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HOI4 Dev Diary - Back from summer!

Hi everyone! The whole team is now back from vacation so its time to kick off dev diaries again!

At the moment we are all working on an unannounced expansion and the 1.8 Husky Update and work is progressing well, so we can start sharing some of it with you guys and gals again. The expansion will remain unannounced until PDXCon so look forward to that. Or better yet, come join us for fun, reveals and gaming in Berlin.

Just because we can’t give the full overview yet doesn’t mean we can’t start revealing stuff in true Paradox tradition, so next week we will be taking a look at France which is getting a full revamp. We are going to be doing our focus trees a bit differently this time around, so expect new nations to get covered in two diaries rather than a single one to better match their scope and structure.

I don't have a lot for today, and spent all my vacation moving and not going to any cool WW2 places, so I will end this diary with a cool WW2 related vacation pic from @Bratyn. Bonus points if you can spot where its from :)

20190808_120141.jpg


See you all next week for something a lot more meaty!
 
also Belgium and Portugal also played a leading role in the world conflict as its prologue, as were the Portuguese citizens both in the Spanish civil war and in their political equilibrium between the Germans and Britons in the world conflict.
Yes and no. Both had been more spectators or supporters but not really players in the game. Had the Belgians been as important in the War as the Dutch had the potential of being? As far as I know their king choose to stay behind and there are not that many stories about belgian resistance like french and dutch.
 
If there is an espionage based DLC, PLEASE don´t make it about stealing tech only. Focus on army and naval intelligence. Also partisan support.

And if the plan IS also adding chance to steal tech, then make it a blueprint like in Arsenal of Democracy. NOT HOI 3 system
 
It's been skimped on for years, and you're telling us it won't be done next as a favor to us.

I think added features are being staggered in this highly-scalable game to slowly and absolutely maximize profit, even if it means waiting this long for the dumb red blob to be fixed (which I suppose, as a bonus, drives up anticipation and demand as it "ripens"). Since the Soviets don't mesh right with whatever features are next on the chopping block, I get to continue a substandard experience for who-knows how long. To be perfectly honest, I think the time and resource issues you mention, insofar as they exist, are mainly the fault of Paradox, and that there is a fundamental incompetence in this company, probably brought on by isolation from competition.

Of course, I belong to a captured niche market, so short of me designing my own game, you can do whatever you want and I'll probably spend money on it anyway. Probably.

Disappointed and insulted.
/rant
I agree that for three years total ignoring the Soviets and when the entire forum is currently overwhelmed with topics about the Soviets: fix? rework, etc. And it is announced that there will be no Soviets. This is just a huge disappointment and insult. And I will vote with my money and will not buy DLC.
 
Yes and no. Both had been more spectators or supporters but not really players in the game. Had the Belgians been as important in the War as the Dutch had the potential of being? As far as I know their king choose to stay behind and there are not that many stories about belgian resistance like french and dutch.


as I said a Belgian tree could be very interesting for several peculiar reasons both its internal and external policy as the Dutch or Mexican tree of the previous one that also had an attitude very similar to the Belgians during that conflict and it is clear the Belgian attitude must affect some way to French rework as I pass historically
 
Please make it a France AND Italy DLC.

Italy REALLY needs a better focus tree... Italy is really bad to play right now.



And what you COULD do is make its Alt-history path better. Make it Not Aligned like the Romans were, and focus more on the conquest of getting the needed lands, being Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia in their focus as well as some political and industrial things. Better infrastucture which the focus w ill be: All Roads Lead To Rome. This will give it infrastrucutre construction speed!


And then a African branch.
 
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I'm really happy to hear that France is going to be reworked.

In the focus tree, we could imagine other options, such as continuing the fighting despite the fall of Paris, with the government moving to Algiers, then called the Great Move.

Thus everything remains legal for the government (no Vichy France or Free France) and all the colonies remain with the government.

Or if the fighting continues, a free union with Great Britain and France for the duration of the war.

Diplomacy can then be totally reworked, because despite before 1940, France had a very large diplomatic network and a certain influence.
 
France and Italy have more than common that you think since both wanted to influence a lot and were quite important in the area of the Mediterranean and both were with many more weaknesses that wanted to cover more than they could really do that and became secondary powers both had quite a few problems in their colonial possessions

I'm not questioning how similar they can be but in WW2 they had very different issues to face and with HOI4 they are affected by different mechanics. The war in Africa is important for Italy, so Logistics and how warfare was conducted is something that can be improved to make playing as Italy a more fun and rewarding experience.

France meanwhile had a host of different problems compared with Italy. Just focusing on Free France, De Gaulle had to basically build a new government from scratch, as it was pretty much just him and a handful of French soldiers that chose to stay with him when the Free French started out. He had to fight to be recognised as the allied French government, as even Churchill only saw him as the leader of the Free French resistance group rather than the leader of France until Vichy France was effectively annexed after Operation Torch. This means that the government in exile mechanics are getting expanded, which would not only benefit France but countries like Belgium, Poland, Greece would also be improved with more options. If espionage is being introduced, that would be a massive boon to the French players, although it would have less impact on an Italy player.
 
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Cheers for the DD Podcat and welcome back to you and the team :D. Looking forward to whatever you're all cooking up, Vive la France!

Here's an image of how I imagine the team, happily returning to duty after holidays (actual pic is of sailors from HMAS Nepal, in 1944) :)

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I understand where you are coming from but I request you to understand our i.e. people who are asking for a Soviet and German-Soviet war rework perspective too. From our perspective it's already massive delays and waiting time for us as the development for this rework gets pushed further. Basically a delay and waiting time for at least an year.
Neither AI, nor logistics, nor mobilization and reserve system are present, and each is massive amount of work, and is absolutely critical to get Soviet front right.
The Soviet tree is disgusting, generals and advisers disgusting. And although AI is an important part in the USSR, it is simply not interesting to play.
USSR is not interesting to play because AI can`t actually make you defend and collapse under pressure. Tree and generals are a distant third concern.
Maybe what they want to keep in Soviet rework for another dlc is to be accompanied by some new designer for tanks or airplanes is still not ready and this fact would be some of the justifications to postpone it because Soviet rework is much more necessary than the French rework and possibly from Italian.
Soviet rework needed is vastly larger than anything yet released for HOI4.
 
I would rather a Italian rework over the Soviets... but thats because I like Italy.

I mean I guess I like soviet and would wanna play them if they were reworked but Im pretty sure we want trees and changes to the nations we want to play.

Like for me? Greece, Turkey and Italy. France too if they make it a realize Napoleons dream thing.
 
Like you can probably imagine, the bottom line is that it is a really hard dlc to do, and you can not skimp on it. As you said it is a massively important theater and a popular nation. It takes more time and resources to do than we got right now without massive delays and waiting time for you guys. It is also design wise a tough nut to crack which in turn needs proper time to ripen. In short its the wrong time to do it right now. It doesnt mean we wont touch the theater or work on AI. We always do that, which I think you know looking back.

It's understandable that it's a hard DLC to do, but I personally still think that it would have been much better to focus on the USSR and the Eastern Front for the next DLC/major patch even if it meant delaying its release considerably to give it proper time to ripen. That is, in my opinion, it should be the number one priority right now, worthy putting all development resources into it and as much time as needed, with other unrelated stuff being pushed to subsequent DLCs. Well, tough luck, I guess...
 
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Can we please have other ways of changing ideology than civil war? Japan, India, Germany, Mexico and USA all are forced to have a civil war to change ideologies, and it's getting boring. It's a major reason why I don't play Kaiserreich.

Well, there are other ways of changing ideology (referendum when picking an ideolog advisor), but Japan, India, Germany, Mexico and the USA are all very good example of countries where it would make no sense to have a peaceful ideology switch though.
 
I suppose no chance to get the ship engine/armor national variants working correctly on game start before 1.8(I assume 1.8 is months away still)? It's painful to have HMS Hood/HMS Repulse/HMS Renown to crawl around at Revenge class speeds, not to mention Queen Elizabeth class...
 
Hopefully next DLC releases sometime in the next 3-6 months :)
 
You made me laugh here.

Well... For a war we need 2 sides and both of them commited murderers and attempts taking the power before 18/7/1936: Asturias and the "Sanjurjada".

:DSure

Where you see a war against democracy others see a crusade against communism.
Sometimes a Burgundian cross is a Burgundian cross, other times it's a Franco apologist.