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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #3

Hi everyone, today it's time for another bag of tricks diary (the previous two can be found here and here). Let's jump straight in!

Attachés
Sending a military Attaché is a new diplomacy action coming in Waking the Tiger. It’s something you can only do while you yourself are at peace and the receiver is at war. It requires good relations and ties up a lot of your command power. In exchange you get army XP back as well as intel so you can see the receiver nation’s war. This is a pretty good way to get XP if you are a nation that isn’t able to send volunteers for example. The receiver gains also benefits from the attaché:
Screenshot_3.png

Sending attachés will make any country the receiver is at war with dislike you, and they may issue a diplomatic protest that can seriously hurt your standing with them as well as cause a stability loss depending on the relevant ideology (so if you refuse a demand from a communist country, you will lose stability depending on the strength of communists in your country).

Extra ground crews
Another good place to spend command power when you don't need it for your armies is by prioritizing strategic air areas to receive extra ground crews. A prioritized area get +10% efficiency for planes operating there which can be great in certain areas to allow your planes to fly more effectively. Prioritizing ties up 20 Command Power per area while active.
Screenshot_5.png

This ability as part of 1.5 Cornflakes and thus available to all.

Historical Army Insignias
As part of the effort to make the game feel a little more immersive and allow you to better recognize your armies, we have added Historical Army Insignias to Germany, France, Britain and the US (the Soviet Union and Japan didn’t really do Army Insignias). They can be assigned to any army like any other army insignia but won’t take the army color. All told there are 18 German icons, 11 British icons, 8 US and 3 French ones as well as 10 shared icons that are available to everyone else (some of them are locked to certain ideologies).
Screenshot_6.png

If this is a popular feature, we might consider expanding it to include historical division insignias also in future DLCs.

Volunteer Air Wings
In Waking the Tiger will be possible to send volunteer air forces. Where before you could only lend-lease planes and hope the AI knows how to use them, you now get to control them yourself (you can still lend-lease planes as well, of course). This means you can have the Condor Legion or The Flying Tigers and help out your own volunteer forces.
Screenshot_2.png

Rather than being sent to another theater like with regular volunteer forces you simply get access for a certain amount of planes to base in and operate in the receiver nation and you can just transfer them as normally. The amount of planes you can use depends both on the size of your airforce and the receiver airbase capacity.
Speaking of Flying Tigers, they actually get a special decision. China can invite the Flying Tigers which will unlock a decision for USA where they can decide to respond. This will both give fighters to China as well as increase their volunteer cap allowing them to send more wings over to assist.
Screenshot_4.png


I’m home with stupid winter influenza so today we got @Da9L and @Archangel85 playing historical Japan in World War Wednesday, so tune in at 16:00 CET if you want to see how that looks or want in-depth info about focus tree design!

Next week we will be taking a look at a hopeful little empire on the rise for Waking the Tiger…
Best possible use of the new Historical Army Insignias:
Capture_ggez.JPG
 
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I am really interested with the next diary to see how Manchukuo will be made fun with the new focus tree. Right now Manchukuo has a very very weak industry and the fact it starts out on the lowest autonomy makes it hard to play.
 
I think, in WtT will much more stuff then last DLC.
 
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This is amazing!
I have a question regarding volentare air crafts will it be possible to use a carrier group outside the coast or are you required to use the host nations airfields?
Is it also possible to mod/adjust the desire to send air VS ground forces?
Thinking first of all of the German Air missions in Spain during the Civil War.
 
I like the new stuff. But I was hoping about a dev diary about some naval changes. I love naval combat and ships. And I usually start all my games by disbanding all the ground units (almost all) so I can make more ships.

I was hoping for some info on chain of command changes to admirals maybe. Some change to make subs more scary against everything except destroyers. Or some way to get more info from the naval battles. Like what fleet did my lost ships belong to.

Thank you.
 
Beware republicans!

Then they'll send the Soviet volunteer pilots with their I-16s, and the pre-1941 Russo-German showdown begins :D

Honestly, I'm guessing Italy's gonna dump their OP CR.32 biplanes into Spain with volunteers immediately.
 
In the Dev stream they said they're in the balancing phase of the DLC now. So I'm guessing we're about 3-5 weeks from release. They also revealed that they havn't actually agreed on a release date yet.

I also noticed that compared to Stellaris and EUIV, HOI4 has the highest average amount of players. And this is before the DLC has even been released!
 
In the Dev stream they said they're in the balancing phase of the DLC now. So I'm guessing we're about 3-5 weeks from release. They also revealed that they havn't actually agreed on a release date yet.

I also noticed that compared to Stellaris and EUIV, HOI4 has the highest average amount of players. And this is before the DLC has even been released!

So much for the naysayers screaming that HOI4 is Paradox's greatest failure, then. Never underestimate the silent majority.
 
In the Dev stream they said they're in the balancing phase of the DLC now. So I'm guessing we're about 3-5 weeks from release. They also revealed that they havn't actually agreed on a release date yet.

I also noticed that compared to Stellaris and EUIV, HOI4 has the highest average amount of players. And this is before the DLC has even been released!
Probably because out of all of Paradox's games, it's the one with the most emphasis on war, mainly due to the time period. Without complicated diplomacy and trade systems getting in the way, Hearts of Iron 4 is the one, plain and simple, is just the easiest.
That's not a bad thing. It's actually a very good thing. Simplicity is often the perfect entry point into other, more complex games. I wouldn't play any of Paradox's games today if it weren't for how simple it was for me to just pick up and learn Hearts of Iron 4.
If I had started with Europa Universalis 4, or Crusader Kings 2, I would have likely just put it down after a couple confused hours, whereas I felt a real tangible improvement with every game, seeing what I actually did wrong in Hearts of Iron 4.
 
Cheers for the DD Podcat, lots of goodies in the bag of tricks :D. Hope you feel better soon as well - flu is nae fun. Reckon my favourite trick in the blog is the volunteer air wings - despite their relatively small numbers the Condor Legion and Flying Tigers are both iconic, and made a significant contribution in their area of operations :). Attaches and army icons are also cool though :cool:.

Bit of a stretch for a naval-related pic this week, but as best I can find out, here's a pic of the Dutch Liner Jagersfontein, the vessel that took the first batch of Flying Tigers out of San Francisco on their way to history:

jagersfontein.jpg
 
Probably because out of all of Paradox's games, it's the one with the most emphasis on war, mainly due to the time period. Without complicated diplomacy and trade systems getting in the way, Hearts of Iron 4 is the one, plain and simple, is just the easiest.
That's not a bad thing. It's actually a very good thing. Simplicity is often the perfect entry point into other, more complex games. I wouldn't play any of Paradox's games today if it weren't for how simple it was for me to just pick up and learn Hearts of Iron 4.
If I had started with Europa Universalis 4, or Crusader Kings 2, I would have likely just put it down after a couple confused hours, whereas I felt a real tangible improvement with every game, seeing what I actually did wrong in Hearts of Iron 4.

also the only one where war isnt fiddly. so even if you dont like war HoI4 is the easiest to play. You can play it when you're tired, its about the only paradox game you can say that for.
theres no chasing around bouncing armies, so having to fiddle with armies at all, just set up the front lines and planning and sit back and watch and focus on the larger scope stuff that the other games are supposed to be more about but that too much war micro in the way to actually be.
 
If a chinese country own Tokyo rename the city to dongjing, because that's the chinese name

If a Chinese conquers Tokyo... why should they kept calling it 'Eastern Capital'? It only makes sense if it's still a capital.
 
Attachés
Sending a military Attaché is a new diplomacy action coming in Waking the Tiger.
[/spoiler]

@podcat, given what the Military Attachés do, I do not think "Attaché" is the right label. Most countries have military attaches as a part of their diplomatic staff et foreign embassies. The right term for this, I think, is "Military Advisors".

Military advisors have been sent in various shape or forms throughout history, and they have the task to both advise and gather knowledge during their missions.