HOI4 Dev Diary - Formables and Releasables

[ZeDoctor1918]

I can't make apology for implying the current and widespread islamophobic tendencies in the west, even unawares, might be playing a part in some people's highly disproportionate response to something as small as a formable being added. (Racism sadly runs deep among Paradox's fanbase — if it didn't, we wouldn't literally need a post reminding people to not use 'kebab' for God's sake It's an issue, and it colours people's reactions.)
.

"I disagree with your opinion, therefore I am going to make assumptions about your (and a bunch of players) personal character and play the racism card."
Classy.

It is not an issue it is a Muslim formable, the problem, or I will admit my problem with it, is I don't see how this fits into the WW II theme of the game. Obviously many people disagree that the game should be an authentic WW II experience. Thats fine, and obviously the devs will take the game in the direction they wish too. Despite my complaints, I fully admit I pre-ordered the DLC as soon as it was available. I still support the devs, but that doesn't mean I, or anyone else, is barred from expressing our opinions on our differences.

 

[Áurum]

They have done a superb in depth spying system. Rewritten all the code for recon. Tidied up the French tree, written a whole new Vichy tree + changes for how tags work. Written 2 Spanish trees & 1 Portuguese tree.

All for the 'core' players.

Then they did a filler DD, to pass the time before they announced the release dates & opened preorders, and some of the 'core' players lost their shit that people other than them are allowed to exist.

You ask:



and the answer is because the dev working on the game thought it would be fun and spent his personal development time on sorting it.

Your rant (and those of the others like you) about people having BagWrongFun would make sense if you were replying to the announcement of a major company change but posting on a filler DD by somebody who has just joined the team is bonkers.

They did great stuff and that's fine. However, there are still many things to fix and instead they give us Polynesia and Al-Andalus.

I can even question why have they implemented two new features, resistance and espionage, when half of the core features of the game have bugs, inconsistencies and unintented behaviours that ruin them. Fix peace conferences and supply and then give us what they want.

Except this isn't what is happening. The espionage changes, armoured cars, recon planes - all very core stuff. It's core and "casual" (a ridiculous term for a HoI4 player - probably better defining it as historical vs alt-history players), not or.

It's not historical vs alt-history. I play Kaiserreich way more than vanilla, because it is consistent and wants to be as plausible and realistic as possible. It doesn't have bugs that ruin the experience because it is actually more polished and solid content than vanilla in every way. Devs should definitely fix the content that is already in the game instead of giving us even more broken side content and meme-y stuff. When LaR comes out, we will find tons of bugs and broken content, and they will fix some and leave the rest forever, ruining the everygame experience, while many core content is broken since release. As they did with all DLCs. MtG is still broken, DoD is still broken, AtT is still broken, TfV is still broken. There are complaints about that in this forum daily.

 

[CPU Taro]

"I disagree with your opinion, therefore I am going to make assumptions about your (and a bunch of players) personal character and play the racism card."
Classy.

It is not an issue it is a Muslim formable, the problem, or I will admit my problem with it, is I don't see how this fits into the WW II theme of the game. Obviously many people disagree that the game should be an authentic WW II experience. Thats fine, and obviously the devs will take the game in the direction they wish too. Despite my complaints, I fully admit I pre-ordered the DLC as soon as it was available. I still support the devs, but that doesn't mean I, or anyone else, is barred from expressing our opinions on our differences.

Funny how none of you replying to me acknowledge that very blatant section of the HoI4 community, nor condemn it.

I have repeatedly expressed why the option for forming Al Andalus is both fitting with the kinds of fantasies that ran behind many of the major powers in WW2 and the megalomaniacs behind them; and yet it is also unlikely to show up at random for those who want to roleplay Hitler down to the minutae, and spoil your aiding Franco. But you keep ignoring it and crying about personal attacks because you can't provide anything more substantial than a vague suspicion of implausibility. So forgive me if I don't give the benefit of the doubt at this stage.

(And to be called 'memers' by the ranks of "Have an upvote good Sir", my godsss.)

If you want a personal insult then fine: y'all think you've got critical thinking skills because you watched a YouTuber talk about ~logical fallacies~ once, but it's just a lazy cover for uncomfortable thoughts you're unwilling to interrogate any further. Whatever, enjoy being petulent about a bloody tickbox that you'll never see firsthand yourself.

Edit: Oh, and if anyone whines about alt-history being a betrayal of the core / long-term HoI fanbase, I'm going to smack them over the head with Kaiserreich till they're prostrated towards Mecca.

 

[Jack Churchill]

Funny how none of you replying to me acknowledge that very blatant section of the HoI4 community, nor condemn it.

I have repeatedly expressed why the option for forming Al Andalus is both fitting with the kinds of fantasies that ran behind many of the major powers in WW2 and the megalomaniacs behind them; and yet it is also unlikely to show up at random for those who want to roleplay Hitler down to the minutae, and spoil your aiding Franco. But you keep ignoring it and crying about personal attacks because you can't provide anything more substantial than a vague suspicion of implausibility. So forgive me if I don't give the benefit of the doubt at this stage.

(And to be called 'memers' by the ranks of "Have an upvote good Sir", my godsss.)

If you want a personal insult then fine: y'all think you've got critical thinking skills because you watched a YouTuber talk about ~logical fallacies~ once, but it's just a lazy cover for uncomfortable thoughts you're unwilling to interrogate any further. Whatever, enjoy being petulent about a bloody tickbox that you'll never see firsthand yourself.

Edit: Oh, and if anyone whines about alt-history being a betrayal of the core / long-term HoI fanbase, I'm going to smack them over the head with Kaiserreich till they're prostrated towards Mecca.

Al-Andalus will never show up in anyone's game unless they decide to release Morocco and form it. This is an Easter egg like forming Byzantium or Babylon was in Victoria II, yet for some reason those similarly implausible formidable you will never see unless you're aiming for It, are praised and upvoted.

 

[ZeDoctor1918]

Funny how none of you replying to me acknowledge that very blatant section of the HoI4 community, nor condemn it.

I have repeatedly expressed why the option for forming Al Andalus is both fitting with the kinds of fantasies that ran behind many of the major powers in WW2 and the megalomaniacs behind them; and yet it is also unlikely to show up at random for those who want to roleplay Hitler down to the minutae, and spoil your aiding Franco. But you keep ignoring it and crying about personal attacks because you can't provide anything more substantial than a vague suspicion of implausibility. So forgive me if I don't give the benefit of the doubt at this stage.

(And to be called 'memers' by the ranks of "Have an upvote good Sir", my godsss.)

If you want a personal insult then fine: y'all think you've got critical thinking skills because you watched a YouTuber talk about ~logical fallacies~ once, but it's just a lazy cover for uncomfortable thoughts you're unwilling to interrogate any further. Whatever, enjoy being petulent about a bloody tickbox that you'll never see firsthand yourself.

Edit: Oh, and if anyone whines about alt-history being a betrayal of the core / long-term HoI fanbase, I'm going to smack them over the head with Kaiserreich till they're prostrated towards Mecca.

I hate to break it to you, but part of wanting a historical experience also requires that Hitler does in fact lose at the end of the game, which as it currently stands, unless the Allies manage to do a D-Day invasion, then the Soviets will inevitably fall allowing Hitler to have free reign. Yes I completely agree with you, in most peoples games this Al-Andalus will not even be a thought in the back of our minds let alone manifest itself.

As for my own post about it, I called it memey and implausible within the context of a WW II game, and my main gripe was that the formable nations took up 90% of the dev diary and that was probably why there such a hostile reaction to it. If that makes me a neo-Nazi then so be it I guess.

 

[Tiramisu]

WOW! very AWESOME!
It will be so hard for players to restore Al-Andalus cuz they will face great powers like UK+France+Italy all of them together!
So this challenge deserve an achievement!

 

[Axe99]

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?

I can even question why have they implemented two new features, resistance and espionage, when half of the core features of the game have bugs, inconsistencies and unintented behaviours that ruin them. Fix peace conferences and supply and then give us what they want.

Three things to keep in mind here:

• If Paradox ever tried to sell an expansion as simply fixing bugs, there would be outrage (quite likely by many of the same people) on the forums. Any DLC needs to have features, realistically, to sell.
• The people that work at Paradox aren't (as far as I'm aware) all self-supporting millionaires that can do what they want, and need to be paid for their work to afford rent/rates, food, and so on. Thus, DLCs need to continue to be sold to continue to fund bug-fixing.
• HoI4 is a very, very complex game, and thus new features and tweaking old ones will inevitably introduce bugs as they go.

There's no way to stop bugs in software - it just doesn't happen (although, for a game, HoI4 is very robust, whether you're comparing it to other strategy games, other games, or HoI's past). I've had more CTDs from Microsoft Excel than HoI4 in the last 6 months, and Excel is sold on a subscription model so they can actually afford to just fix bugs without adding features.

It could be possible to arrange for there to be a prolonged (say 3-6 month) window at the end of each DLC development phase to rigorously go through the game and fix bugs, but this would mean more expensive DLC, and less often - and plenty of people are complaining that the DLC is already too expensive, and doesn't come out quickly enough.

In short, when calling for "less bugs", I think it's important you make it clear how you want this to be achieved - do you want more expensive DLC, and DLC to be less frequent, at the same time, or do you have some other proposed pathway to achieve what you'd like?

It's not historical vs alt-history. I play Kaiserreich way more than vanilla, because it is consistent and wants to be as plausible and realistic as possible.

KR is many things (one of which, is that it's a lot of fun), and I haven't played it in a few months, but it is not plausible and realistic! It might feel that way (which is wonderful that they've achieved that), but it's alt-history turned up to 11. This isn't a criticism of KR or its team - I think it's awesome - but they draw more than a few very long bows when it comes to their scenarios (ie, situations are manufactured which create interesting gameplay situations that are often only very loosely, if at all, related to the institutions, cultures and economic situations of the nations in question at the point in time of the split between our history and KR's history) which is fine - it's a game, it's about having fun.

 

[Harin]

KR is many things (one of which, is that it's a lot of fun), and I haven't played it in a few months, but it is not plausible and realistic! It might feel that way (which is wonderful that they've achieved that), but it's alt-history turned up to 11. This isn't a criticism of KR or its team - I think it's awesome - but they draw more than a few very long bows when it comes to their scenarios (ie, situations are manufactured which create interesting gameplay situations that are often only very loosely, if t all, related to the institutions, cultures and economic situations of the nations in question at the point in time of the split between our history and KR's history) which is fine - it's a game, it's about having fun.

I agree. KR is a lot of fun to me because it plays well, before all else, and it breaks the Allied/Axis/Comintern factions so wars and mini-wars are much more varied. It was not until KR that I realized that the vanilla factions lock almost the entire world into the big war. With KR, there is less map painting and more varied experiences. I bring it up just to point out how changes in factions, like adding more, can make for some unexpected and fun alt-history.

Forgive me, but I do like how this game lets us play historical and alternatives. While I tend to lean historical, I eventually get bored beating up the Axis or Allies and the alt stuff gives me more gaming under the same engine.

 

[Tiramisu]

Guys, What's your strategy/Tactic to restore Al-Andalus?

 

[MoreHistory]

I'm confused about all the hate, this has some nice flavour to it.

 

[MobiusTwo]

I am getting the impression from some of these posts that some people are equating criticisms of Al-Andalus with racism or Islamaphobia, which I think is unfortunate, because as someone who questions the need for Al-Andalus, I would love focus trees for some of the other Muslim countries in the game. I've posted on another thread that I think the conditions for restoring the Ottoman Empire should be a little more specific and should reward you at least with a Sultan national spirit. India could use a revamped focus tree similar to Spain's that actually portrays the huge role Jinnah had in the Indian independence story. You could maybe have a path for him to become prime minister of a united India like Gandhi wanted, or acquire independence for Pakistan with or without a civil war.

However, I think those things ought to be secondary to Soviet and Italy reworks which are more relevant to the core, WWII focus of the game.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

Told you already, Mahgreb should've been added instead of Al-Andalus. That's the most realistic formable nation by North African states, i think.

If y'all want to restore the Caliphate, you can do it with Arabia after its rework.

You want to unite the peninsula? Sure.

You want to turn down Sykes-Picot over its head? Sure too.

You want to conquer MENA to unify the Arabs? You can do that too.

Hang up the gun and live in peace, or restore the Caliphate and extend further by challenge your eastern neighbors? Up to you.

The difference from before is you can do this step-by-step instead of holding off both Axis and Allies in Middle East and Africa before forming Arabia.

 

[CPU Taro]

I am getting the impression from some of these posts that some people are equating criticisms of Al-Andalus with racism or Islamaphobia, which I think is unfortunate, because as someone who questions the need for Al-Andalus, I would love focus trees for some of the other Muslim countries in the game. I've posted on another thread that I think the conditions for restoring the Ottoman Empire should be a little more specific and should reward you at least with a Sultan national spirit. India could use a revamped focus tree similar to Spain's that actually portrays the huge role Jinnah had in the Indian independence story. You could maybe have a path for him to become prime minister of a united India like Gandhi wanted, or acquire independence for Pakistan with or without a civil war.

However, I think those things ought to be secondary to Soviet and Italy reworks which are more relevant to the core, WWII focus of the game.

No question, but again this was a small change done in a developer's spare time; i.e. it took no resources away from any major reforms, and certain people are repeatedly ignoring that.

And totally agree on the India thing, that'd be great.

Told you already, Mahgreb should've been added instead of Al-Andalus. That's the most realistic formable nation by North African states, i think.

If y'all want to restore the Caliphate, you can do it with Arabia after its rework.

You want to unite the peninsula? Sure.

You want to turn down Sykes-Picot over its head? Sure too.

You want to conquer MENA to unify the Arabs? You can do that too.

Hang up the gun and live in peace, or restore the Caliphate and extend further by challenge your eastern neighbors? Up to you.

The difference from before is you can do this step-by-step instead of holding off both Axis and Allies in Middle East and Africa before forming Arabia.

I mean, there isn't any reason that a Caliphate has to begin in Arabia. Islam is Arabic in language (like North Africa), but that didn't preclude the Turkic speaking Ottomans either.

In lieu of a religion feature, it feels like Islamism should be an ideological or focus-tree option for Muslim countries, but at the same time that would oversimplify what a Caliphate is by modern definitions and modelling them on the likes of Daesh.

The near complete absence of religion from HoI4 always felt like a mistake to me. It certainly was relevant to Soviet and German domestic policies.

 

[Metz]

Well, Al Andalus could be useful to have if it means that it will exist in Victoria III due to it being ported over from an EUIV game. It would create a connection from 1444 to 1936 in a custom game.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

Uhm, i'm sorry if you got me wrong, but i just want to add that in a time when nationalism, irredentism, and pan-whatevers is still at large, i want to make sure that the Formable Nations are catering to that.

Baltic Unity is real, that's why Baltic Assembly exist

Greater Indonesia concept is there, so that's why Majapahit exist too.

Heck, we can stretch it to Mussolini's dream about Rome, and that's why Roman Empire can be formed too.

And obviously Byzantium is a meme, but it has "Victory In" decisions that would be pretty useful to be used on another formables.

My thread about Formable Nations Rework are supposed to be a proposal to fix bugs regarding it, and also correcting the existing formable nations, whether it is adding core/claims, adding more decisions, etc. As long as it is plausible in a 1900s HoI4 setting.

Making another meme formable like Al-Andalus is a step too far for me. I mean, Pan-Berberism and Tamazgha concept are still exist in 1900s, why not add Mahgreb instead?

Arabia is one of the most difficult formable, though. So that's why i propose a rework so that it can be easier to form.

If you want to play (Arabic) caliphate, conquer Mecca and Medina first, both are on Arabian Peninsula. So that's why i make Caliphate Restoration decisions unique to Arabia only. The North African nations still can form it, though, but they still needs to conquer the peninsula first to form Arabia.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

No question, but again this was a small change done in a developer's spare time; i.e. it took no resources away from any major reforms, and certain people are repeatedly ignoring that.

And totally agree on the India thing, that'd be great.



I mean, there isn't any reason that a Caliphate has to begin in Arabia. Islam is Arabic in language (like North Africa), but that didn't preclude the Turkic speaking Ottomans either.

In lieu of a religion feature, it feels like Islamism should be an ideological or focus-tree option for Muslim countries, but at the same time that would oversimplify what a Caliphate is by modern definitions and modelling them on the likes of Daesh.

The near complete absence of religion from HoI4 always felt like a mistake to me. It certainly was relevant to Soviet and German domestic policies.

I think the issue here is not the work, it's putting the work front and centre, instead of the bug-fixes people crave. You're right to an extent, most of the posters here are European or Anglophone so they aren't anywhere near as interested in Al-Andalus as they are the Roman Empire, or crushing the USA as Churchill, or any other nonsense alt-history. With Al-Andalus it'#s a bit different, because for that to be a thing a lot of other things had to happen first, before the game started. By contrast, there were a lot of people in the US and UK that thought as late as 1940 that war might be inevitable.

It doesn't help that they then give you a decision to restore the Umayyad Caliphate, as opposed to a more reasonable contemporary Caliphate.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

It doesn't help that they then give you a decision to restore the Umayyad Caliphate, as opposed to a more reasonable contemporary Caliphate.

Yep, as if a caliphate can be repeated. Just name it after the reigning monarch's House. Alawite for the Morrocans, Saudi for the Sauds, Hashemite for Iraq, etc.

Or just simply "Proclaim the Caliphate", whether the Osmans approved or not.

 

[MobiusTwo]

I think peoples' problems with some of the alt-history in this game comes from the fact that it often seems spontaneous, without a really convincing explanation as to why it happens, and without a fleshed out arc to make it believable.

Things like "Hmm, for some reason fascist United Kingdom is decolonizing" or "Communists in Japan somehow have the numbers and means to (attempt to) overthrow the Emperor" just feel artificially inserted in the game to check off x country's democratic/communist/fascist/monarchist branch to appease people who like playing as every ideology. Obviously, the game should appease the fans, but I'd just like a more fleshed out world. Maybe you should be able to restore democracy/monarchy to Germany, but it should be way harder and take way longer. I say this as a player who isn't particularly good.

Edward VIII's United Kingdom and independent Manchukuo are two paths that I feel the devs really pulled off well for the above reasons. Spain looks really good too and I'm super excited for that.

Not sure how much this relates to the more recent posts in this thread, but I'd just like to bring it up. Again, I'm grateful for all the work the devs do, but I just wish they had more members on their staff to be able to make every aspect of this game as good as the best aspects of this game.

 

[CPU Taro]

I think the issue here is not the work, it's putting the work front and centre, instead of the bug-fixes people crave. You're right to an extent, most of the posters here are European or Anglophone so they aren't anywhere near as interested in Al-Andalus as they are the Roman Empire, or crushing the USA as Churchill, or any other nonsense alt-history. With Al-Andalus it'#s a bit different, because for that to be a thing a lot of other things had to happen first, before the game started. By contrast, there were a lot of people in the US and UK that thought as late as 1940 that war might be inevitable.

It doesn't help that they then give you a decision to restore the Umayyad Caliphate, as opposed to a more reasonable contemporary Caliphate.

Maybe I misread, but I thought the tag didn't actually change to the Umayyads, so much as make a territorial claim through that shared heritage. The reason the focus is being given to the Umayyads over Generic Caliphate is that their dynasty continued to rule Al-Andalus even after losing the honour of being Caleph.

Anyway, it seems a bit of an exaggeration to call something at the end of a weekly dev diary 'front and centre'.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

Anyway, don't forget about Grossdeutsches Reiches, an actual formable nation that can be formed by AH himself when he holds Paris, Leningrad, and Stalingrad.

It didn't core anything, though. Just a name and color change. For me, it's a good example of a formable nation that didn't core anything but still gives a sense of accomplishment