat log screen when there are too many traits.
- Added order highlighting when mouse hovers over army shields in theater or plan execute/stop buttons


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Removed duplicate static_modifiers script. the ones in modifiers folder is what we use now
- transfer_navy and transfer_ship effects can now use scope targets for their target (e.g target = FROM)
- Mods marked as dependencies are now loaded in the correct order
- Added on daily action (use cautiously!)
- Added validation of equipment bonus when ideas are loaded.
- Added cancel_if_not_visible parameter to decisions. Cancels a decision if it's visible trigger is false.
- Generating the exact same type of wargoal against the same country now ignores the effect.
- Enabled equipment bonus validation for modders
- Added define to tweak color of invalid trait "TRAIT_INVALID_FOR_ASSIGNMENT_COLOR".
- Added modifiers static_anti_air_damage_factor and static_anti_air_hit_chance_factor.
- Now it is possible to create your own interfaces with mods. Windows, buttons, textfields, and it's actions can now be scripted.
- Value triggers are now accessible as dynamic variables.


##################################
# Database
##################################
- Updated game credits.
- "Danzig or War" now gives core in Danzig.
- "Reassert Eastern Claims" now gives core on Memel.
- Sun Tzu Reborn achievement is now possible to achieve (requires level 9 Field Marshal).
- Communist Byzantium now has the correct flag.
- "Expand the Imperial Guards"-spawned troops for MAN are no longer locked
- Industrial Land Appropriation no longer repeatable for the same state.
- Fixed date requirements for AI values for Ichi Go and Test the Soviets decisions (AI was not prevented from taking these before certain dates).
- Reworked Anschluss bypass conditions.
- Fixed correct state for "Ostwall" forts.
- Fixed art for Japanese Last Stand command power ability.
- "Support the Anti-Fascist War" and "Guns for the Anti-Fascist War" decisions are now targeted decisions.
- Adjusted Polish and German provinces and states to make historical German WW1 borders possible, as well as adding Oder-Neisse line.
- Adjusted Vojvodina and Serbia states to make Austro-Hungarian borders more historical.
- Renamed "Alsace" to "Alsace-Lorraine", and "Lorraine" to "Franche-Comte"
- Added 1x BB tech bonus to French focus "Capital Ship Focus" to bring it in line with "Carrier Focus".
- ai strategy databases are reloadable now
- enabled Japanese equipment names for Manchukuo
- fixed a few naming issues in German name list
- A nationalist China losing a power struggle will now get a cosmetic tag to distinguish it from new nationalist China. If a warlord who has previously taken over nationalists loses a power struggle, they will lose their cosmetic tag. This should fix the 3 China issue.
- changed flavor name of a Manchukuo rifle after two hour discussion of Manchurian small arms development
- added Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck as a general to Imperial Germany
- Updated 'The People Have Stood Up' achievement to better fit description in steam.
- Updated 'My Ships Don't Lie' achievement to fit description in steam.
- Fixed a duplicate name of a German destroyer
- Fixed a few naming inconsitencies in French Division Namelists and Added new Namelist for late-war French Armored Divisions
- Elsass-Lothringen and victory points now renamed back to their French counterparts of France wins the war and retakes it.
- Several text translations has been added and improved.
- Fixed some inconsistencies in name lists for French-speaking countries.
- Renamed Communist Roman Empire to Communitas Proletariique Romani.
- Removed Zhang Lan as Nationalist Chinese Democratic leader due to previous communist committments (replaced with Weng Wenhao)
- Soviet volunteer group and flying tiger focuses now bypass if someone else has already completed that focus to avoid doubles.


##################################
# Balance
##################################
- Whampoa College National Focus now also adds 1 planning point to existing leaders as well as new ones
- Starting land doctrine techs now have normal tech base costs (so now at 50% of before)
- Slightly rebalanced chance of French intervention resulting from Return of the Kaiser.
- Production bonus can go negative now and slow down your equipment production
- Generals gains less XP as combats drag on (down to 10% in a month)
- Generals gains more XP if they are dealing more damage compared to enemies (up to 4x while you are doing 4x damage compared to enemy)
- added an option to Chinese provocation event that allows Japan to withdraw from the continent
- Winter War peace treaty no longer hands over Petsamo (SOV will have to get that the hard way)
- Neutral ideology is now allowed for puppets.
- Halved the extra wounding chance on the reckless trait
- Cautious trait now reduces chance to get wounded (making it the polar opposite of reckless).
- Changed mobilization impact from positive war support to 30 % (up from 3%)
- japanese ideology advisors are now only locked behind focuses for Waking the Tiger DLC owners
- Reworked the Assertiveness Branch of the Manchukuo Tree:
- added a decision unlocked from taking control of the railroads that gives 4 CIV factories over the course of a year
- removed factories from legislative council, purge general affairs and control the railroads
- purge the general affairs council now removes Kwantung veto
- bolster nationalism now allows recruiting bandits. if bandits are still active in the country, taking these decisions removes the spirit
- added a decision to local arms procurement that adds an idea giving dramatically reduced cost for small arms at the cost of reduced reliability
- removed autonomy gain from Assertiveness focus (made no sense)
- added a decision to five people armies allowing the raising (and disbanding) of Manchu Banners, represented by 5 large infantry divisions
- added a decision to the purge general affairs council allowing player to pay command power to seize Japanese army depots in the case of war, giving increasingly large injections of equipment into stockpile and corresponding attack and defense penalties to Japan for a limited time
- reduced the impact of bolster nationalism spirit
- "Changed Command Power cost for Communist China's Infiltration decisions (-0.01 => -0.2) and the Nationalist/Japanese counter (-0.05 => -0.1).
- Increased command power cost (-0.02 => -0.2) for gaining army support in preparation for a civil war. Old values were not rebalanced properly after major system rework."
- Added surrender limit penalty when at low war support. Scales from 0 to -30%.
- Reduced air superiority stat of strategic bombers.(1 => 0.01)
- Increased heavy fighters air superiority (1 => 1.25), so they are better at something that isn't shooting bombers...
- Lowered impact on speed due to enemy air superiority (-0.5 => -0.3).
- Lowered impact on defense due to enemy air superiority (-0.5 => -0.35).
- Changed cap of "Air support" modifier from CAS assisting land unit in combat from 21% to 35%.
- Division anti air reduces damage to the division caused by close air support attacks, in proportion to the AA's ability to shoot down planes.
- Corrected AA damage reduction tooltip to show numbers in red.
- Reduced factory output penalty from long march spirit for PRC (now -15%/-5%, down from -25%/-10%).
- Changed penalty from Chinese idea Illegal Regime (-0.35 => -0.2)
- Last 3 radar techs now increase aim of static AA guns by 20% each.
- Each intermediary AA tech now adds 8% damage reduction from enemy bombers.
- Each AA equipment unlock now increases static AA damage output by 10%.
- Air bases now take 50% less damage from bombing.
- Reduced negative production modifier for Canada and Australia's version of the great depression (for TfV owners).
- The German War Economy Focus now requires 50% war support.
- MEFO bills base cost reduced by 0.05 PP, added -5% Consumer Goods, and increased build speed bonuses to 25%.
- Rebalanced Nationalist Chinese Focuses: Welfare Focuses now give 10 War Support (up from 5), Democracy Focuses that gave stability or War Support have been increased to give 10 instead of 5, added a military factory each to expanding the Taiyuan and Hanyan Arsenals.
- Balanced temperatures for commando trait to < -15 or > 27.
- Chinese Scorched Earth Tactics and Industrial Evacuation Focuses reduced to 35 days.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Improved Spanish translations.
- Took map wrap-around line in the Pacific into account when computing a state's center point, correcting East Siberia's center from its previous position in the Norwegian Sea.
- Stopped the Focus.IgnorePrerequisites cheat from being used in an ironman game by first turning it on in a normal game.
- Prevented various exploit methods which could pull divisions out of naval transfer convoy combat by cancelling or changing division orders.
- Fixed incorrect default of convoy efficiency when writing persistent data, which had a small chance of causing out-of-syncs.
- Fixed daily change in party popularity being inaccurate.
- Changing of ruling party to unaligned now cancel all boost party popularity
- Naval combat report will now only appear if any damage has been dealt
- Fixed naval combat report not mentioning some losses when merging with older ones in the same province
- Fixed planes shot by carrier fighters not showing in the strategic air view.
- Fixed port strikes with no participating planes
- Fixed planes shot by carrier fighters not showing in the strategic air view.
- Air permission can no longer be obtained from both side of a war and observe similar restrictions as land volunteer.
- Added nb used convoys and nb free convoys to the checksum for OOS detection
- German historical DLC now properly enabled all picture replacements for events
- Fixed a loading order issue that could mess up some triggers for ideas on starting the game
- Japanese surrender events for MAN/CHI no longer incorrectly mentions transferring Korea to MAN/CHI control.
- Return of the Kaiser event when rescuing him through war now triggers upon control of Holland state; previously triggered from capitulation which could bug out if Holland was not in a faction when it surrendered.
- MEFO bills are no longer removed if Anschluss is rushed before the bills are extended a second time.
- Drastically increased the WT generation required for UK to want to kick Imperial Germany out of its faction when having taken the "Alliance with the Shade" focus. Germany now needs to have created 81% more WT than the faction average, up from 34%.
- "Support Anti-Fascist War" decision for USA now correctly removes off-map factories again after the duration ends.
- Fixed some possible problems with text save games while writing arrays
- Fixed a crash after user directory is cleared using the launcher while there are enabled mods in it
- Fixed research all cheat not working for some of the researches
- Fixed a bunch of typos
- Added localization for 'send attaché' action in diplomacy tab/country list screen
- Fixed UI scale glitches with equipment stockpile line graphs
- added a bypass for Build up manchurian army focus in japanese focus tree
- added a bypass for Communist Chinese focus if low_popular support spirit is not present
- fixed critical spelling error in bombing damage modifier tooltip
- fix for unlocalised bypass requirement in Soviet Advisers focus
- the opinion bonus from Italian befriend Japan focus is now correctly applied to Japan
- integrate the warlord army decision now transfers any generals and only creates leaders if the target has not taken personal leadership focus
- Fixed general selection menu stating that Field Marshal can "command 5 armies" when it should be "24 division".
- Fixed tooltip for how many divisions a corps commander can control showing up when trying to assign a Field Marshal.
- Fixed invalid equipment bonus for PRC_peoples_war, PRC_maoism, CZE_naval_focus and bofors.
- Ichi go spirit targeted modifier now works against all the Chinese nations.
- Added attache relation gfx for diplomacy view
- Command power cost on abilities now displays 2 decimals.
- Fixed tooltip for integrate warlord decisions using a flag with wrong localisation.
- Fixed integrate warlord decisions effect running immediately instead of after 90days.
- Re-added localisation for custom tooltips in Chinese Industry Relocation decisions.
- Removed auto call for faction members when a country is the target of war declaration.
- Navies on convoy escort missions now try to help allies if there are no friendly convoys to help.
- Fixed 'org loss while moving' leader modifier not being applied
- Volunteers sent to a countries which became enemies, will now be sent back home (so your divisions don't fight on both sides of the conflict).
- Fixed yet another grammatical issue in texts about the attaches.
- XP is now awarded in the case of unit being destroyed with nowhere to run and for overruns it is awarded to units both in current and in destination province if enemies.
- Fixed bug where a cavalry 3d models didn't get a proper winter camo
- Fixed volunteers not properly being sent back to their rightful owner.
- Corrected British division namelist to use brackets instead of apostrophes.
- Changed scavenger trait to additive modifier
- Fixed a broken bypass in Japanese Liberate Manchuria focus.
- Changed completion trigger for 'Fuhrer directive 21' mission to include allies controlling the required states.
- Added scripted trigger for a state being controlled by ROOT country or an ally to them.
- Fixed Austria-Hungary being formed multiple times as a result of ""Rekindle Imperial Sentiment"" focus.
- Fixed Austria-Hungary news event referring to ""Austria-Hungary taking the lead"". Now correctly refers to country's old tag.
- Re-Forming Austria_Hungary now flips government to Unaligned and makes Otto von Habsburg country leader.
- Hungary can now choose ""Tade Deal with Germany"" focus with non-Fascist Germany.
- ""Break the Anglo-French Colonial Hegemony"" focus now also correctly gives claims on Palau, Papua, and Samoa.
- ""Reinstate Imperial Possessions"" and ""Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine"" focuses are now also available if France is puppeted or if Germany owns Alsace-Lorraine.
- ""Reinstate Imperial Possessions"" and ""Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine"" focuses now rename Alsace-Lorraine to Elsass-Lothringen, Strasbourg to Strassburg, and Mulhouse to Mulhausen.
- Greater Hungary can no longer be formed if Austria-Hungary was formed via the ""Rekindle Imperial Sentiment""-spawned decision.
- Fixed panzer_leader trait not gaining xp if a non-armor unit was participating in the combat. Now it gains xp if more than 40% of the army under the leader control's is armored at the time of the combat.
- Reworked the AI's pathfinding algorithms, so it should now take more reasonable routes, when it comes to combinations of land and naval transportations.
- The battle plan window is now hidden in naval and air map mode.
- Fixed drag and drop causing 'new army' portrait to ignore clicks
- Added temporary penalty for assigning airplanes to a new region or receiving reinforcements.
- It's no longer possible to capture naval/air equipment when it gets destroyed in land combat.
- More fixes in the texts translations.
- Fixed a wrong tooltip in Manchukuo Five People Armies focus.
- Fixed two wrong cavalry division names in British name lists.
- "Danzig for Guarantees" now renames Poznan to Posen, if accepted.
- Added bypasses for "Align Hungary" and "Align Romania" focuses, if they are in Germany's faction.
- "Reinstate Imperial Possessions" and "Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine" now also transfer Alsace-Lorraine to Germany.
- Nuking now uses the highest VP in the state when calculating war support penalty instead of specific province nuked. Multiplier from infrastructure is now calculated before they are destroyed.
- Drawing defensive orders now takes army groups into account when counting divisions, so it displays the correct number of divisions that will be assigned.
- Fixed tooltip of panzer_leader trait for the xp gain.
- Fixed cancel_trigger for timed decisions not removing, but instead executing remove_effect if the mission was completed.
- Fixed guaranteeing nations not being auto-called into war when neither the guaranteeing country nor the attacking country are in factions.
- Yalta Conference event now should allocate correct states to DDR and Poland.
- MEFO bills now gives a 20% construction speed bonus to military factories, dockyards, forts and coastal forts, air and naval bases, AA buildings, and Radar stations, instead of -20% consumer goods.
- MEFO bills now renew every 180 days instead of every 90 days.
- MEFO bills - Slightly increased the base political power cost and the political power cost ramp-up.
- Unaligned Germany now loses MEFO bills when the German civil war begins (but is not required to pay for them). MEFO bills and mission are now transferred to the Nazi side of the civil war.
- Unaligned/Democratic Germany now gets a temporary "Rebuild the Nation" National Spirit that gives -20% consumer goods bonus for 365 days, when completing the "Rebuild the Nation" national focus.
- "Rebuild the Nation" national focus now takes 70 days to complete, up from 35 days.
- Previous "Rebuild the Nation" national spirit has now been renamed to "National Revitalization".
- Fix issue where scripted events that try to add countries to a civil war were silently doing nothing if world tension is too low. The world tension check should not automatically apply to scripted events; the country should just be directly added to the war, which is now once again the case.
- Fixed nuke events referencing the wrong states/leaders.
- Fixed a spelling error in a tooltip for Attaches.
- Fixed navy leaders not gaining xp.
- Fixed a news event referencing a Hungarian king that didn't necessarily exist.
- Added an appropriate Apostrophe to King's Own Cavalry division.
- Warlords that have inherited the Incompetent Officer national spirit from Nationalist China can now take the decision to get rid of it.
- The Japanese kodoha national focus path will now only invite Japan to the axis once.
- Countries on the winning side of a war but occupied by a different faction can no longer be marked as untouched, allowing them to be annexed or puppeted by the occupiers even if the actual enemies never did any damage to them.
- Unit leaders go into cooldown when you disband the army now.
- Capped minimum supply consumption to 0.05, so it's no longer possible to get it negative and suffer huge penalties.
- Forced countries entering into a dependency relation to cancel any war relation they have between them.
- Fixed the Call Ally diplomatic action to have the recipient join the correct war.
- Clarified Treaty with USSR" requiring "Anti-Soviet Pact" to not have been taken.
- Army group orders now does not mention number of unit information in them.
- Made the call ally tooltip properly indicate when a civil war is not joinable by an ally due to low world tension, just as it already does for the other country if they want to initiate a join war action.
- Call to war and join war actions in the diplomacy screen no longer show every individual war relation in the list of wars, but just the primary one.
- Allowed a country to be invited into peace conferences even if some of their faction allies are at war with the winners of the war, as long as the country being invited is at peace with all the winners and at war with the losers.
- Fixed a bug that caused a navy leaders not gaining experience.
- Fixed killing encircled units not giving intended amount of flat experience gain.


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed small memory leak.
- Fixed uninitialized variable in graphical settings, which in theory could cause an undefined game behaviour.
- Fixed CTD when loading a savegames which was related to the air wings.
- Fixed OOS caused by "local resistance" data not being properly cleared.
- Improved initial loading time a bit. The naval distance calculations are much faster, and is done only once (or whenever a game changes has been detected that could affect the naval distance calcluations). At every next game start, the loading process skips the naval distance calculations by just loading the cached data.
- Fixed peace conference behavior and crash in the case that one or more of the winners have been occupied by a different winning faction.
- Fixed SS recruitment crashing the game under very specific circumstances.
- Fixed CTD when asking a lend lease to some AI countries within the first day of the game.
- Puppets surrender with their overlords and any other majors even if they have been in the war for fewer days than normally required to surrender. This fixes a crash elsewhere when transferring the puppet in a peace conference.
- Attempt to gracefully skip over opponents who are no longer at war with each other when cleaning up war relations at the conclusion of a peace conference. This avoids crashes when multiple peace conferences get initiated and completed simultaneously, especially due to scripted white peace events.
- Ensured all buildings in the newly-changed Polish and German states are present in those states, to avoid crashes.
- Fixed CTD on create_unit effect with invalid template name. Now shows an error instead.

Difficulty Settings
With 1.5 Cornflakes we added 2 extra difficulty levels and we did some checking up on how that impacted what people selected.
upload_2018-4-4_15-56-30.png

So we can see that the new Civilian difficulty level was needed as well as Elite as both effectively split the old difficulty levels in two. The lower two actually both increased as Regular lowered a bit, although this might just be a temporary bias right now as a lot of new players tend to join at a big expansion release. Speaking of, if you are regularly playing on Civilian and Recruit I would love a PM or comment on why. its one of those things we are trying to figure out.

Multiplayer Telemetry
We have long wanted to try and figure out more about how people play HOI4 in multiplayer so we decided to look at new data we are now able to see as of 1.5.

upload_2018-4-4_15-4-38.png

My gut feel was that 2 player coop was the most popular by far. The above for sure shows that 2 player MP is the vast majority. On top of what you can see in the graph above 5-9 players is 1.3% of time played and above 9 is 0.8%.

Figuring out exactly how people play is more difficult. Sadly we do not have a way to check if war broke out right now between players so the "Free for All" category I suspect a large part of is coop, but as part of separate factions. Such as a UK and Soviet player vs Germany or the like.
upload_2018-4-4_15-19-32.png

The categories mean:
  • Free for all - Everyone for themselves (no one together in a faction)
  • Co-Op - Everyone working together in one faction vs ai
  • Team Competitive - Teams in different factions
  • Mixed - Mixed working together/going it alone
So it seems like cooperative play is quite popular, but we also see that people change things up and move between "types" while playing too. Looking at each type in more detail pure co-op is the one limited to the smallest range of players while Mixed (not surprisingly) has the largest.
upload_2018-4-4_15-29-4.png


This kind of data is super helpful, but often we need to iterate and add more "hooks" that get reported so we can interpret it better which we tend to do when we release patches etc.

See you next week. Assuming we are done with the patch then we'll be talking future roadmap.
 
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Probably based off how many men were actually in combat for division, not all the non-combative support units. Given the division organization, no division had close to 40 battalions either.

"if they wanted to be this way they should made it optimal" is a ridiculous argument. 20 width at their time of testing giving 80 max for a province and 40 for a connecting province made sense to them.
I don't think you follow. If 20 width is historical and preferred, then there should be a penalty, not a benefit to going over that. Otherwise it's simply more optimal to go 40. End of.
 
@fabius @Erepio
Yeah, I usually play regular and use the sliders to buff all enemy nations which provides a decent challenge, but it disables achievements for one... and I really wish for more dynamic difficulty elements like events for example:
"Soviet Winter Offensives | reduces planning time and increases breakthrough for one month"
so temporary combat modifier events which help the AI from time to time (could also happen to players on lower difficulty) and make sense depending on the state of the frontline with stronger events happening the closer they are to surrendering so there could be a potential comeback and another big factor is reduced industry take over in my opinion. On hardest difficulty fascist and communist nations should displace/destroy all industry as the enemy conquers the state although that might be hard for the AI so I'd be content with just a lower occupation use-rate combined with lower factories from annexed countries. There is much that could really make harder difficulties more interesting and I don't think it's super hard to implement these things.
 
I recommend paradox reach out and actually join/play with several Historic Team competitive MP (16-25 players) sessions and see why people are so vehement about it. You created a great platform for some very interesting and memorable playthroughs. Obviously your gonna get some better and some worse communities but overall they are a great pull in for multiplayer and make up much of the personality sphere of the community.
 
@podcat

Thanks for new features. Talking about division designer, how abut giving players ability to order template list? Drag and drop instrument or even simple arrows for clicking... Could be pretty helpful.
 
I don't think you follow. If 20 width is historical and preferred, then there should be a penalty, not a benefit to going over that. Otherwise it's simply more optimal to go 40. End of.

Ok they didn't get around to implementing a penalty such as movement speed like it would in real life since WW2 marked the end of square divisions because they weren't mobile enough. Go ahead and build your "space marine divisions" but don't say people that don't play online aren't skilled enough.
 
I don't do space marines. No one does. They are banned in all proper games for a reason.
I say people who don't play online aren't skilled because it's pretty obvious. If you find the AI in its current form a challenge you can't go around saying you are good at this game... If you find AI hard you would last 2 minutes against actually skilled people...
Ok they didn't get around to implementing a penalty such as movement speed like it would in real life since WW2 marked the end of square divisions because they weren't mobile enough. Go ahead and build your "space marine divisions" but don't say people that don't play online aren't skilled enough.
 
This is probably way too soon for another DLC idea, but I have three that might work for the future. A Scandinavian DLC (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland) a Mediterranean DLC ( Portugal, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey) and the Benelux DLC (Belgium, Netherlands (plus the Dutch East Indies),and Luxembourg). Maybe the Middle Eastern area if there's enough interest. This is just an idea and it would be best if Paradox fixed the current issues of the game before any more DLC, but just some food for thought.
 
I don't do space marines. No one does. They are banned in all proper games for a reason.
I say people who don't play online aren't skilled because it's pretty obvious. If you find the AI in its current form a challenge you can't go around saying you are good at this game... If you find AI hard you would last 2 minutes against actually skilled people...

If the devs didn't want people to build space marines there would be a penalty for it... see how your logic works?

Trust me I don't find the AI a challenge.
 
I recommend paradox reach out and actually join/play with several Historic Team competitive MP (16-25 players) sessions and see why people are so vehement about it. You created a great platform for some very interesting and memorable playthroughs. Obviously your gonna get some better and some worse communities but overall they are a great pull in for multiplayer and make up much of the personality sphere of the community.
Look at the telemetry. 10-15% of games are MP. Less than 1% of those games are of that size. Why would they want to balance around less than 0.1% of the playerbase?

I mean those games are cool and all, but they are very niche.
 
If the devs didn't want people to build space marines there would be a penalty for it... see how your logic works?

Trust me I don't find the AI a challenge.
And what happened this patch? They nerfed Marine Divisions!
 
Im curious how you count the hours played for your stats. If you have five players in a multiplayer game for an hour does that go down as one hour in multi player or five hours in multiplayer?
 
I don't like having negative modifiers applied to the country I am playing, I could technically care less if the AI get more, but I don't want to hinder myself just so the AI is better. Sorry, I don't have a suggestion on how to improve that, but I don't mind playing against a harder AI as long it is not via negative modifiers.
Negative modifiers for player are far better solution, chiefly because of the amount of developer work that is needed to change AI build strategies to accomodate for buffs. In HOI3, where AI would get buffs, it would run out of steem extremely fast, because it would get a huge bonus to IC, and then spend most of their manpower on a tonne of weak infantry, and lose it in useless attacks.
Could I suggest something for the next big balance change? Let competitive MP players try out out in closed beta / listen to their opinions/ comments about game balance. The likes of Cain, KLS, Fulmen... understand the game far better than your testers. No offense.
Aside from satisfying you desire of exclusivity, how is closed beta any better than open one?
automatically increase the power of your adversaries the closer they are to losing
You should actually try BICE, they do this for eastern front, and result is immensly frustrating, and not fun at all. When you entire frontline stalls because your best armor can`t break through even weakest Soviet divisions, it is like hitting a totally artificial brick wall. Now, obviously BICE has those modifiers decay over time, but it just means you have to pause for no reason.
We actually have this in an internal suggestion database. I think its a cool think and would make more people interested. I am not convinced the modifiers we use for the higher difficulties are really that fun tho. the PP penalty in particular.
Please make penalties multiplicative, not additive. It is immensly frustrating how huge of an impact difficulty settings makes on your production early on, but then effect comes down to not noticeable.

PP penalty is not noticeable for Germany(pre 1.5) but French and USA would actually go into negative PP thans to difficulty.
the second best thing is prolly is give other nations buffs as difficulty goes up or things mention above
I get that negative modifiers are not fun, but just giving AI buffs doesn`t make them better, in fact, they would often cripple themselves far more, by taking more MP cassualties, and getting into bad recruitment laws faster, oberbuilding and losing infantry. If you slider-boost Germany and Italy as SU, it`s often screwes them up, as they are both more agressive vs France, and lose more troops in useless transfers to Africa.
 
I recommend paradox reach out and actually join/play with several Historic Team competitive MP (16-25 players) sessions and see why people are so vehement about it. You created a great platform for some very interesting and memorable playthroughs. Obviously your gonna get some better and some worse communities but overall they are a great pull in for multiplayer and make up much of the personality sphere of the community.

As one of these players I would love to see Paradox talk to us directly. I understand that we are in the extreme minority of players (iirc a previous Dev Diary said something like 5% of players play multiplayer at all, and now this diary shows that 0.8% of multiplayer games are "competitive teams", which means we represent like 0.04% of players... not hard to see how we get looked over), but I also feel like players in our community know the game better than anyone, even sometimes the Paradox devs. If you had polled our community on the 1.5.2 MEFO change (before today's update), I can guarantee you close to 0% of us would have approved of it or suggested anything like it.

Now of course, we have always known to some degree and especially know now that at it's core HOI4 is not a competitive multiplayer game, and Paradox is not designing for us. We have to bend the game to our will, with pages upon pages of house rules, to avoid it breaking from us pushing the game to it's limits. This has led to the discovery of countless bugs and exploits, many of which have been widely known nearly since the game's release, and many of which continue to persist, documented in multiplayer rulesets with obscure rules like "No setting planes to invalid missions".

However, just because the game is not balanced from the ground up as a competitive multiplayer game doesn't mean Paradox should ignore how the game performs under these extreme conditions. We would love to be able to do away with as many of our house rules as possible, not to play with balance mods (many of which are more broken than the base game IMO, far too often I see these mods go way out of control and become a tangled mess with no real goal in mind), and I believe the game could stand to benefit from opening a more regular line of communication between the competitive community and the developers.
 
Speaking of, if you are regularly playing on Civilian and Recruit I would love a PM or comment on why. its one of those things we are trying to figure out.

I occasionally play on the lower difficulty settings. Sometimes, I'm not looking for a challenge, I'm just looking to paint the map a certain colour or craft a narrative. And that usually works best on lower difficulty levels, where your plans don't get derailed too much. Just some relaxing time, basically.
 
Difficulty Settings
With 1.5 Cornflakes we added 2 extra difficulty levels and we did some checking up on how that impacted what people selected.
View attachment 354664
So we can see that the new Civilian difficulty level was needed as well as Elite as both effectively split the old difficulty levels in two. The lower two actually both increased as Regular lowered a bit, although this might just be a temporary bias right now as a lot of new players tend to join at a big expansion release. Speaking of, if you are regularly playing on Civilian and Recruit I would love a PM or comment on why. its one of those things we are trying to figure out.

Hi! Thanks for the feedback!

Even though I've been playing EUIV and CK2 for years, I am indeed new to HoI4, and specifically almost immediately post-expansion, so yes, that is why I am selecting "civilian" difficulty (easiness? :p )

Thanks!
 
So we can see that the new Civilian difficulty level was needed as well as Elite as both effectively split the old difficulty levels in two. The lower two actually both increased as Regular lowered a bit, although this might just be a temporary bias right now as a lot of new players tend to join at a big expansion release. Speaking of, if you are regularly playing on Civilian and Recruit I would love a PM or comment on why. its one of those things we are trying to figure out.

@podcat

I play on recruit and regular difficulties, and I have never in my roughly 200 hours played on anything more. I feel that there is a excessive focus in the forum on a sort of 'prestige play' and I'm not massively interested in that, and while I respect that everyone has a different level of skill and commitment to the game and opinions vary a lot, I also feel as though people who don't play like this are sometimes presented as not proper players. Yes I like getting achievements, but honestly when a game goes against you and you've sunk x amount of hours into it it's a huge turn-off and I feel I've wasted my time, particularly in a win-or-lose game like HoI (as compared to say EU4, where losing wars is part of the experience). Again, yes I don't want it to be easy, I just need it to be challenging enough. On the flipside, considering I'm currently doing an Ironman Communist China, and I've pretty much managed to conquer China with Mao, I'm probably a better player than what I give myself credit for. But regardless, I don't feel the need to play on a particularly high difficulty and I don't think I would get very much out of it. Moreover I do have a tendency for playing smaller countries (South Africa, 'straya and the Qing), which bring additional pressure.

To summarise, I love the game but I like taking it at my own pace, and just realising the ultimate goals of certain nations in the game is enough entertainment most of the time.

Unaligned Germany now loses MEFO bills when the German civil war begins (but is not required to pay for them). MEFO bills and mission are now transferred to the Nazi side of the civil war.

As a somewhat unconnected point, the wording of this is somewhat ambigious: does this mean Nonaligned Germany doesn't get MEFO Bills at all? This would be a good improvement considering by 39 Non-aligned Germany was crippled by pp loss with no silent workhorses to compensate
 
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