• 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.

HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #1

Hello, hopefully you can tear yourself away from rewatching the Star Wars trailer for just one more glimpse of the Porg creature... because it's Wednesday! Time for another dev diary for 1.5 “Cornflakes” update and the as-yet unannounced DLC. We have been covering several big features in the diaries leading up here, so now it's time to also look at some smaller features from our "bag of tricks" :)

Control Groups
This might actually be one of my favourites :D Was reminded about this in a forum thread about UI improvements people wanted and realized I had totally forgotten how nice it was. You can now hit Ctrl+number to save any selection, and then hit the number key again to bring that up. It works with any selection, not just divisions, so you can mark areas, air wings etc and jump between them quickly. Double tapping the number key moves camera to the selection.
pasted image 0.png



Consolidate Divisions
Sometimes after hard battles, or when cut off from reinforcement and supply you can end up with a lot of divisions a low strength. Sometimes you need them at full strength right away and can’t wait for them to fill up normally. The DLC will come with a new feature that lets you consolidate divisions together into fewer, full strength (or as close as you can get ones). Units will move towards the strongest division and transfer over their manpower and equipment when they get there. The system also handles doing it with many divisions in which case it will try to form as many full strength divisions as it can.
Screenshot_4.png



Minimap & Pinging
A minimap is something HOI4 was designed to live without, but there is clearly a part of the community that really miss it, so you can now get it as part of the DLC if you want. It also comes with some new functionality for multiplayer. You can ping the map to illustrate to allies of things you are discussing, like where you want them to defend or push, or as a quick reminder like “watch out here the russians are about to encircle you!”
Screenshot_1.png


Minimap can be toggled to a closed state if you like, and you can still use pings through keyboard shortcuts.
Screenshot_2.png



Kick From Faction
With Cornflakes it will now be possible to kick nations from your faction in the form of a new diplo action.
Screenshot_3.png



Since this stuff tended to lead to some exploiting in the past (players picking off members one by one etc), we have been working on how AI sees this stuff to make it handle a few things… Kicking is possible in war time also and we have been putting a lot of time into dealing with how HOI4 handles wars in code. Basically the underlying system has been completely remade to stop war merging and the like from ruining your wars, or getting nations dropped or included in ways you wouldn't expect. Its one of those non-sexy things that you can't really show but that is going to make things feel a lot better and avoid edge case bugs messing up your day. This also allows us much more flexibility with how we may want to handle wars in the future.


That's it for today, see you all again next week for more updates!

****************************
Guys / Gals

This thread is to discuss the dev diary, not Pdx DLC policy, which has been debated ad nauseam. Stay on topic of the thread. - Had a dad
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Consolidate Divisions
Sometimes after hard battles, or when cut off from reinforcement and supply you can end up with a lot of divisions a low strength. Sometimes you need them at full strength right away and can’t wait for them to fill up normally. The DLC will come with a new feature that lets you consolidate divisions together into fewer, full strength (or as close as you can get ones). Units will move towards the strongest division and transfer over their manpower and equipment when they get there. The system also handles doing it with many divisions in which case it will try to form as many full strength divisions as it can.
Very nice!

But understrength divisions will disappear when consolidating? I can see some issues with this (the start of massive front-line shuffling when the number of forces decreases for starters).

Another thing, you could basically divide your forces into brigades through templates for marching through bad areas (for example) and then template switch to division size again of one division and consolidate the rest?
4xBrigade-sized units with Logistics and Maintenance for maneuvering and then merging them together under a new template to reform the entire division.
The only thing missing to make it truly great is a "split" option to disassemble a division into other templates (such as brigade-components).

How will XP be handled when consolidating?
 
Last edited:
I have to second this. Auto join is super silly and we had a few situations in Multiplayer games ruined because nations auto joined when they really shouldn't be doing that.

I hear ya. The team mostly agree it doesnt really fit anymore in HOI4 (cant remember if HOI2 had it, but HOI3 did). It comes with some problems to solve though, but its something we are thinking about and I suspect it will change. If not for 1.5 then a later patch
 
Its one of those things thats really for a part of the players only. When I had the betas and QA play they were basically split between "oh yes!!!" and "I like it the way it is and will keep it collapsed", so I think its a pretty good fit for DLC. I personally still like to use quick mouse zooming

Well, like I said, I'll have this DLC either way, so it won't affect me personally. I just figure that minimaps are so ubiquitous that it just feels off to make it a paid feature. So, just chalk that up as another 'oh yes' vote, I suppose.
 
Not wanting to assume anything but when consolidating divisions well we lose org/exp??
Or well it stay the same as what division it's being consolidated to??
 
Consolidate is a paid feature? Why? How? ...

All features can't be free though, can they? Then no one would buy the DLC and there would be no development at all on the game.

So far they have announced two major free patch features in previous DDs ( Chain of Command + Stability & War Support ), so IMO it seems there will be alot of free features in the patch.
 
Is it possible that Consolidation could edit the automatically generated division names? For example if we consolidated the 4th and 5th Infantry division, could it be automatically set to change to 4th/5th Infantry regiment? It's what happened in real life with many armies, for example in Britain, the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards.

It'd be a nice bit of flavour to look back and see which divisions stuck around, and trace their lineage back across the campaign
 
Alright! Faction kicking and mini-map look great! Thx for the great features, the dev diaries are amazing!

Maybe it would be cool to have customizable options/settings for straits and diplomatic options with it, it would be weird for a fascist country to have the gibraltar strait open for everyone :S.

Or new peace deal options like: Keep the ideology, but setup a new leader (could be used by soviet union when they invade PRC ;P), fire advisors or fire the whole cabinet, take some of their civilian factories or military factories as war reparation (for a certain amount of time), force them to share a part of their nation's manpower with you (for a certain amount of time), take temporary control of a state, demilitarize a state, fire or kill some of their generals, make your own custom puppet states, more annexation options because it's really immersion breaking when you just want a part of Africa but you just get this mega piece of land because the states are so big. Influence their foreign policy or change their policies, make state changes (change the border of a state) or add your own custom states in a peace deal.

It would also be nice to have regional state leaders you can setup, who run that state for you! (kind of like the general/Field marshal system but more passive) and when you get in a peace deal you can release a state as their own country and the leader of that state becomes the leader of that country, except if the state doesn't have a leader, then the leader becomes someone of your choice.
 
Last edited:
Nice update!!

Grammar police: In the consolidate window, it should probably read: "... will be consolidated with..." or "... will be reinforced by...". If you write "...will be consolidated by...", then it's the weaker units that will do the consolidating - and as the name of the consolidated unit is specifically the strongest unit, this doesn't make much sense.
 
Minimap, what is this amazing technology? Glad that it's back.

Looks good though, was not expecting pinging, and the consolidation is nice. Control groups I've never used (and won't) in Paradox games but at least there is choice!

Also, kick from faction is a nice addition.
 
@podcat - when you consolidate divisions do the plundered divisions go back to a recruitment/training stage or are they gone completely?