Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries
Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Hearts of Iron IV 48193 Bug Reports 17221 After Action Reports (AAR)
Previous dev diary Next dev diary
Show only dev responses

HOI4 Dev Diary - Future and Cornflakes

Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

Right now
With the "Oak" 1.4.2 patch out the door and the team back from vacation its time to start looking at the future. This week we started work on the next DLC which is going to be a full-sized expansion. A lot of people have been asking for more mechanics and larger changes, and this will be it. As normal the expansion will arrive together with a free update we've dubbed 1.5 "Cornflakes".

As for exactly what these will contain you will need to bear with us a bit. As I said with us getting started on it now we need some time to actually make and test stuff before we start showing it off to you. This will mean that the next two diaries (if all goes according to plan) are going to be covering other stuff while we get ready. My plan there is to get some guest writing in from people who can talk about the business and process side of the company and team.

The five year plan
Not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future. Some of you may have seen me talk about some of this in my PdxCon talk earlier this year.

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

  • Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
  • More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
  • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
  • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
  • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
  • Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
  • A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
  • Spies and espionage
  • Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
  • Improving peace conferences
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
  • Wunderwaffen projects
  • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
  • Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
  • Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
  • An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
  • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
  • Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
  • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented. Oh yeah, and before someone goes "why isn't improving AI on this list" the answer is that its not really something you can ever check off as done. We'll keep working on that in parallel with other stuff as we have since release.

There is no World War Wednesday stream today since the channel is all streaming from Gamescom today, but you can now check out last weeks episode on youtube to see me run the dev team as generals in a massive co-op.
 
Last edited:
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
The team is really ambitious, and sets high standards! Looking forward to seeing whatever you end up doing or get to finalise amongst what is listed here. :)
 
How about ground doctrines rework and some cookies to players who like manual control? Are you going to leave that planing bonus? If yes please add a button to forbid unit's shaffle for AI. So player could have planning bonus but with full manual control of army.
 
[QUOTE="podcat, post: 23208236, member: 80904"

  • Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
  • More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
  • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
  • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
  • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
  • An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
[/QUOTE]

Here's to hoping for the Asia / Navy expansion.

These are the ones I am most looking forward to getting implemented
 
Love the list.

While I'd love to also see a South American focused DLC as well, Naval Warfare(In General) and the Pacific need the love first.

Couple that with your logistics overhaul and I would actually play Japan and the US for a change.
 
podcat said:
Performance and Ai are usually at each others throats. A lot of AI logic is difficult and performance intensive and how often its run and updated directly translates to better AI, but also hurts performance. see: ai naval transport of units and frontline organization.
Click to expand...

Any chance for a feature that would allow the timing for when the AI is run to be adjustable by the player, or perhaps make it moddable? This game has always run great for me with very little lag, and I would be willing to sacrifice some more CPU horsepower if it gives me the opportunity to have a stronger AI.
 
@podcat Since you mentioned immersion, will the NF mechanic get a bit of an overhaul or will NF durations be looked at in the future? It seems a little immersion breaking that remilitarizing the Rhineland takes exactly as long as building 4 cic factories. It's not a big issue, but it would be nice to see some variance and maybe a little less determinism.
 
Last edited:
Come to think of it, I seem to recall on some stream during Death or Dishonor's developement, someone mentioned that you (Paradox Interactive) would like to see certain weather conditions be even more devastating and meaningful, such as winter. I hope you come to do something about that.
 
I looked at podcats to-do list and liked everything on it. This game is heading in the right direction.
 
podcat said:
Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

  • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
  • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
  • Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
  • A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
  • Spies and espionage
  • Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
  • Wunderwaffen projects
  • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
Click to expand...
NOW THIS GOT ME HYPED! AND I MEAN PRE-LAUNCH HYPE
 
This is the "best" Dev Diary so far in my opinion, and it looks promising. I might finally be "able to" play this game. As of now I very much prefer HOI3 over HOI4 - but some of this changes might change my mind.

podcat said:
  • Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
    • Thank God! This has been to me one of the most annoying things in HOI4 so far - it's making the game "unplayable" for me personally.
  • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
    • Again, so much needed. We need corps, armies, army groups etc. I don't care that much about the leaders... But the actual structure needs to be there and I do hope you make a far more advanced version than in HOI3 too.
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly) - Very good!
  • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
    • Not sure what this actually means? A more historical game? If so, great. If more of the current nonsense, not so great... And what does "visible to players" mean?
  • Spies and espionage
    • Was expecting this. Should be more advanced than in HOI3 too in my opinion, and could if done well, be a "game within the game" - at least for the inter-war years etc.
  • Improving peace conferences - YES
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
    • Meh... What does this mean? An even more bizarre game? Even more implausible nonsense?
  • Wunderwaffen projects
    • Was also expecting this at some point. But how? Make it so it is somewhat historical. Ie. nations that did not do any of this stuff should not be able to create fantasy fighters... This needs to be done right to not mess up the implausibility of the game even more in my honest opinion.
  • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
    • Expected! But very much needed. Am looking forward to a far more advanced version than in HOI3.
  • Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff - YES
  • Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems - YES
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
    • Not so sure about this. I mean three is enough. Communist, Fascist, Democrat (and what you are indicate what alliance you can drift towards) - but again, not a big fan of a "political game" - I prefer game being historical and that it should be impossible to change "ideology" - even though many "ideologies" are very odd in this game.
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
    • Not a big fan of the national focus trees at all. Too hard to create a historical game with them - they should be reworked to some extent in my opinion if "needed" to stay - ie. not bound to x amount of days to "complete" and similar. More like an event chain you can actually see and triggers than needs to be fulfilled before being able to select or similar. So that you can sign the Ribbentrop-Molotov deal on the same exact day as in real life if you wish for it.
  • An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
    • Occupation should be fun again! I know that many did not like the uprisings. I did. They are very much missed in my opinion. But should be more "flexible" than in HOI3 for instance - ie. not full blown divisions that do uprisings initially... But an uprising could for instance evolve into full blown partisan divisions if not handled.
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
    • War in itself needs to be made more fun in my opinion. As of now it feels more like a "RTS game" like Command & Conquer than a strategy game or typical HOI game.
  • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
    • Again. Expected, but needed. Strange that this one wasn't in place from the start or at least in one of the very first patches.
  • Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
    • Brilliant. Love it. But make infrastructure based on province to province again...
  • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
    • Sounds like a very good solution!
Click to expand...

Many of this points just made my day.
  1. Counters - have normal counters again... Counters that stack, that is easy to see where the unit actually is. The strange merging is just annoying and you would have to zoom way in sometimes.
  2. Map - have a normal map. A map that looks like a map. A flat map. Not this "RTS world" map we have now only.
  3. Map modes - most modes we used to have should be back in the game.
  4. Divisional designs on a "unit-by-unit" basis if you wish, by other means than to create an entire template for it.
  5. More advanced COC / OOB than what we are used to in HOI3. That would make great uses of many of the support type units etc.
 
I'm a little concerned that people seem to be taking the list of "things we'd like to do" in the next several DLCs and treating it like it's all coming out before Christmas. If the history of HoI4 is any guide, these things don't happen quickly, and some of the solutions will have drawbacks that we don't even understand yet.
 
Ironside121 said:
Fix the AI alone and your game will be 10x better.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as fixing the AI. There really isn't. There is improving the AI, but they try to do this all the time anyway, but there is no such things a "fix the AI" because that implies that anyone here could agree on a fixed standard that it is supposed to meet without being super-intelligent.

Now, don't get me wrong, obviously there are some ludicrously bad things about HOI4's AI, but even an AI that is greatly improved will still make bad mistakes, because it won't actually be that smart.

PS - Please fix division spam (and yes, this is asking for an element of the AI to be fixed, albeit it is fixable through a simple numerical limitation).
 
Last edited:
Dear Podcat - please, please, please fix the mechanic where I have a 20-day naval battle in the Med and each side loses 35 DD's and nothing else. Too crazy. :-/
 
@podcat we are so lucky to have a Dev team which listens us so much even with all the hate that we have read on these forums!!!:)

I am very thankful that you wish to add fuel mechanics as, sadly many forget, the Allies victory was largely due to their infinite supplies of oil. I personally feel frustrated when I see Germany mass producing panzers and trucks without worrying about oil consumption after they have been produced. How ahistorical! :(
I am also very grateful that Majors will be revamped as they desperately need it since the addition of TFV and DOD focus trees.
Furthermore I cannot await Chinese and Turkish focus trees. I can already see some kind of "return of Pu Yi to the Forbidden City" event or the "restore the Ottoman Empire" focus offering Turkey nice cores over the oil-rich provinces of Irak.... :rolleyes:
Very Hyped!
 
podcat said:
Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
Click to expand...

Any chance to improve Polish national focus tree? Now it is weaker than a generic tree. And they has not own voices like countries from Death or Dishonor (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania etc). Generally "United and Ready" DLC content looks a bit poor in comparison to counterparts from other DLCs. So maybe is 1.5 patch a good opportunity to change it? :).
 
FOARP said:
There is no such thing as fixing the AI. There really isn't. There is improving the AI, but they try to do this all the time anyway, but there is no such things a "fix the AI" because that implies that anyone here could agree on a fixed standard that it is supposed to meet without being super-intelligent.

Now, don't get me wrong, obviously there are some ludicrously bad things about HOI4's AI, but even an AI that is greatly improved will still make bad mistakes, because it won't actually be that smart.

PS - Please fix division spam (and yes, this is asking for an element of the AI to be fixed, albeit it is fixable through a simple numerical limitation).
Click to expand...

If ANYONE thinks the AI is up to ANY acceptable standard right now- they're a fool.

No there isn't a fixed standard that we could agree on, but the current level is utterly unacceptable. An AI that doesn't react to it's opponents movements, an AI that doesn't try fix equipment deficits, and AI that keeps launching pointless charges against forts when already short on equipment- completely unacceptable.
 
@podcat: I have another request, before/while working on the next dlc could you get proper czech political advisors for czecholsovakia instead of a bunch of slovak nationalist who wanted autonomy (for the moderates)/independence (for the hard liners)

Good luck in your endeavour.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back