Hi everyone, sorry for the late diary. It was a little crazy at the office today coming back from the long weekend... But all is well that ends well, so here we go with our last real diary before release (next week is full patchlog etc). We will be talking about new subject levels, achivements, music, assorted QoL features and AI Update #3.
Music
Handing over this section to Andreas Waldetoft...
Hi, my name is Andreas Waldetoft and I am the senior music composer here at Paradox.
We decided early on to make really aggressive war music and that it should be recorded with a live orchestra. What better orchestra to use for Death or Dishonor that focuses on eastern Europe then the Budapest Film Orchestra in Hungary.
Here is the orchestra after doing a particularly hard part in one of the tracks where I am shielded by bulletproof glass in case they were to throw an instrument at me:
I would like to share a music excerpt from one of the tracks so that you can have a sneak peek of what to expect from the music. The ending part of the track in 15/8 over to 7/8 time signature was one of the parts where I had to hide behind the glass btw.
Here is a part of a song to listen to while you read the rest:
Axis Autonomy Levels
To follow up on the autonomy system from TFV we wanted to give fascist nations custom levels as well. These are a bit harder to break out from (since fascist nations tend to fight more this helps keeping them under control). The new levels all come with free equipment licenses from your master, which can be really powerful
Satellite
Subject manpower requirement = 40%
Bonus trade for overlord = 40%
Trade cost for master = -40%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Reichsprotectorate
Subject manpower requirement = 70%
Bonus trade for overlord = 60%
Trade cost for master = -60%
Civilian industry to overlord = 25%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Reichskommisariat
Subject manpower requirement = 90%
Bonus trade for overlord = 100%
Trade cost for master = -90%
Civilian industry to overlord = 25%
Military industry to overlord = 65%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Achievements
Death or Dishonor comes with 10 new achievements. 2 for each new nations and 2 unrelated.
The Balkan Powder Keg
As Yugoslavia, start the Second World War (i.e. be part of either the Axis or the Allies and at war with the other faction in a war you started)
Huge-oslavia
As Yugoslavia, occupy all your neighbouring countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Italy and Greece)
Miklos Horthy and the Habsburg Prince
As Hungary, restore Austria-Hungary
Better than the Szent Istvan
Have Miklos Horthy as a Naval commander and build a battleship
Czechmate
As Czechoslovakia, occupy Canberra (Australia) while at war with the allies
The Munich Disagreement
As Czechoslovakia, occupy Munich while at war with Germany
Neither Death nor Dishonor
As Romania, end the game with all the states you started it with and control either Moscow or Berlin
Death or Dishonor or Cake
Own a slice of all your starting neighbors as Romania
Lethal Straight
Have a production license from at least 5 of the 7 major powers.
En Svensk Tiger
As Sweden, acquire a production license for a Tiger or Tiger II tank from Germany
AI Update #3
We figured the best way to do this was to lift stuff from the changelog directly and talk about it, so lets go!
Some AI plan and plan activation work:
All in all, this would improve the AIs use of plans in most situations, both making them better at determining time for activation as well as replanning and when to even focus on attack. On a situation to situation basis, it may seem to have a small impact, but on a larger scale it is meant to make the AI feel more responsive and active.
Some interesting use of the new role functionality:
Together with some new triggers, the AI can be made to respond to the enemy armor and piercing values in specific roles. Since the trigger for those two things are based on intel values, research encryption will matter, as keeping it higher will make the estimations worse. I hope modders find inspiration for even more interesting things with roles and designs being triggered by various things in the game state.
AI Research:
There was a lot of research cases holding the AI back. Germany for example has a narrow window to get medium tanks ready for templates and production and if it queues up the wrong techs its pretty bad for it. We both tweaked ai selection weights as well as fixing a couple of tricky timing issues that meant that often it would end up picking worse techs in a long term strategy it thought was good a long time ago (so before it got ahead of tiem reduction focuses etc). This generally helped all AI nations, but a few like Germany and Soviets the most.
Ministers and Laws:
We also did a whole bunch of balancing around the asian countries which you'll need to check full changelog for, but of note is that we added 79 new Aluminium that is accessible (through conquest, subjects or owned) and 32 steel. Japan in particular was really lacking some of its resources which also meshed badly with their historical number for those.
UI Updates
As part of Oak we have been updating some interfaces that we felt needed it. We talked about the war interface in an earlier diary and here is the trade interface:
Its much easier to see balance of resources now, and its possible to sort by convoys you'd need for those trades. Trade Influence is now in the export tooltip since it only really affects the export anyway and you seldom cared about it.
Another super sweet thing is that you can now double click on a division in the division list to select all of the same type (also works for airwings in the new airwing UI):
So if I double-clicked on one of those divisions all get selected.
We have also change rules for mapmodes, so they now only switch when going from major types (naval to air say). That means you can draw battleplans and control units in supply mapmode for example.
Next week on the 14th is release of Death or Dishonor and the 1.4 Oak Update. I'll have an early diary out with patchlog for you all to discuss. Pinky swear <3
Music
Handing over this section to Andreas Waldetoft...
Hi, my name is Andreas Waldetoft and I am the senior music composer here at Paradox.
We decided early on to make really aggressive war music and that it should be recorded with a live orchestra. What better orchestra to use for Death or Dishonor that focuses on eastern Europe then the Budapest Film Orchestra in Hungary.
Here is the orchestra after doing a particularly hard part in one of the tracks where I am shielded by bulletproof glass in case they were to throw an instrument at me:
I would like to share a music excerpt from one of the tracks so that you can have a sneak peek of what to expect from the music. The ending part of the track in 15/8 over to 7/8 time signature was one of the parts where I had to hide behind the glass btw.
Here is a part of a song to listen to while you read the rest:
Axis Autonomy Levels
To follow up on the autonomy system from TFV we wanted to give fascist nations custom levels as well. These are a bit harder to break out from (since fascist nations tend to fight more this helps keeping them under control). The new levels all come with free equipment licenses from your master, which can be really powerful
Satellite
Subject manpower requirement = 40%
Bonus trade for overlord = 40%
Trade cost for master = -40%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Reichsprotectorate
Subject manpower requirement = 70%
Bonus trade for overlord = 60%
Trade cost for master = -60%
Civilian industry to overlord = 25%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Reichskommisariat
Subject manpower requirement = 90%
Bonus trade for overlord = 100%
Trade cost for master = -90%
Civilian industry to overlord = 25%
Military industry to overlord = 65%
All autonomy gain = -30%
Free license production with overlord.
Achievements
Death or Dishonor comes with 10 new achievements. 2 for each new nations and 2 unrelated.
The Balkan Powder Keg
As Yugoslavia, start the Second World War (i.e. be part of either the Axis or the Allies and at war with the other faction in a war you started)
Huge-oslavia
As Yugoslavia, occupy all your neighbouring countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Italy and Greece)
Miklos Horthy and the Habsburg Prince
As Hungary, restore Austria-Hungary
Better than the Szent Istvan
Have Miklos Horthy as a Naval commander and build a battleship
Czechmate
As Czechoslovakia, occupy Canberra (Australia) while at war with the allies
The Munich Disagreement
As Czechoslovakia, occupy Munich while at war with Germany
Neither Death nor Dishonor
As Romania, end the game with all the states you started it with and control either Moscow or Berlin
Death or Dishonor or Cake
Own a slice of all your starting neighbors as Romania
Lethal Straight
Have a production license from at least 5 of the 7 major powers.
En Svensk Tiger
As Sweden, acquire a production license for a Tiger or Tiger II tank from Germany
AI Update #3
We figured the best way to do this was to lift stuff from the changelog directly and talk about it, so lets go!
Some AI plan and plan activation work:
All in all, this would improve the AIs use of plans in most situations, both making them better at determining time for activation as well as replanning and when to even focus on attack. On a situation to situation basis, it may seem to have a small impact, but on a larger scale it is meant to make the AI feel more responsive and active.
Some interesting use of the new role functionality:
Together with some new triggers, the AI can be made to respond to the enemy armor and piercing values in specific roles. Since the trigger for those two things are based on intel values, research encryption will matter, as keeping it higher will make the estimations worse. I hope modders find inspiration for even more interesting things with roles and designs being triggered by various things in the game state.
AI Research:
There was a lot of research cases holding the AI back. Germany for example has a narrow window to get medium tanks ready for templates and production and if it queues up the wrong techs its pretty bad for it. We both tweaked ai selection weights as well as fixing a couple of tricky timing issues that meant that often it would end up picking worse techs in a long term strategy it thought was good a long time ago (so before it got ahead of tiem reduction focuses etc). This generally helped all AI nations, but a few like Germany and Soviets the most.
Ministers and Laws:
When improving AI it tends to make conflicts turn out really differently (Japan vs China conflict ended in 1.5 years after we improved battleplanner AI). Before balancing these things from a historical standpoint we always want to make sure both sides are playing as good as possible, and there was a lot of cases where China would end up losing because it did not pick laws or ministers correctly. Thus we focused a bunch of attention there. This helped other nations a lot also and helped solve issues where the Soviets ended up burning their political power to spread out navies and such setting them back on laws and making them lose to Germany because of it.
We also did a whole bunch of balancing around the asian countries which you'll need to check full changelog for, but of note is that we added 79 new Aluminium that is accessible (through conquest, subjects or owned) and 32 steel. Japan in particular was really lacking some of its resources which also meshed badly with their historical number for those.
UI Updates
As part of Oak we have been updating some interfaces that we felt needed it. We talked about the war interface in an earlier diary and here is the trade interface:
Its much easier to see balance of resources now, and its possible to sort by convoys you'd need for those trades. Trade Influence is now in the export tooltip since it only really affects the export anyway and you seldom cared about it.
Another super sweet thing is that you can now double click on a division in the division list to select all of the same type (also works for airwings in the new airwing UI):
So if I double-clicked on one of those divisions all get selected.
We have also change rules for mapmodes, so they now only switch when going from major types (naval to air say). That means you can draw battleplans and control units in supply mapmode for example.
Next week on the 14th is release of Death or Dishonor and the 1.4 Oak Update. I'll have an early diary out with patchlog for you all to discuss. Pinky swear <3
