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Meka66

CK3 Game Design
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Sep 23, 2019
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Hello everyone and welcome to another dev diary for La Resistance! I should begin by introducing myself: I am Meka, I joined Paradox just a few months ago as a Content Designer. Some of you may be aware of me due to my work on Theocracies and Burgundy over on EUIV, but now I'm here to show what mischief I've been up to in my time on Hearts of Iron.

Man the Guns saw the creation of a lot of new tags, making some countries balkanisable, and almost all of the world decolonisable. Waking the Tiger saw the introduction of formable tags, a mechanic that until now has not been further utilised. However, with the Husky patch, a whole slew of new releasable tags will be added to the game along with two new formable nations; one as part of the free patch, and one for owners of La Resistance.
Polynesia 001.png

Starting with releasable tags, Man the Guns allowed most of the world to be decolonised, but Oceania was mostly left unloved with only one nation being added to the continent, leaving the rest of the disparate islands untouched and still under colonial rule. However, I have added 6 new releasable tags and one formable for the region.

The Kingdom of Hawaii was only annexed by the United States 38 years before the start of Hearts of Iron and can be released along with most of the US’s pacific holdings.
Polynesia 002.png


Tahiti
Polynesia 003.png


Samoa
Polynesia 004.png


The Federated States of Micronesia
Polynesia 005.png


The Solomon Islands
Polynesia 006.png


The Mariana Federation
Polynesia 007.png


These disparate islands may struggle to survive on their own, and so a nation who holds enough of the Polynesian Triangle will be able to unite all Pacific peoples into a single state known as Polynesia. This state will be formable by any nation listed above plus New Zealand. Unlike other formable tags, this nation can be created by dominions meaning New Zealand does not necessarily have to leave the Allies in order to form this tag.
Polynesia 008.png


But perhaps players wish to live out an alternate history where the Naha Prophecy was fulfilled and Kamehameha united the Pacific several years earlier. With the Polynesian Empire game rule, Hawaii will begin the game having already conquered the entirety of the Polynesian Islands and built up a fair-sized industry.
Polynesia 009.png

Polynesia 010.png


The ability to form Polynesia is a free feature, as are the releasable tags.


Along with adding these releasable nations, I did also touch up the old fragmentation game options to make the world fully split into different continents. The UK now surrenders its African, Asian, and American islands to its former colonies, Portugal surrenders Timor to Indonesia, and a few other small changes like that.


Also, armies standing around in former colonial territories is now a thing of the past and nations will now only have armies stationed in territories where they have access.
Armies.png


Iberia is a focal point of La Resistance and as such, a few releasable tags have been added to the subcontinent as well.


Catalonia
Catalonia.png


The Basque Country
Basque.png


Galicia
Galicia.png


Spain can of course be fractured from the start of the game by selecting the appropriate option in the game menu. However, I noticed Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia simply weren’t enough to make Iberia look “shattered” so I took the liberty of adding an “11th of November” game rule, and I will leave it for you all to speculate what that option does.
Spanish Fragmentation.png


When it comes to the second formable, one must be opportunistic and take full advantage of the instability in Spain and Portugal. The Moorish people once reigned sovereign over all of Iberia, and owners of La Resistance will be able to restore the long-dead state of Al-Andalus.
Andalusia Conditions.png


Andalusia was once an Islamic Sultanate that ruled from the Iberian peninsula and a beacon of the Islamic world. Through struggles with the Catholic kingdoms in the medieval era, the Andalusians would slowly be pushed out of Iberia, ending with the conquest of the Emirate of Granada in 1520. However, the Moorish people continue to exist to this day in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, many of whom are descendants from Moorish refugees fleeing the Spanish Reconquista.

Andalusia will be formable by any of the North African countries; Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Algeria, or Libya. In order to form this tag, one must occupy a large portion of both Spain and Portugal’s southern states and forming the tag grants cores on the entirety of the Iberian subcontinent.
Andalusia 1.png


But that isn’t the end of Andalusia. Similar to Byzantium’s “triumph” decisions, Andalusia will be able to sweep across the Mediterranean and beyond, restoring their old claims and titles.
Andalusia Decision 2.png


If a player can enact all decisions relating to the Andalusian conquests of North Africa and the Med, they will be able to press on for Egypt and Arabia and declare themselves the Umayyad Caliphate reborn, granting cores on the Arabian Peninsula.
Andalusia Decision 3.png


Upon doing so, Andalusia will unlock their final set of decisions, allowing them to restore the entire former claims and titles of the Umayyad Caliphate, effectively reuinifying the Islamic world.
Andalusia Decision 4.png

Andalusia 3.png


As we have expanded the scope of Hearts of Iron, some old bits of content started to become outdated and lead to some annoying bugs, which I have dedicated some time to fixing. One key thing I have improved is the way that the British Raj interacts with different game options and Britain doing strange things. From now on, the Raj will be able to freely pursue their focus tree even if Britain forces them into independence, with some focuses bypassing, and others no longer requiring the Raj to be a subject.
Raj Fix.png


Join Da9L, Bratyn and Jojo at 16:00CET on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive as they have a closer look at Anarchist Spain!
 
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So....where are you hiding Podcat? :confused:
They locked me in a giant cargo container. I am not quite sure where I am, but I think I can hear helicopters and growling from what I can only assume are mountain lions from outside. plz send help
 
Andalusia getting cores on Iberia...
I very much made the decisions for Andalusia in the spirit of the existing Byzantium formable, prioritising fun and layered objectives over any historical believability.

I noticed that Tahiti has a unique portrait. Did you add more generic portraits or is that a unique portrait?
As much as I would love for the Queen of Tahiti to have her own portrait, she is currently using a generic Operative portrait.

With the Polynesian flags, the flag of the United Kingdom of... Polynesia? (I think that was it but didn't really see that part), is the Royal Tongan flag, but there's no Tonga. My question is, will this little tiny island Kingdom be ever added in? or is it so small that god forbid the ocean has swallowed it already?
Unfortunately, Tonga is still subdued far beneath the waves. I opted to use Tonga's royal standard as Polynesia's neutral flag as Tui Tonga is the closest real life example of a Polynesian state spanning several cultural identities. The dem/com/fasc flags however are all original and I had a lot of fun making those :)
 
What are the alternate names for the new tags? I'm particularly thinking about the People's Democratic Republic of Hawaii.
I had a lot of fun with alternate country names and flags. Communist Hawaii specifically is known as "the Great Ohana Commonwealth"

I am sure adding pacific islands as releaseable tags had priority over fixing broken events and event chains that for example hungary has.
The Oceanic releasables began as a pet project of mine since I noticed that the decolonisation game options largely ignored this corner of the world. I did spend quite some time updating old events and focuses too, as mentioned at the end of the diary ;)
 
I had a lot of fun with alternate country names and flags. Communist Hawaii specifically is known as "the Great Ohana Commonwealth"


The Oceanic releasables began as a pet project of mine since I noticed that the decolonisation game options largely ignored this corner of the world. I did spend quite some time updating old events and focuses too, as mentioned at the end of the diary ;)

I can't help but wonder, if you were placed on the CKIII or Stellaris teams how you'd get Polynesia into those games...
 
This argument has been restated again and again, but it does not apply here.
Now it is a simple matter of prioritization of what the content designers do: content designers, as far as I can see, make a) decisions, b) events, c) focus trees.
The problem here is not content designers not programming the AI; it is rather that instead of working on existing problems within their purview (such as problematic focus trees interactions in general) or adding decisions/formables/events with at least some relevance to the 20th century (such as at least pan-Arabism instead of the damn Caliphate) that energy is put into Byzantium, the HRE, and Al-Andalus.

The best thing of this dev diary is the fix in the Indian focus tree, for which I must say both "congratulations" and "about time", honestly.

As mentioned, Paradox staff have Personal Development Time during which they can do stuff that is work related, but outside the scope of what a patch might be. This is likely due to @Meka66 making use of that.
 
I appreciate the feedback, however I did all this as well as fixing bugs, not instead of. I fixed a number of content bugs, including those mentioned to be found in the TfV and Hungarian trees as well as some old Waking the Tiger bugs. I just felt the odds and ends I'd fixed was more of a footnote to a diary than a full diary in itself.
 
maybe I'm just nitpicking, but I think it seems a bit odd to have Al-Andalus as a formable but not Iberia, unless Iberia has always been a formable and I'm just stupid. But I'm pretty sure that it isn't. So I think it's weird to implement a rather obscure formable because of the DLC's focus on Iberia as opposed to actual Iberia. Again maybe I'm just nitpicking.
There will be... ways to form an Iberian tag ;)

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Why even spend one minute implementing something as ridiculous as centuries-old Arab kingdom in a WWII game?
Because a lot of people enjoy it. HOI4 is a game played by lots of different people and formables is one of those things people keep asking for more of.
If you dont like it thats fine to say that, but try to keep in mind the different kinds of players we have. As an example we put a massive amount of development time into multiplayer despite the community not being particularly big. When it comes for ww2 history vs alt history content we probably spend 3x the resources on history stuff despite only about 50% of people play in a historical way. Its all about trying to balance a lot of different wants. Also fun side fact, me having to respond to people posting mean stuff to a guy who just wanted to show off some fun stuff he did in his off time IS eating into ai bugfixing which I am currently doing
 
Red flag! Red flag!

If that's the mentality, I may as well play civ
That was my approach to designing specifically the Andalusia formable, it does not reflect my stance on design for HoI4 as a whole.

@Meka66 Examples:
- East African Federation
- Greater Mongolia
- United South America
- Central Asia (Turan)
- Indochina
- Greater Antilles
- Transcaucasia
- Australasia (AST+NZL)
- Hispaniola
- The Gold Coast of Africa
I would be delighted at the opportunity to add more formables in the future :)

does come across as bug fixes being less worthy of mention than this. Even just two or three non-trivial bugs fixed (and maybe how they were found/analyzed/solved) would in my humble opinion make very good material for a dev diary.
Bugfixing has taken up a significant portion of my time on Hearts of Iron. While it has been time consuming and has improved the experience of the game overall, it didn't strike me as being something as interesting to talk about as some fun new features to play around with. While bugfixing is important and improves the game overall, it's not exciting and honestly once a bug is fixed and is verified as fixed, I largely forget there was ever even a bug there to begin with.

My job as a content designer is to create and refine content. It's something I'm passionate about and I like thinking of fun ways the player can enjoy the content I've made; maybe it's the challenge of it that appeals to someone, or the sandboxy fun you can have from a non-historic playthrough. Something like a formable doesn't take long to make or test, so it's easy to implement in my own time, whereas something like a focus tree overhaul as many in this thread have suggested takes up a lot of time to research, develop, and properly implement into the game. I'd love to take ownership of a focus tree in HoI's future, but for now my job has mainly been to fix bugs and refine existing features, so anything creative like this has been done in my own time out of passion for the game :)

Why doesn't the Kingdom of Hawaii have a Union Jack on its flag like it did historically? This was the flag of the historic kingdom, territory and the modern State so it makes sense that it would be the flag of an independent Hawaii unless the new state was Communist.
For neutral Hawaii, I have the royal standard as the national flag. The historical Union Jack design is available to a Democratic Hawaii. Hawaii as an independent nation is largely seen as either a republic or a restored monarchy, and since Non-Aligned is a bit finnicky to flip into, I made it their default starting ideology with a significantly high support for Democracy. While the monarchy did use the Union Flag as well, I wanted to make all Polynesian countries have four distinct flags for each of their ideologies.
 
give some unique party names for Spanish splinters but almost every micro island nobody would play has at least one. Don't you think that there is something wrong with it?
The majority of these Oceanic countries gained independence as republics so finding information on their political parties was relatively simple. The Spanish splinter nations do have unique leader names for each of their parties, although yes unique party names could be implemented at some point as well.
 
With regards to all the comments about bugs, here's a brief summary of just a few content bugs I have fixed recently:

Bugfixes1.png
Supply areas in S. America and China were pretty wonky and have been redrawn

Bugfixes2.png

Chinese Warlords no longer go to war with themselves in the event of a civil war

Bugfixes3.png

These guys were not using their unique portraits for a long time but that is now fixed

Croatia will only break free from Yugoslavia if Yugoslavia owns Croatia.

Mexico can now freely change ideologies without owning MtG

All countries now have names generated for their Com/Fasc/Dem boosting advisors

You can no longer fire the Molotov-Rib pact as Germany if the Soviets already occupied all of Poland

You can now reintegrate multiple states at the same time during the American Civil War

Democratic Germany's AI no longer attempts to do its focuses in the wrong order or try to do Kaiser-related focuses

Japan will no longer go to war with the PRC immediately after losing against China

The Dutch focus "protect the colonies" will no longer bypass all the time

India and Pakistan will no longer go to war 100% of the time

One state countries can no longer have "civil wars"

That's just a handful of bugs I've fixed that I could remember off of the top of my head. More changes like this are incoming in patch notes. My creating content for the game does not substitute bugfixing.
 
Just a suggestion: Go back to designing content for EU4 and Paradox get somebody to actually fix the shitty combat like teleporting planes?
Dunno. Maybe Al Andalusia is the next big thing though and I am wrong.

I didn't realise that teleporting planes were under the remit of content design?
 
This should have been the first post.
I did touch on bugs briefly such as fixing the bug with colonial troops standing around in their former territory and updating the Raj's focus tree to work better with MtG. I've been bugfixing as part of my work a lot since joining HoI and I wanted to share a part of my work that shows off some new content I have made of my own free will.
 
There are hella lot of broken content desperately in need for fixing, why don't they focus on it during their free time instead of some childish fantasy?

Because it's the dev's free time and if they want to make something ahistorical, why not? I'd never expect nor want them to do work on their free time and if they are I would hope the union would speak up. And if the people responsible for the project decide to merge the dev's personal work into the game, that's fine by me - after all IIRC both Iron Century and Sunset Invasion begun as personal projects of devs.
 
Maybe this would be a revelation for you, but fixing broken content is their JOB. Since when Paradox is a little team of enthusiastic modders who can do whatever they want because rule of cool? It's nice that devs dedicate their free time on their product, but maybe they should dedicate it on something they couldn't do during their work time instead of adding roof to the house without solid foundation?

Having applied to be content designer for Paradox and done the worktest involved as part of the application - yeah I've got a pretty good idea of what the job involves :p

My argument/thesis is that if a dev wants to add something fun (for them and hopefully us) in their off time and is enthusiastic to share it with the community and their manager agrees to implement it into the patch, why should we complain? They've clearly (as per a later post in the thread) done their job fixing issues with script.