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HOI4 Dev Diary - Intel

Hi everyone! Next to last dev diary before christmas, and today we are going to talk about intel. We have been talking about ways to get intel a bit in previous diaries, like code cracking, scout planes and spies but not really talked about the system as a whole. So lets get to it!

Before intel was based essentially on comparing two nations crypto tech levels and it was a flat value covering everything. To make this more interesting we are splitting it into 4 separate values: Civilian/Industry Intel, Army Intel, Navy Intel, Air Intel. These affect what you can see in our new intel ledger, that replaces the little intel bit in the diplomacy interface from before for people with La Resistance:
upload_2019-12-11_12-24-29.png

Each of the tabs cover each type of intel (here we have civilian/industry selected), and they also come with mapmode information. As an example in the one above we aggregate building values as you zoom out (if you zoom in you see the same by state). This can help you when figuring out where to bomb or where and what kind of sabotage can be most effective.

The more intel you have the more information is displayed, we break down the levels in a tooltip per category:
upload_2019-12-11_12-37-57.png

So right now I can see how many army techs have been researched, but not specifically which. That requires 70% but then you can look at their tech tree. If I had 5% more I could see roughly how many of each division template the other nation had. At the moment I can only see that they exist but no real info about what they contain.

The army intel tab also lets you get a breakdown of the enemy stockpile of equipment.

Naval and air are similar:
upload_2019-12-11_12-44-10.png


upload_2019-12-11_12-44-42.png


Naval intel mapmode is quite powerful and at high intel levels will let you see where the enemy is placing certain missions
upload_2019-12-11_13-2-10.png


Intel can come from many different sources, for example:
- Spy networks
- Infiltrated spy assets
- Captured enemy spies
- Radar
- Broken Ciphers
- Scout planes
- Fighting the enemy in land combat
- Fighting the enemy in air combat
- Fighting the enemy in naval combat
And probably some I forgot.

Each source has a max it can contribute and may affect different intel values in different ways. For example if you have a spy network over the enemies coast, or scout naval areas with traffic you will get more naval intel. Each source also decays over time so its important to actively do things to keep your intel levels current and make sure you combine many sources to get as much intel as possible.

Here I have multiple sources:
upload_2019-12-11_13-17-34.png

Do note that the biggest chunk here is me doing some quick events with rewards of intel to cheat my way to quick screenshots ;). Also note that simply being democratic and having open trade laws make hiding the civilian part of your intel hard.

Knowing what kind of build strategy, templates, tech and stockpile an enemy has can be very useful allowing you to counter and attack them in the best way possible, but there is also direct advantage from relative intel which replaces the crypto level comparison from before.
upload_2019-12-11_13-35-41.png


See you next week for more cool stuff, and don't forget to tune into twitch at 16:00CET where we will be showing of France for the first time (aka watch Daniel accidentally leak stuff).
 
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Hi Podcat,

This looks very interesting. One of the screenshots mentions that at a certain percentage of intelligence that you get access to the exact design details of enemy equipment. I was wondering how this relates to the ability to purchase licenses. You see, currently that ability can be used to spy on other countries. For example, as the USSR I might look to see what equipment I could potentially license from Germany. As I recall, hovering over any equipment will reveal its stats to me. Through that I can derive what kind of modifications Germany has made to its airplanes, tanks or even in what way they've designed their ships. Depending on the equipment I could easily come to understand that Germany's fighters have had their agility increased, their tanks their armor or that their light cruisers are built with an emphasis on light attack. Is this possibility of 'legal espionage' being addressed in some way?

Also, previously radars had some use in collecting intelligence: A certain level of radar + a number of those radars overlapping + the right encryption/decryption techs would reveal, for example, the positions of enemy divisions in range of those overlapping radar stations. Is any function radar might have in this respect being preserved?

Thanks in advance for answering :)
 
Knowing enemy equipment isn´t as important as knowing enemy templates. IF there is a template heavy in medium/heavy armor, THEN I can prepare with more AT. Knowing the design alone doesn´t make that much change.
 
Hi Podcat, few really important questions:

1.) Does current "intel" system will be removed from the game? [eq. we can see a rough number of enemy ships in sea terrain or similiar things]

2.) How licensions will work now? Will it be still possible to see other nations licences [UK cheking germans tanks for licence before war begins]

3.) Last one, similiar to 1: how overall info about enemy we can see will change in comparsion to current in-game where we almost know everything.
 
Will democracies get any sort of bonuses to intel-gathering/operations? Given how they were ultimately victorious against fascist intelligence, hiding their cyphers and successfully cracking the enemy's, and attracting lots of defectors from the dictatorships.

Right now it seems Germany & Axis are gaining another ahistorical buff for no reason (other than the devs loving fascist gameplay I assume).

Edit: Looks like I triggered the pro-fascist crowd. Sorry fellas, the Allies cracked every major Axis code and beat the crap out of them. Germany & co couldn't even correctly calculate the true power of the USSR and got their ass kicked for it.
 
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What about focus trees? One little thing that annoyed me a lot was that, at a certain level of intelligence, you could only see the current focus but not the past ones. As a result, I had to check my main adversaries' (and allies') focuses every 2 months and try to remember them. It would make much more sense to do it the opposite way: show previous focuses (especially since some of them result in global events anyway), but hide the current one.
 
Another really solid dev diary. Some of this information has been sorely missing for a while now, and will be greatly appreciated. Equipment stockpiles in particular are a good addition, as there's been plenty of times when I've thought I've worn down an enemy only to tag switch to them to see that have shortages of nearly everything, but have a stockpile of 2 million guns.

Some other info I hope you'll add:
  • Enemy convoy routes.
  • Enemy trade partners. It's not obvious that Germany can import hundreds of oil from Iraq and Iran, which I only discovered by tag-switching one game. I now know it's important to deal with this in some way in my campaigns, but I feel it's a common noob-trap especially for those who only play on ironman and can't freely tag switch to see what's going on.
  • Mobilization progress. If I look at an enemy and see they have All Adults Serve, there's a big difference between them being at 10.1% recruitable pop, and having been fully mobilized at 20%. This would also be good for puppets when using their manpower. I shouldn't need to guess in that instance.
 
Fun fact: Not a single German spy succeeded in Great Britain. They were all either killed or turned.

So, a democracy isn't necessarily so easy to infiltrate. (And of course it doesn't help if you walk into an English pub, wet on your feet, carrying a bag full of bank notes with a Luger on the bottom, and order "Four pints of Lager, bitte" with a heavy German accent.)
 
Fun fact: Not a single German spy succeeded in Great Britain. They were all either killed or turned.

So, a democracy isn't necessarily so easy to infiltrate. (And of course it doesn't help if you walk into an English pub, wet on your feet, carrying a bag full of bank notes with a Luger on the bottom, and order "Four pints of Lager, bitte" with a heavy German accent.)
On the other hand the Japanese managed to collect quite a bit of intel prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, using civilian air tours among other things for photographs. So in peace time this is justifiable, at war not so much.
 
Fun fact: Not a single German spy succeeded in Great Britain. They were all either killed or turned.

So, a democracy isn't necessarily so easy to infiltrate. (And of course it doesn't help if you walk into an English pub, wet on your feet, carrying a bag full of bank notes with a Luger on the bottom, and order "Four pints of Lager, bitte" with a heavy German accent.)

Yeah, countries with old and larger empires like UK/Russia had more expertise in deal with foreign stuff at same time more "isolated" countries like JAP/GER suffer more with this stuff.
 
Is it possible to mod-in decisions which fake the intel others are seeing about my country? (i.e. pretending to have much less fuel for a period of time etc.)
 
Another question will democratic countries get a modifier for spying due to them often being more diverse than fascist countries and them often housing refugees
atm when you get governments in exile and nations joining your faction after losing it will mean chance of recruiting from their nationalities

What about cheeky spying through "Request Licence Production"?
We are discussing that one. I think either a game rules to block it to factions or we have the diplo action have to be approved by the sender before they can see the list

Fake intel units? Did I miss something?
see https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-operations.1284812/

Hi Podcat, few really important questions:

1.) Does current "intel" system will be removed from the game? [eq. we can see a rough number of enemy ships in sea terrain or similiar things]
all the places that use fuzzy numbers will be using this stuff rather than comparign crypto levels now

Some other info I hope you'll add:
  • Enemy convoy routes.
  • Enemy trade partners. It's not obvious that Germany can import hundreds of oil from Iraq and Iran, which I only discovered by tag-switching one game. I now know it's important to deal with this in some way in my campaigns, but I feel it's a common noob-trap especially for those who only play on ironman and can't freely tag switch to see what's going on.
If you have higher intel levels you can see routes too. so this works
 
Will democracies get any sort of bonuses to intel-gathering/operations? Given how they were ultimately victorious against fascist intelligence, hiding their cyphers and successfully cracking the enemy's, and attracting lots of defectors from the dictatorships.

Right now it seems Germany & Axis are gaining another ahistorical buff for no reason (other than the devs loving fascist gameplay I assume).

You know what they say about assuming...

Resistance rework will almost exclusively work as a debuff to axis. Democracies will have access to far more operatives in historical playthroughs. Democracies will also give up less intel on their armies and airforces.
 
Can I share intel with a 3rd party?
For example, Britain share intel to Soviet.
And...can I betray my ally and send intel to enemy just so that I can take over the faction when my ally fall or.....backstab Japan as Manchu :p