HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!

[Foxman8472]

Could you give some examples of strategy game where AI is even a bit smarter on higher difficulties?

Starcraft 2.

What improves drastically in Starcraft AI as you increase the difficulty is build order. This is a game that has millions and billions of games to draw info about build orders from. Of course, Starcraft isn't all about build order and the AI does not improve much in other areas (although it DOES improve depending on difficulty, it no longer goes all in and retreats at the sight of unfavorable odds). This is a huge step up from Warcraft 3's AI who just gets more gold and XP the higher the difficulty setting.

I wonder how Paradox still doesnt understand how difficulty supposed to work in games.Higher difficulty supposed to mean better AI,not unfair and useless negative modifiers.

When you don't know programming and how games actually work and you only see the shiny stuff on the front-end, it's easy to criticize or to say how you'd do better. What actually happens is that you're so deep into the Donning-Kruger effect that your tone also takes an arrogant note. It is YOU who doesn't understand how difficulty, or AI, works behind the curtains. Games are mostly smoke and mirrors and the actual AI that they have is either a freeform stumbling buffoon or a heavily hardcoded scripted mess that only works great when looked at from one particular angle, so then the developers focus on restricting the player to view only from that angle so they don't see the strings on the puppets or the fact that the puppets aren't actually alive. You're up for a lot of disappointment if you think current artificial intelligence is at the level presented in science fiction. We're still teaching it to wipe its own ass and each time it's one semicolon away from dropping the iPhone in the toilet.

 

[podcat]

That's the least of my worries or needs. I would like them to listen to us on balance/fixes.

I think we do. If you look at stuff done under balancing on the 1.5 patches a lot of that is feedback from MP groups (many of our good betas play a lot of MP and in different ways than we do at the office). Whenever we touch air balance its basically all based on MP feedback for example. As you said the competitive MP community is probably somethign like 0.1%, but you get quite a big impact on decisions, although it might not always be clear when that happens I guess.
A lot of balance changes requested by MP groups would also destroy the ai for single player so even if I agree with them they can not be done. Maybe in the future as we get more and more time to work on AI and improve its abilities more of those ideas will make it in also, but as other suggested MP groups can do balance mods to suit their style and not have to worry about balancing different groups of player like we do

 

[Vonboe]

Awesome addition with the 3D model previewer, looking forward to getting home and checking it out

 

[SrgChris]

@ Everyone talking about MP and difficulty level used for single player games.

There is a weird double standard currently, where EU4 is balanced in part around the Dev MP Streams, which are decently high level. Though given recent streams, I feel like more players playing MP would be Kaiser Johan level, than that of some of the others devs.

However in HoI4, the dev team doesn't have a Dev Clash, doesn't play at a high level, and bases the game's difficulty and design choices on the fact that players struggle in single player? And then when they do an MP stream, they invite a bunch of youtubers that haven't touched the game in months?

Weird double standard.

Another thing to consider for MP stats, is that Waking the Tiger has hit the membership of many MP groups hard, given the awkward changes to the gameplay and meta. Particularly, Fuhrer mana has made the game more of a who-can-click-faster fest than anything else.

 

[Foxman8472]

YOU paradox create some multiplayer chambers at fixed days-hours

Dedicated servers? Continuous expense that doesn't prevent trolls and noobs. You can create your own fixed chamber and post about it and start the game whether everybody is on board or not, then see that UK hasn't been taken by anyone and the Allies rage quit 5 minutes after. As a person who hosted HoI4 multiplayer matches in the past, I tell you HoI4 is not a PUG game. It's hard to keep fidgeting anonymous players playing for 8 hours+. 4 hours isn't enough, after 4 hours you're fully in the meat of things, especially if people run Spanish Civil War at speed 2, but don't necessarily have an end in sight. Either run small games with friends that you can actually punch in the kisser if they drop and ruin your game or directly expect a frustrating experience filled with trolls an rage quitters.

 

[CrazyZombie]

Heck yes. And sorting divisions by xp would also be a nice QoL improvement. As well as a select all on your naval and air units.

Well, I'm more interested in grouping templates, while now that mess with infantry-mountaineer-motorized-cavalry-tanks-another infantry and so on greatly annoys me.

 

[myzael]

Well, I'm more interested in grouping templates, while now that mess with infantry-mountaineer-motorized-cavalry-tanks-another infantry and so on greatly annoys me.

In an army, or in a division designer? If the former, why not have specialised armies, benefiting more from compatible general traits?

 

[Wann1]

It's a bit different from what I am used to.

 

[Foxman8472]

if you are regularly playing on Civilian and Recruit I would love a PM or comment on why.

The bonuses my country receives from lower difficulty settings somewhat offsets the HORRENDOUSLY DUMB ALLIED AI. It makes it possible for me to play a minor and stand a chance without relying on functionality that had its QA outsourced to the community.

 

[Marcus Arulius]

0.4 percent of the player base might play real MP, so those are the people you should be listening to. Game Devs would do well to listen to the people who understand and play your game at the highest level. We push your game to its breaking point. Ballance is almost irrelevant for SP at any difficulty, you can win every game by just building CAS as any major. If you really care about balance then listen to us, and stop doing dumb things.

-CAIN

 

[Marcus Arulius]

Dumb things, eg MEFO bills giving -20 percent consumer goods..... Last stand being completely broken to the point that when taking France as Germany if its properly microed, you have to literally run France out of equipment/manpower..........WHY? Why would you make last stand take 0 org damage? Like how could you think that is a good idea?

-CAIN

 

[CrazyZombie]

In an army, or in a division designer? If the former, why not have specialised armies, benefiting more from compatible general traits?

Division designer, ofc. I don't care about order of divisions in the army.

 

[Demosthenest]

0.4 percent of the player base might play real MP, so those are the people you should be listening to. Game Devs would do well to listen to the people who understand and play your game at the highest level. We push your game to its breaking point. Ballance is almost irrelevant for SP at any difficulty, you can win every game by just building CAS as any major. If you really care about balance then listen to us, and stop doing dumb things.

-CAIN

And btw. This right here is most likely one of the top 5 players in this game right now. I'd listen.

 

[SrgChris]

Every company should listen to people who sign their name after a post

 

[JohnnyDepressio]

I wonder how Paradox still doesnt understand how difficulty supposed to work in games.Higher difficulty supposed to mean better AI,not unfair and useless negative modifiers.

That Idea is just terrible and pretty unrealistic. Using boni or mali for player/ai is the best and most effective way to adjust the difficulty. Regarding the AI you should always use the best ai you can make. Programming different ais for different difficulty settings would be a stupid waste of programming time and a nightmare to balance.

 

[MrArrows]

The changelog reads like someone keeps an eye on the HoI Facebook Group. Nearly every flavour change thats in the changelog was discussed there what makes me extrem happy.
Great work that shows the great passion you guys have for this game. Thats not default (Looking at you, WarGaming!) and I highly appreciate it! Thank you PDX! As long as you don't stop with this level of passion, I don't mind paying 20 EUR for a DLC

 

[puppet on a string]

@podcat Could your team think about going over some previously made focus trees and touching up details that are frustrating? For instance, India would be a really fun country to play except that to get their freedom they have to go into civil war, and beat the allies faction. What I mean is reworking problematic aspects of focus trees, instead of fully replacing them. Perhaps add some industry to people's republic of China. Perhaps give Italy something interesting. Perhaps add a bit of detail to Bulgaria.

with india, they also cannot get cores or claims on the european colonies such as goa and pondicherry

i think india should also control the andaman islands, but this should be double-checked somewhere

another disappointing thing is that lots of new focus icons are unused... would be nice to add them on the older trees

 

[Demosthenest]

I think we do. If you look at stuff done under balancing on the 1.5 patches a lot of that is feedback from MP groups (many of our good betas play a lot of MP and in different ways than we do at the office). Whenever we touch air balance its basically all based on MP feedback for example. As you said the competitive MP community is probably somethign like 0.1%, but you get quite a big impact on decisions, although it might not always be clear when that happens I guess.
A lot of balance changes requested by MP groups would also destroy the ai for single player so even if I agree with them they can not be done. Maybe in the future as we get more and more time to work on AI and improve its abilities more of those ideas will make it in also, but as other suggested MP groups can do balance mods to suit their style and not have to worry about balancing different groups of player like we do

Do you know how long it took me to get you guys to fix the most game breaking bug this game has had since start? I'm talking about phantom factories. Threads and threads in bug report, nothing done. Spamming you guys in other threads countless times and after around 4 months you actually fixed it... But OK since it wasn't a single player make-game-easier upgrade nothing was done for all that time.
And now, I'm sorry to say, in 1.5.1 you guys killed organised vanilla multilayer. I do think the improvements in 1.5.2 will help so I thank you for that. Truly.

 

[j4l]

Is the Bug in 1.5x fixed that if you save/quit the day you start a research with 50% discount after loading this save, the 50% discount is gone? Happened to me in 1.4 in non ironmode quite often till i realized that it comes form loading the save game

 

[Foxman8472]

(many of our good betas play a lot of MP and in different ways than we do at the office).

I hope you pay them well, QA ain't cheap.

A lot of balance changes requested by MP groups would also destroy the ai for single player so even if I agree with them they can not be done.

You mean the hardcoding you did? If I'd be a programmer working on HoI4 this is the moment where I'd dig a dark hole to hide my shame. Shame. Shame. The equivalent of procrastination in programming creeps up on you later on when you need to expand and maintain the code; If you hardcode the hell out of it, the next piece of added or modified functionality will make it break from all joints. You're thus no victims, this is your past sins catching up to you. What's the next thing you just can't change because you glued the house of cards using spit?

Maybe in the future as we get more and more time to work on AI

Something that you should've done before release, not possibly foreseeing three expansions in. I don't know how you got it through the door but if I were to guess it would've shipped even if it didn't compile. But it's alright, you're just at the 4th HoI game.

as other suggested MP groups can do balance mods to suit their style

Thank God for the modders, they save your asses on a daily basis. Unpaid QA, unpaid developers, living la vida loca. Might want to go to them and take some notes about how not to hardcode division templates so only a few majors know how to make tank divisions.

I don't expect the audience to know programming or understand what I just said. It might look like I'm bashing like a hater. That might be true, but it might be just because I'm pissed at laziness that actually reflects into doing more work afterwards. What's true for sure is that the AI is hardcoded and that will project present as well as future issues. This isn't some thing you can sweep under the rug, unless you start over. HoI5? In the meantime, enjoy the hardcoding and respectfully disagree. I'm sure they pay you to PR brigade as much as they pay the QA and the devs that do the real heavy lifting for the game, as in the beta testing community and the modders. I raise a glass for them and none for Paradox. Good thing this isn't Origin, so I get to speak my mind AND keep the games that I bought; It's like having the cake and eating it too.