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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:
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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


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Naval intel mapmode is quite powerful and at high intel levels will let you see where the enemy is placing certain missions
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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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This could be a good way to give advantages and penalties to nations temporarily. I hope it makes a significant influence to combat outcomes. Battle and war outcomes can be less dependent on production/numerical advantages. I think this is closer to history. The French Army was comparable to the German army in 1940 for instance, German victory was obtained by outmanoeuvering the opponment. Instead of victory for Germany to depend on numbers more influence can be given to intel, likewise the poor performance of the Red Army against Finland can be affected by poor intel of the USSR. In game terms especially early on, Germany should have great intel, the allies poor and the USSR terrible
 
Does the Naval Intel mapmode show you where the enemy convoy routes are? How many convoy battles you have had? How many convoys you have sunk? What kind of convoys you have sunk? The gross tonnage?

Does the Intel screen allow you to see your Allies stockpile? So you can Lend Lease them the right equipment.
 
I was just thinking about the new DLC and I realized something which happened historically during the war. And that is mass disinformation campaigns to deceive the enemy. Like the Allies did before D-Day. And secretly building up forces for a secret attack like the Germans did for the Battle of the Bulge. I think the Devs need to make these things possible.

Maybe a 'Radio Silence' command could be used to try to hide Divisions you want to secretly move into position.
 
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This could be a good way to give advantages and penalties to nations temporarily. I hope it makes a significant influence to combat outcomes. Battle and war outcomes can be less dependent on production/numerical advantages. I think this is closer to history. The French Army was comparable to the German army in 1940 for instance, German victory was obtained by outmanoeuvering the opponment. Instead of victory for Germany to depend on numbers more influence can be given to intel, likewise the poor performance of the Red Army against Finland can be affected by poor intel of the USSR. In game terms especially early on, Germany should have great intel, the allies poor and the USSR terrible
Uh... the NKVD and the MI5 and MI6 were 100 times more effective than the Abewehr
 
I was just thinking about the new DLC and I realized something which happened historically during the war. And that is mass disinformation campaigns to deceive the enemy. Like the Allies did before D-Day. And secretly building up forces for a secret attack like the Germans did for the Battle of the Bulge. I think the Devs need to make these things possible.
They have fake units IIRC, also that's just strong encryption.
 
Uh... the NKVD and the MI5 and MI6 were 100 times more effective than the Abewehr
Well, the Abwehr was pretty effective in its counter-intelligence efforts, the SOE and resistance took tremendous losses at their hands, but they kept coming, the work never ended. However they certainly failed utterly in regards to the Jack King operation. That was MI5/6's crowning achievement.

Imagine, ALL of your spies being unwittingly turned throughout the most of the war. They are the ones that "confirmed" FUSAG and the Calais landing site, which is why GER delayed sending reinforcements so long to Normandy.
 
Well, the Abwehr was pretty effective in its counter-intelligence efforts, the SOE and resistance took tremendous losses at their hands, but they kept coming, the work never ended. However they certainly failed utterly in regards to the Jack King operation. That was MI5/6's crowning achievement.

Imagine, ALL of your spies being unwittingly turned throughout the most of the war. They are the ones that "confirmed" FUSAG and the Calais landing site, which is why GER delayed sending reinforcements so long to Normandy.

I'll always love how the future of Western Europe was decided by some guys believing the landing site was somewhere else, despite the amount of landings in Normandy, and Hitler was sleeping and they didn't want to disturb him.
 
I'll always love how the future of Western Europe was decided by some guys believing the landing site was somewhere else, despite the amount of landings in Normandy, and Hitler was sleeping and they didn't want to disturb him.
And Rommel's wife's Birthday and the weather allowing him to sneak to Berlin for a few days - although that was not certainly planned in any way by the allies, however made a big difference.

Some things are just dumb luck, like USS Nautilus and its unknowing role in the sinking of the Japanese Carriers at Midway.
 
I'll always love how the future of Western Europe was decided by some guys believing the landing site was somewhere else, despite the amount of landings in Normandy, and Hitler was sleeping and they didn't want to disturb him.

Wouldn't have made any difference, the Soviets pumped by lend-lease were already unstoppable by the time D-Day happened. The only difference if D-Day failed would be that theorically the soviets could have demanded all of Germany, but I think Stalin wouldn't have done it since he knew americans vastly outproduced him + atomic bomb.

Some things are just dumb luck, like USS Nautilus and its unknowing role in the sinking of the Japanese Carriers at Midway.

From wikipedia: "Nautilus (commanded by Lieutenant Commander William H. Brockman Jr.) got underway for her first war patrol, to Midway Island to help repel the expected attack by the Japanese fleet."

No dump luck anywhere here, americans knew the Japs were going to attack Midway due to the decoded cypher and probably had many subs there in position. A japanese sub also sank an american carrier in the same battle. And from what I understand the carrier sunk by Nautilus was already damaged and probably would have sunk anyway.
 
From wikipedia: "Nautilus (commanded by Lieutenant Commander William H. Brockman Jr.) got underway for her first war patrol, to Midway Island to help repel the expected attack by the Japanese fleet."

Here are the important details you missed. Nautilus attacked a screen BB, which called in a DD for protection. Nautilus did not see nor reported seeing any CVs. The DD then harassed and hunted the sub for a few hours. After disengagement the DD had to return to the CV Task Force at flank speed. Lt. Cmdr. McCluskey, leader of the DB squadrons, spotted the DDs jet spray from seeing a rainbow caused by the water spray, on the horizon. The rest is history...

Now that's luck...

BTW, Nautilus sank no CV - Japanese scuttled their own heavily damaged and irreparable CVs. Yorktown was sunk after the battle, limping back to Pearl for possibly yet another miraculous repair. Its bilge oil slick was spotted (precisely what the US Navy feared when Yorktown was returning from Coral Sea, prior to Midway - the Yorktown, ran out of luck).
 
For air intel, could you please show standardized models for clarity (if it's a naval bomber I or II, ...); this should also be done in the air zone screen when you hover over enemy planes. It currently only shows the flavor names, so unless you know by heart each planes it's difficult to make sense of it.

The devs didn't care about this remark; so basically in the intel interface the standardized types are never written (only flavor names), including for land equipment :rolleyes:
 
Wouldn't have made any difference, the Soviets pumped by lend-lease were already unstoppable by the time D-Day happened. The only difference if D-Day failed would be that theorically the soviets could have demanded all of Germany, but I think Stalin wouldn't have done it since he knew americans vastly outproduced him + atomic bomb.



From wikipedia: "Nautilus (commanded by Lieutenant Commander William H. Brockman Jr.) got underway for her first war patrol, to Midway Island to help repel the expected attack by the Japanese fleet."

No dump luck anywhere here, americans knew the Japs were going to attack Midway due to the decoded cypher and probably had many subs there in position. A japanese sub also sank an american carrier in the same battle. And from what I understand the carrier sunk by Nautilus was already damaged and probably would have sunk anyway.
What are you talking about? Nautilus didn't sink anything. Its failed attack on the Kirishima indirectly led to the sinking of Kaga and Akagi.
 
Wouldn't have made any difference, the Soviets pumped by lend-lease were already unstoppable by the time D-Day happened. The only difference if D-Day failed would be that theorically the soviets could have demanded all of Germany, but I think Stalin wouldn't have done it since he knew americans vastly outproduced him + atomic bomb.

That's what I meant, if D-Day had failed, planning and preparing for another invasion would've taken longer and we have no idea how the Soviet advances would've done, example a fully communist Germany, instead of partitioning it into 4
 
I hope Paradox can continue to expand on the AI using these new systems. It would be awesome if instead of cheating/doing stuff at random it was intelligently using intel to plan its attacks/defensive strategies.
 
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As far as I know, other than through difficulty settings (ie, when players consciously give the AI more resources, or themselves less - however they work), the AI doesn't cheat.
 
Uh... the NKVD and the MI5 and MI6 were 100 times more effective than the Abewehr
Well, British may be, but NKVD got affected by purges too, mainly that's one of the reasons why Soviet support of the Spain was uneffective, why comintern got disolved and etc.
Later in time, they had best field agents in the whole world, later Israel joined in to share