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HOI4 Dev Diary - Formables and Releasables

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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Thank you for a interesting dev diary. This add on does not take away from the bug fixes its just that we are selfish in our ways and like to heart about improvements about fixing bugs that have made the game somewhat unenjoyable. This is a new content that will be used by many who love to play alternate history, something I rarely ever do but becomes more interested in with every new expansion of HOI4. Thank you for taking out your free time to create this for us and hope you will continue to give us more free stuff.
 
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.

I respect that and understand that you are proud of your work. What I don’t understand is what it and many other things planned for this expansion is doing in a ww2 game.
 
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I've read most of the comments and I haven't really seen personal attacks. Why can't people voice their concerns and opinions without being called out for supposedly doing something awful? Maybe the bad messages have been removed? Regardless the new content designer is not at fault, but the guy approving this is where the concern lies. As podcat says a lot of different people play hoi4 I get that and good for paradox so I'm guessing they want to cater to the biggest audience they can because money speaks. But should us that want a "real" ww2 game be ridiculed? It's a perfectly logical thing to want from a hearts of iron game even though we don't get that anymore because perhaps the majority wants something else? Which is absurd when you think about it and the history of hearts of iron games. But I get it, money speaks and I accept that, I still would like to voice my concern and opinion over the direction the game is going and what I miss from previous games.

Regarding bug fix dev diary I think you guys would be surprised. There are some old nasty bugs that people would REJOICE if they were addressed. It's a huge issue and complaints going on for years now, surely you must realize that.

Voicing your opinion against the game's direction is fine, but must of the comments are more like "you're doing this fantasy crap instead bugfixing?" or "they are ruining the historical experience!".
For starters we are talking about a formable nation that can only be created by an unreleased country! You would have to go out of your way to dig this up into your game, the AI certainly ain't gonna do it, and on mp is a near impossible task, so this is not going to disturb anyone's "historical gameplay".
As for the "resource management", this is simply a formable nation, I don't think people realize how little time consuming it is compared to everything else, hell, I dipped my toes into modding for this game, and I would wager, (after looking up a few tutorials to refresh my memory) I could create any formable nation I wanted in a day, now think how long would a dev that knows what he's doing would take? Maybe a dev can prove me wrong, but I believe this formable nation hardly took any time from more pressing matters.

About the game's direction, I don't know if people realized, but HoI4 already features a fully cored Roman and Byzantine Empire, a Aus-Hun Empire, Trotsky returning to the USSR and ruling Mexico, a resigning UK government after an improper marriage(?), I could go on! The course of this game is already set and its not changing, at this point not including some silliness would be inconsistent.
I think Andalus shouldn’t have featured like this in a DD, if that was the case I bet people would just discover it as a little obscure Easter egg like the HRE (and also, maybe remove the cores in Iberia...).

I however, do understand people want a HoI featuring only the plausible, I also wish for this, and I think it would make those alt-history choices more immersive and meaningful than the "oh look, we are monarchist now!" that we have currently, but that is simply not happening in HoI4 anymore, unless they remove/modify a HUGE chunk of content, which is not going to happen.
 
Voicing your opinion against the game's direction is fine, but must of the comments are more like "you're doing this fantasy crap instead bugfixing?" or "they are ruining the historical experience!".
For starters we are talking about a formable nation that can only be created by an unreleased country! You would have to go out of your way to dig this up into your game, the AI certainly ain't gonna do it, and on mp is a near impossible task, so this is not going to disturb anyone's "historical gameplay".
As for the "resource management", this is simply a formable nation, I don't think people realize how little time consuming it is compared to everything else, hell, I dipped my toes into modding for this game, and I would wager, (after looking up a few tutorials to refresh my memory) I could create any formable nation I wanted in a day, now think how long would a dev that knows what he's doing would take? Maybe a dev can prove me wrong, but I believe this formable nation hardly took any time from more pressing matters.
As someone who has been working on an overhaul mod on and off for HOI4 for the last 3 years...
I can confirm that a formable nation like this, with only a handful unique decisions (looks to be 3-4) would take me about...
Maybe 5-7 minutes tops to add the name, a lot less like if I know what I want to name the ideological variants beforehand.
At most 10-20 minutes to go open the game, type 'tdebug' and check the id of which states is needed for the decision and prepare the decision.
Maybe 1-4 minutes to add localisation flavor for said decision.
Now I'm sadly poor at making flags, so the assumption could be that it could take me 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on how much data there are for flags for the country.
If I want I could then add flavor stuff like news event and stuff. Which could take me like...10-15 minutes?

So for someone like me who knows this fairly well, I could vaguer I could finish making one in around 1-2 hours really.
It's barely a pebble in a mountain of time, and if someone knew what they were doing maybe they could cut down a bit of time.
 
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And that makes it relevant in a ww2 setting?

It makes it relevant to a game set during the WW2 timeline, with a major focus on alt-history, yes. Personally, I only play on historical. But as Podcat has pointed out in this thread, only about half the people who play the game play it on historical.

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.

I think they understand that the central draw of the game is the historical WW2 setting and timeline, but arguing that the game should only follow historical events is ignoring how people actually play the game. If anything, people like you and me who prefer historical gameplay are overrepresented from a dev resource standpoint.
 
While it is understandable this was done in their free time, hopefully the devs understand why there is a bit of contempt? When, rather than a footnote, all of the extra tags and formable nations take up a good chunk of a DEVELOPMENT diary, that people will jump to the conclusion that this took away from the proper development of content directly relevant to WWII? It also goes without saying that HoI IV is in fact advertised as a WWII game, and therefore people would expect a fulfilling, as historical as possible, WWII experience? Add to that many bugs reported both on this forum and elsewhere are given the footnote treatment or not responded to at all when it is evident these are the things people very much care about.

Alt-history such as "what if Germany didn't back stab the Soviet Union?" is very interesting due to the fact of how possible it was and how much it would have altered world history. The nonsensical alt-history such as a Confederate revival in the USA takes away the, for lack of a better term, seriousness the game could otherwise have. It is rather disappointing when content is added seemingly for the sake of "meme youtubers can make content out this", when that sort of content should be left for modders, or at the very least, after WWII is properly represented as best as the game allows. Following the logic that stuff should be made for fun before historical probability is very sad to hear. What is to say that an independent Utah that goes on to a create the State of Deseret, or a resurgent Cherokee nation, isn't out of the realm of possibility?
 
It makes it relevant to a game set during the WW2 timeline, with a major focus on alt-history, yes. Personally, I only play on historical. But as Podcat has pointed out in this thread, only about half the people who play the game play it on historical.



I think they understand that the central draw of the game is the historical WW2 setting and timeline, but arguing that the game should only follow historical events is ignoring how people actually play the game. If anything, people like you and me who prefer historical gameplay are overrepresented from a dev resource standpoint.

I haven't argued that the game should only follow historical events. But I struggle to see the the need for nations that in 1945 would have had problems building a small boat engine in a grand strategy game. Maybe when the main timeline is somewhere near an acceptable state, but before several nations that did fight the war even have correct pictures or for generals, advisors and so on? When de Gaulle and several other defects to Vichy? It's plain stupid.
 
I suspect some people might be happier to read a text book than play a game. No matter how “historically accurate” a game might be as soon as you make your first decision you are in fantasy alt history land.
 
What a pathetic, entitled response from this community this has been.

So many of these posts are disgusting and people should seriously take a long hard look at themselves. They and their very specific way they play the game are not the sole reason for its existence. There are tens of thousands of players who play the game in all kinds of ways that have nothing to do with the "right" way to play.

The vitriol directed at a NEW member of the HoI4 team is a quick fire way to even LESS dev interaction on these forums. Especially when it's directed at a personal project, something they are doing to make the game more fun and interesting for more people.

Also, the idea that we as a community are OWED dev diaries is a joke. They are done because PDX like to show off what's coming up and get people excited about a particular thing. They aren't required to do it and frankly, they should skip next week's DD as punishment.

I expected better from this community, but I guess I was wrong.
 
Shouldn't East Timour be its own tag? Feels odd having it just go to Indonesia.
 
I haven't argued that the game should only follow historical events. But I struggle to see the the need for nations that in 1945 would have had problems building a small boat engine in a grand strategy game. Maybe when the main timeline is somewhere near an acceptable state, but before several nations that did fight the war even have correct pictures or for generals, advisors and so on? When de Gaulle and several other defects to Vichy? It's plain stupid.

You said that you didn't understand what it was doing in the game. I believe it's there because some people who play the game enjoy this kind of thing. Sure, it doesn't NEED to be in the game, but if some people enjoy it and someone wants to add it in their free time, I don't see the problem. It's just not for us, and that's okay.
 
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

And this is one of the reasons why I admire you guys persistently writing diaries for us, in spite of all the crap you get in return. I don't necessarily agree with every change to the games I play, but if so then I'll provide constructive criticism rather than indignation.

Not every game developer provides Dev Diaries. Sports Interactive, for example, just announce their new features for each version of Football Manager, with little community input and seemingly little impact on popularity. It's worth us remembering that you could easily choose to do the same.
 
You said that you didn't understand what it was doing in the game. I believe it's there because some people who play the game enjoy this kind of thing. Sure, it doesn't NEED to be in the game, but if some people enjoy it and someone wants to add it in their free time, I don't see the problem. It's just not for us, and that's okay.

If the rationale for including new content is that it would be enjoyed by some players, I'm eagerly awaiting the Moon Nazis DLC. I think the game is lacking direction, and that it is a problem that there doesn't seem to be any idea what it should be. And that adds to the many issues with the current state of it.

What a pathetic, entitled response from this community this has been.

So many of these posts are disgusting and people should seriously take a long hard look at themselves. They and their very specific way they play the game are not the sole reason for its existence. There are tens of thousands of players who play the game in all kinds of ways that have nothing to do with the "right" way to play.

The vitriol directed at a NEW member of the HoI4 team is a quick fire way to even LESS dev interaction on these forums. Especially when it's directed at a personal project, something they are doing to make the game more fun and interesting for more people.

Also, the idea that we as a community are OWED dev diaries is a joke. They are done because PDX like to show off what's coming up and get people excited about a particular thing. They aren't required to do it and frankly, they should skip next week's DD as punishment.

I expected better from this community, but I guess I was wrong.

You do realize people pay for the game?
 
Also, the idea that we as a community are OWED dev diaries is a joke. They are done because PDX like to show off what's coming up and get people excited about a particular thing. They aren't required to do it and frankly, they should skip next week's DD as punishment.

I expected better from this community, but I guess I was wrong.

If people expressing different opinions on the direction of the game is worthy of "punishment", then I really do fear for the games development.