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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.
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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.
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Tahiti
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Samoa
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The Federated States of Micronesia
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The Solomon Islands
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The Mariana Federation
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Iberia is a focal point of La Resistance and as such, a few releasable tags have been added to the subcontinent as well.


Catalonia
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The Basque Country
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Galicia
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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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I just love all the angry comments at such a minor things like releasable tags, [sarcasm]yes I'm sure they pulled critical resources from the "WW2 era content" to create this.[/sarcasm]
Think of this like Easter egg extra content for fun, its not going to "disturb" anyone's WWII immersion unless you go after it you know?

Honestly this sounds like a group of snobs scoffing in an outrage after some tiny drops of their precious delicate tea fell on their pants.
A reminder that Content Designers can have Personal Development Time and do things outside of their contracted work I.e this didn't take any focus away from the content of the expansion, bug fixes or anything of the sort. Much the same as the releasable tags made by @Bratyn in MtG

It feels like everyone thinks every individual person who works on the game is a multitasker who fulfills every role at once, and people having fun pet-projects on the side is a physical impossibility. Someone doing a pet project in their free time? NO. Must be taking hours away from the combat AI, something a content designer likely isn't even hired to work on. Never forget the entire Iron Century patch was a pet project.

I can kind of understand where people are coming from in regards to wishing the content were more WW2 focused, but as was stated before, content designers do have free time to do with as they wish. Thing is this situation reminds me of not long ago, when unit model packs or w/e would come out for EU4 and people would talk about artists "wasting development time".
 
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Sad to see where this game was gone.
So much alt history nonsense and so little love for the AI, fixes for old dlc and actual ww2 content.
Seriously who of your designers thought it's a good idea to add Al Andalus or the other nonsense formable countries?
What's the point anymore of this game except of starting any country and form some meme country to get free cores?
 
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Not a big fan of the formables, save Polynesia.

There should be fewer nostalgic formables and more modern, nationalist, pannationalist, and internationalist unions. So far this patch, the Global Defense Council is the only formable that interests me.

Like, we have Byzantium and the Rashidan caliphate, but not the United Nations?
Gotta agree. I understand a pan-arab state, but why does it have to be a such a throwback? Pan-arabism is something that actually existed. Arabia is already in the game. Why doesn't it get these decisions?
 
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.
 
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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@Meka66 I'm sorry to be hating on your first post here as a Content Designer. I'm looking forward to the bug fixes you mentioned earlier. However, adding a bunch of ahistorical formable tags just seems to me (and evidently many others) to be a shark-jumping moment for a game that's been moving away from its historical WWII theme for a while now. If this work was a personal pet project, it should probably have been released as a mod or optional add-on, not as part of an official release. The reason for all the angry comments in this thread is that it's frustrating to see Content Designer time being spent on projects like this when iconic WW2 events like the Phoney War, the Italian Civil War, and the Winter War are missing or heavily underdeveloped.

I want to love and support this game, but it's getting harder with every release. The development process just lacks focus. And that doesn't just affect content, either. Every formable nation, alternate history focus tree, or decision introduces a potential for new bugs, stealing development time from core features. Just look at the last few changelogs to see what I mean.
 
There will be... ways to form an Iberian tag ;)

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that's good to see but I hope it's not too conditional, if there's one thing that grinds my gears it's when Spain or Portugal completely own one another and retain the old name, so I hope the only condition is for one to control the other, if you have to go a particular ideology to access a focus or something for example that could be rather annoying
 
Am kind of more interested in some decolonial focus stuff like the soviets bringing back the Comintern’s eastern workers congresses, a United Arab Republic, and stuff like that, not as much bringing back the corpses of old kingdoms. Communist trees should include a better form of “destroy the empire” or “dismantle empire” that raises the cost of maintaining colonies by a lot using the the new garrison system and maybe a revolt if the owner says no.

If this is just a way to spend extra time for new staff, maybe it should be spent on filling out the list of portraits, adding missions, and retooling old focuses.
 
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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
Don't worry, the polar bear cavalry are on their way
 
@Meka66
You're doing a good job. I like your changes very much do not let you get under.

@All
I do not like people who complain about things that do not harm them personally just because it is not what they wanted whom Meka66 wanted to do in his development time then let him do it and did not expect that he would solve the problems that exist in his private development time that is the task of paradox and not of a single developer.
Ps would found Al anderlus.
PPS Googel translator
 
Because they perceive small fun things like this as taking a significant amount of man-hours from other roles for whatever reason.

I mentioned this in my post above, but I wanted to address this directly. The "small fun things" add up. Once something is an official feature of the game Paradox have to spend development time on bug fixing etc. Focus trees are probably the worst offenders, but even releasables end up causing bugs such as missing flags, portraits, etc. But even beyond that, it's really a question of priorities and direction. Why even spend one minute implementing something as ridiculous as centuries-old Arab kingdom in a WWII game?
 
I mentioned this in my post above, but I wanted to address this directly. The "small fun things" add up. Once something is an official feature of the game Paradox have to spend development time on bug fixing etc. Focus trees are probably the worst offenders, but even releasables end up causing bugs such as missing flags, portraits, etc. But even beyond that, it's really a question of priorities and direction. Why even spend one minute implementing something as ridiculous as centuries-old Arab kingdom in a WWII game?

Biggest problem is performance, all these essentially unused Tags take up a huge chunk of the games resources. (Can be tested by anyone by removing all the irrelevant tags) They essentially negate the work they did in the last updates
 
Not meant to complain, but, should Luis Urrengoetxea should be the leader of the communist faction instead of the democratic one? He was the leader of Eusko Abertzale Ekintza, which was a nationalist left-winged party.

Anyway, is a great dev diary, i hope we can get a date soon for La Resistance.
 
I mentioned this in my post above, but I wanted to address this directly. The "small fun things" add up. Once something is an official feature of the game Paradox have to spend development time on bug fixing etc. Focus trees are probably the worst offenders, but even releasables end up causing bugs such as missing flags, portraits, etc. But even beyond that, it's really a question of priorities and direction. Why even spend one minute implementing something as ridiculous as centuries-old Arab kingdom in a WWII game?

At a guess it would be a new person joining the project who doesn't want to break any existing functionality and so creates a new semi-fictional country to test he has the scripting language working correctly & decisions, cores, etc. linking properly. Upon showing it to the senior designer to double check his work, the senior designer approves the work as correct and functional and offers to include it in the game if the new person wants.