HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #2

[klopkr]

Great changes.

Not sure if that encirclement animation will be that noticeable though. Should there be a warning kind of like naval invasions?

 

[po8crg]

Unlike subject construction, this will utilize only your own factories, leaving your favored ally to continue with their own constructions as before. We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar, however this setting is easily moddable for those interested in expanding their options. We initially allowed the allied construction of forts, but, well, the office MP proved why that was a terrible idea.

Please please please please please add Ports to that list. So many naval invasions where I can't build a port because I invaded an ally's core territory.

Yeah, I know there are Mulberrys now, but...

 

[Thrawn000000]

These changes all seem great -- glad you can't build forts in allied land

Sad to see podcat go, but congratulations arheo

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Maybe, formally, the bulding on allies territories should be preceded by a diplomatic action.

 

[GenericType]

this is for the people that complained that ussr was "nerfed", these changes are going to make it hell for germany to advance in soviet territory

Depends on who is being nerfed. Players would definitely have a blast with the new tree, not sure about the AI though. I almost exclusively play single player, and would like to see the Soviet AI for once to go its historic route of making Der Failure off himself.

Btw, I am not sure if this has been asked in the thread, is there news on the 'supply trucks should use fuel' angle?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

I’m super excited to take my experiences forward from Macedonian nation-building to the 20th century.

Macedonian FT confirmed.

 

[Orderchaos]

While all of this seems so wonderful with the plethora of content, I'm a little worried about the dev's changing, due to the fact that Imperator rome doesn't have the best reputation in the community and the guy who worked on it is coming over to here while I still am reserving judgment because he has yet to do anything, it worries me, hoi 4 is one of my favorite games, and I'd like to keep it that way

 

[Wombat69]

All of this is purely cosmetic. Barely anything changed. Maybe its more clear now idk but I would hardly call it an improvment. Bizarrely, Devs act like it is a completely new feature, while it is not

I beg to differ.

While weather has been a part of the game, I never took it into consideration for my operations - well, not quite (sandstorms, snow), but not really. My issue has been, that the impact has personally not been visible enough as an effect on my forces. I would like to know how other players took weather into consideration.
Looking at historical events and how weather impacted operations, I appreciate this dev effort.

What interests me though and what I’d like to know more about is how the visibility of weather effects will be increased, and in particular on faster game speeds.
Would this be added to unit info on movement and supply in better visibility? Just seeing weather effects on the map did not do it for me.

 

[aantia]

@podcat secret project? It's a bit soon for vic4 right?

Paradox was developing a fantasy GSG, according to their investor relations stuff. I'm hoping this'll be their next game - Stellaris needs a fantasy counterpart!

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Podcat, thank you for all your contributions to the game and your immense patience with this somewhat fractious community over the years.

Arheo, congratulations on your new role. You persuaded me to buy and play Imperator so I'm sure this ship is still in safe hands.

 

[bERt0r]

Ok, you're reworking weather. First issue: why is Blizzard even a thing? AFAIK that's a North American thing that doesn't really happen in Europe/Russia. Now you may just use the term blizzard instead of "heavy snowstorm" but then it begs the question why the penalties are so large. I don't know if heavy snowfall was a big issue in Russia, afaik the big issue was abnormally cold temperatures during the war which was exacerbated for the Germans due to their lack of winter equipment. But Blizzards? I don't think even the Soviets would have attempted a winter offensive during a blizzard.

>You'll now be able to allow/deny by category, both in archetype and variant, without the need to manage everything individually.

Awesome! Plz do the same for creating air wings and lend lease.

>We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar, however this setting is easily moddable for those interested in expanding their options. We initially allowed the allied construction of forts, but, well, the office MP proved why that was a terrible idea.

Excuse me but I don't think that the office MP is able to prove much. The biggest issue I can think of is building ports. As in Allies do D-Day and cannot build and repair ports and infrastructure in France & Benelux. If your office MP experience tells you forts are OP, I think it's time for another Devs vs Influencers match. I'm sure Dankus would love to play Germany.

 

[wisecat]

Dear Dev's - please add a setting/option/whatever that will make units under orders ignore the auto-stop in cases when further movement will trigger lack of supply.
It's no fun having to order 20+ divisions to start moving again by hand or have a whole front implode on you while you were managing another one, because your units just stop following orders.

 

[2570524876]

While all of this seems so wonderful with the plethora of content, I'm a little worried about the dev's changing, due to the fact that Imperator rome doesn't have the best reputation in the community and the guy who worked on it is coming over to here

The hoi4 community welcomes you Peter lol

besides that joke, I find the changes small but with great impact on the game. The weather is definitely not important atm, hope it will be enough to make us care about it.

I’d just say that on the new equipment menu in division design, less is sometimes better. There is already a simple way to tell the game if it’s a filer or à first class division, what improvement does it make to be able to filter out equipment. Didn’t the game already did that when clicking on the three button : yellow, white and red ?

 

[Arheo]

Dear Dev's - please add a setting/option/whatever that will make units under orders ignore the auto-stop in cases when further movement will trigger lack of supply.
It's no fun having to order 20+ divisions to start moving again by hand or have a whole front implode on you while you were managing another one, because your units just stop following orders.

We actually added this yesterday, with the ignore setting tied to order execution status.

 

[Wombat69]

Any chance you can add Naval Bases to the list of things you can build in Allied territory? I'd be more interested in helping liberate Africa or SE Asia if I could build extra naval bases to limit the attrition taken while on campaign in those areas. Allied construction of naval bases is somewhat historical, since I believe D-Day involved lots of port upgrades after the initial beachhead was secured.

On a related note, could an ally lend their Civs to accelerate the repair of damaged infrastructure after recapturing lost territory? In many areas, the infrastructure is already quite high, so building new infrastructure wouldn't help supply as much as repairing the broken infrastructure would.

You have Mulberries.

 

[ScottyWired]

Peak excitement for an update is booting up the game and getting bummed out immediately because I'm thinking "man this is gonna be so much cooler if I just wait a few months"

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Arheo, and many, many thanks for all of your work on both HoI3 and HoI4 Podcat - best of luck for the secret project, and I have no doubt it'll be something to look forward to once we know a bit more about what's going on .

Lots of great things in this DD as well, although I have some thoughts on one or two things:

New Ground Conditions: (WIP)​

Condition	Attrition	Div Speed	Div Attack	Div Defense	Dig In	Org Regain	Org Loss While Moving
Deep Snow	+25%	-25%	-30%	+25%
Snow	-10%	-10%	+10%
Mud	+70%	-50%	-40%	+25%
Flood	-50%	+50%	+20%	+25%

While I appreciate it's important not to be to 'unforgiving' to players, this seems a very 'gently gently' take on mud. My impression on the impact of mud, from reading Mud: A Military History (as well as military history more generally - although I don't focus on the dirty, landy stuff unless I really focus on the dirty landy stuff!), is that it has a significantly greater impact on both speed and attack. I'd suggest -70% movement and -60% attack, with movement modified by infra (like it should be already) - but with strategic movement not impacted if strategic movement is tied to rail networks.

You can access this feature in the division designer, where you’ll have a comprehensive breakdown of all equipment types currently stockpiled. You'll now be able to allow/deny by category, both in archetype and variant, without the need to manage everything individually.

So, so wonderful

We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar

I know it's been mentioned a bit already, but ports would be my #1 request here. The inability to build (or repair) ports in allied countries forces me to adjust my gameplay around it when making naval invasions, because the AI is terrible at this and recently liberated nations have no CIC to repair/build ports in any event. It's historically implausible and seriously impacts gameplay. As for 'exploits', I'm not clear how it would be crazily exploited - it's not as if allies can build the ports until after troops have landed, and once troops have landed ports can still only be built at their maximum rate (I presume and hope that nations can't stack builds for extra speed). Pre-invasion ports have never, ever been a barrier to me invading, but at the moment it usually makes sense to let allies get overrun after successfully invading and then invading myself, rather than supporting my ally, because sending troops into support just results in them stagnating supply-wise and going nowhere at best, and being overrun and destroyed at worst.

That said, thank you very much for making this moddable . I usually play vanilla, but if the settings stay "as is", I'll go back to playing modded games, as after message settings the way ports and allies work in relation to invasions is one of the more annoying and immersion-breaking parts of the game for me.

We've taken the opportunity with NSB to add some feedback to one of the more serious situations an army can find itself in - encirclement. Whenever an encircled division is destroyed, a short animation will be played to draw some attention towards it.

It's great that you're adding more user feedback as to in-game events, but that effort has been spent on something that tells plays after a failure state, and is something that is only visible when being looked at in the first place, is a bit disappointing. The game's big UI challenges relate to things that aren't visible on the current window (ie, other parts of the map), not things that players can already see - and relate to telling players before failure, not after. It's better than nothing, and appreciated, but it's a curious prioritisation of in-game UI challenges (I'd have thought alerting players that a unit had been encircled, rather than destroyed by encirclement, would have been much more valuable, and doing it in a way that was viewable regardless of where there map focussed a good deal more useful).

I’m going to be working with a Secret Project which I can't tell you very much about - except that I am super pumped about it, and that it isn't HOI5.

Can't wait Best of luck with everything, and again many thanks for all of your work on HoI4

Peter here again - I’m honored to have been asked to take the reigns on HoI. I’ve been working closely with Dan and the team over the last months, and feel confident that we can keep on building HoI in the right direction.

Congratulations, and best of luck for the future - I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us

Like forts, ports can be somewhat abusable - ie; setting it up to make the D-day landings a lot easier by coating ports everywhere etc.

How does this work though? There are enough ports in ENG at game start to launch D-Day, and any nation powerful enough to launch D-Day can coat ports everywhere after landing by themselves (indeed, it's generally necessary to build a few ports after the initial invasion, given the way supply works in-game and the lack of capacity to supply over the beachhead, although Mulberries will change this a bit, and other supply changes may have also influenced it). Were I not to mod this (which I will be doing, so no issue for me personally) I'd just continue doing what I do now, and instead of invading France, drop straight into Germany where I can build and repair ports. Not allowing ports doesn't seem to achieve much beyond making historical play inefficient due to arbitrary limits on where allies can build ports. I usually play an allied nation (not always a major) and invading an occupied country, or supporting an Allied invasion, is generally a mess because of the lack of port-building capacity and the AI's inability (occupied country with limited CIC) or disinterest (AI invading an enemy directly) in setting up appropriate supply infrastructure.

It's not a biggy, of course - but it seems like a huge missed opportunity - the one thing I'd like to be able to build on allied territory is left out, for reasons that don't really seem to stack up at least at first glance (and I'm very open to be proven wrong here ).

I honestly think ppl would want to play this and that it would be fun

They would indeed, but what about a game that started, say, with the Seven Years' War and went through to the end of the Napoleonic Wars? Sure, it could get fairly crazy, but cool crazy


For a naval-themed pic today, to say goodbye to Podcat, here's a period-appropriate naval cat:

 

[WindingArc]

I honestly think ppl would want to play this and that it would be fun

I would want to play this and it would be fun.

Good work, good luck, and don't be a stranger. I'm sure Victoria IV whatever you're working on will be cool.

How does this work though? There are enough ports in ENG at game start to launch D-Day, and any nation powerful enough to launch D-Day can coat ports everywhere after landing by themselves (indeed, it's generally necessary to build a few ports after the initial invasion, given the way supply works in-game and the lack of capacity to supply over the beachhead, although Mulberries will change this a bit, and other supply changes may have also influenced it). Were I not to mod this (which I will be doing, so no issue for me personally) I'd just continue doing what I do now, and instead of invading France, drop straight into Germany where I can build and repair ports. Not allowing ports doesn't seem to achieve much beyond making historical play inefficient due to arbitrary limits on where allies can build ports. I usually play an allied nation (not always a major) and invading an occupied country, or supporting an Allied invasion, is generally a mess because of the lack of port-building capacity and the AI's inability (occupied country with limited CIC) or disinterest (AI invading an enemy directly) in setting up appropriate supply infrastructure.

It's not a biggy, of course - but it seems like a huge missed opportunity - the one thing I'd like to be able to build on allied territory is left out, for reasons that don't really seem to stack up at least at first glance (and I'm very open to be proven wrong here ).

I think he meant spamming ports on coastline that would be invaded, rather than be invaded from. With that said, I can't think of a scenario in which it makes sense to build ports in allied territory you expect to liberate later. I can see France building ports instead of factories as a sort of metagame scorched earth strategy against Germany, but if the United Kingdom built French ports instead of British factories and dockyards, it would be handicapping itself and probably making the future naval invasion harder.

They would indeed, but what about a game that started, say, with the Seven Years' War and went through to the end of the Napoleonic Wars? Sure, it could get fairly crazy, but cool crazy

I think you'd need to focus either on long-term diplomacy or short-term warfare to make that work. The possibility of winning a near-total victory as Britain historically did in the Seven Years' War makes the second half of that campaign potentially very boring.

There's also the interesting recurrence between 1648 and 1945 of great power conflicts between smaller, geographically contiguous coalitions on the European continent centered around a large, populous state with a first rate army (usually France or Germany) fighting larger, geographically separated coalitions including at least one nation with a first rate navy (usually Britain). The Seven Years' War is the most unusual entry in that pattern because Prussia's small size gave it little breathing room to fight its multi-front war against uncoordinated enemies and because Britain's coalition was in the atypical position of having both a consolidated position on the continent and a credible chance at decisive victory overseas. A Seven Years' War game would probably be pretty interesting.

 

[Axe99]

I think he meant spamming ports on coastline that would be invaded, rather than be invaded from. With that said, I can't think of a scenario in which it makes sense to build ports in allied territory you expect to liberate later. I can see France building ports instead of factories as a sort of metagame scorched earth strategy against Germany, but if the United Kingdom built French ports instead of British factories and dockyards, it would be handicapping itself and probably making the future naval invasion harder.

Ahhh, this makes a little more sense - although, as you say, as long as it's kept "in-faction", the Allies surely have better ways to spend their CIC than building up ports on the French coast. I mean, it's not as if Britain et al can't use it's CIC to purchase goods from France and a French player then use the CIC traded to build the ports itself, so that kind of thing can be done now (and wouldn't require someone to be in the faction - the US could fund French port-building that way). Restricting plausible ways of using the potential functionality to prevent the use of an exploit that can be done anyway seems a bit harsh - although I could easily have missed something else

 

[General Werymash]

Can sandstorms dramatically increase supply consumption? I think more than anything those sandstorms fouled up guns and equipment and so something of that nature should take precedence over org loss etc.