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HOI4 Dev Diary - Man the Guns and PdxCon

Hi everyone! We are now back from PdxCon which was an amazing experience. If any of you were there, thanks a lot for coming! I had a lot of fun and interesting conversations with HOI fans and we had a very cool challenge to as Poland inflict as much casualties as possible on Germany in 1939 in just 30 minutes. The winner (all glory to @Zwireq, AKA Zwirbaum) pulled off 1.8 million using clever tactics and a strong cavalry army! What better way to save Poland than to turn the false myth of the polish cavalry charging German tanks around :)

25036_1b.jpg


The myth itself is something based on reality where polish cavalry performed a successful charge early on in the war vs German infantry at the battle of Krojanty. Something the German propaganda machine tried to falsely portray as the poles being unprepared for meeting modern German armor (there were no tanks there). The myth apparently lived on a long time, notably taught in schools and promoted in soviet propaganda… that said, in Hearts of Iron IV at pdxcon the polish hussars did ride out and win!

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The HOI4 booth where we ran the challenge.

We also announced the next big expansion for HOI: Man the Guns.
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Man the Guns will focus on naval warfare primarily but also redoing UK and USA and giving them more fun options. There will also be other new focuses but those are secret for now. We will also be adding fuel to the game which a lot of people were very excited to hear about at pdxcon :)

The UK and US revamps we plan to handle the same way we did Germany and Japan, e.g the changed trees and historical path in the 1.6 'Ironclad' update and the new alt-history paths (despite my perhaps not so subtle hints people have figured out that there is going to be the possibility of a 2nd american civil war among other cool things).

As for the themes we decided to go with naval for several reasons. One, that it fits very well with USA (and they were on the top of our list of nations we felt needed more fun gameplay). Secondly we have already done big changes to both land and air in previous expansions and updates so it was time for the 3rd type of warfare to get its time in the spotlights. Its also currently in my opinion the weakest part of HOI and something we really want to make shine.

We are currently very early in development so things may change, but here are some things mentioned we are aiming to do (in expansion or free update or mixed):
- Ship design and the ability to refit older ships and keep things up to date
- Naval Terrain: different seas will behave differently and suit different ships and fleet compositions
- Revamped naval combat
- Fleets split up into task forces for better control
- New naval spotting system
- Ability to control naval routes and block areas you dont want units to travel through
- Fuel, obviously going to be a massive balance job for us and a big gameplay change for you :)
- Gameplay rules, particularly to help multiplayer groups out when it comes to manage their games
- of course other stuff as well. to be revealed in the future.

We don't have a release date yet, and most of the above is still subject to change because we are are still early. I really wanted to talk as much as possible about what we are up to at pdxcon though :) Hopefully I will see more of you next year there!

We also announced that HOI4 has hit 1 million sales (wooot), and to celebrate that we have decided to make an anniversary edition that comes with a super cool alt history diorama - Italian soldiers raising the flag over the rubble of Big Ben, Iwo Jima style ;). I felt italy invading London was one of the more hearts of iron things there was when it comes to alt-history :)

_K7A8977.jpg

We had the first version for PdxCon in the booth fresh from the maker, and you can see it there in the picture above. The anniversary edition is actually possible to preorder already! Just follow this link.

As have been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't mean we are ready to start up regular diaries yet. You guys are not really fans of filler stuff, so we are going to have to wait a little longer for diaries to start up regularly again. I will let you know as soon as we feel ready to start showing things off proper.
 
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I'm very excited for this expansion, maybe the first time since release of this game... but the diorama... seriously... o_O
 
We are currently very early in development so things may change, but here are some things mentioned we are aiming to do (in expansion or free update or mixed):
- Ship design and the ability to refit older ships and keep things up to date
- Naval Terrain: different seas will behave differently and suit different ships and fleet compositions
- Revamped naval combat
- Fleets split up into task forces for better control
- New naval spotting system
- Ability to control naval routes and block areas you dont want units to travel through
- Fuel, obviously going to be a massive balance job for us and a big gameplay change for you :)
- Gameplay rules, particularly to help multiplayer groups out when it comes to manage their games
- of course other stuff as well. to be revealed in the future.
What about Navel Doomstacks? Do you already have plans to prevent Doomstacks?
 
Hi everyone! We are now back from PdxCon which was an amazing experience. If any of you were there, thanks a lot for coming! I had a lot of fun and interesting conversations with HOI fans and we had a very cool challenge to as Poland inflict as much casualties as possible on Germany in 1939 in just 30 minutes. The winner pulled off 1.8 million using clever tactics and a strong cavalry army! What better way to save Poland than to turn the false myth of the polish cavalry charging German tanks around :)

25036_1b.jpg


The myth itself is something based on reality where polish cavalry performed a successful charge early on in the war vs German infantry at the battle of Krojanty. Something the German propaganda machine tried to falsely portray as the poles being unprepared for meeting modern German armor (there were no tanks there). The myth apparently lived on a long time, notably taught in schools and promoted in soviet propaganda… that said, in Hearts of Iron IV at pdxcon the polish hussars did ride out and win!

View attachment 371927
The HOI4 booth where we ran the challenge.

We also announced the next big expansion for HOI: Man the Guns.
View attachment 371931

Man the Guns will focus on naval warfare primarily but also redoing UK and USA and giving them more fun options. There will also be other new focuses but those are secret for now. We will also be adding fuel to the game which a lot of people were very excited to hear about at pdxcon :)

The UK and US revamps we plan to handle the same way we did Germany and Japan, e.g the changed trees and historical path in the 1.6 'Ironclad' update and the new alt-history paths (despite my perhaps not so subtle hints people have figured out that there is going to be the possibility of a 2nd american civil war among other cool things).

As for the themes we decided to go with naval for several reasons. One, that it fits very well with USA (and they were on the top of our list of nations we felt needed more fun gameplay). Secondly we have already done big changes to both land and air in previous expansions and updates so it was time for the 3rd type of warfare to get its time in the spotlights. Its also currently in my opinion the weakest part of HOI and something we really want to make shine.

We are currently very early in development so things may change, but here are some things mentioned we are aiming to do (in expansion or free update or mixed):
- Ship design and the ability to refit older ships and keep things up to date
- Naval Terrain: different seas will behave differently and suit different ships and fleet compositions
- Revamped naval combat
- Fleets split up into task forces for better control
- New naval spotting system
- Ability to control naval routes and block areas you dont want units to travel through
- Fuel, obviously going to be a massive balance job for us and a big gameplay change for you :)
- Gameplay rules, particularly to help multiplayer groups out when it comes to manage their games
- of course other stuff as well. to be revealed in the future.

We don't have a release date yet, and most of the above is still subject to change because we are are still early. I really wanted to talk as much as possible about what we are up to at pdxcon though :) Hopefully I will see more of you next year there!

We also announced that HOI4 has hit 1 million sales (wooot), and to celebrate that we have decided to make an anniversary edition that comes with a super cool alt history diorama - Italian soldiers raising the flag over the rubble of Big Ben, Iwo Jima style ;). I felt italy invading London was one of the more hearts of iron things there was when it comes to alt-history :)

View attachment 371959
We had the first version for PdxCon in the booth fresh from the maker, and you can see it there in the picture above. The anniversary edition is actually possible to preorder already! Just follow this link.

As have been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't mean we are ready to start up regular diaries yet. You guys are not really fans of filler stuff, so we are going to have to wait a little longer for diaries to start up regularly again. I will let you know as soon as we feel ready to start showing things off proper.
Are there any changes planned to naval invasions as well?

I personally only disagreed with the last part on reflex, about not having regular DDs, but hey, you guys are at fault here, you did this to me ;)
 
It was awesome to meet the devs at PDXCon and pester them with questions (I'm the one who asked about AI strategies). Podcat is taller than I expected, Dan9l's hair look even blonder in real life, and I will definitely come back =)
 
You need to roll back the changes to soft attack for arty and tanks, and get rid of the special forces cap. They have made the game less fun to play, particularly as a smaller country.
 
- of course other stuff as well. to be revealed in the future.

In the name of all that is precious to us, I hope this includes a better way to manage fleets. Collecting the ships I want out of what I have and collecting them into a single fleet should not be a 5-10 minute process.

Also I hope even refitted ships aren't as good as brand new ones, since that would probably be the case I assume, and it would give you an incentive to spend time building all those new ships. But I am really excited for this, navies have needed so much help, and as an American it's nice to know you're finally looking at us, since this is the only actively developed game where we'll ever realistically show up, and it wasn't very fun to play us before! I can't wait to see what happens with the depression and our national focus tree (I am assuming this is going to become a thing that you have to work to eliminate, rather than a spirit that just magically disappears).
 
Are the gameplay rules planned to be multiplayer only or singleplayer will may used it too?
Thank for your hard work! :D
probably both, but we are primarily focusing on the MP side of the rules first

There have been like a dozen threads about these issues with many people wondering if there will be a patch before Ironclad.
Sadly no, we did one more patch than normal after tiger and we sadly cant really manage another patch before MTG comes out.

Hopefully the multiplayer improvements would include a peace deal turn timer.

We felt that being able to kick ppl who refused to do their turn (or who disconnected) and have them join in later would solve most of the issues. What kinda issues are you experiencing in MP atm where this would be better with turn timer etc. convince me basically :)

What about Navel Doomstacks? Do you already have plans to prevent Doomstacks?
yup

Can we get achievements for USA?
absolutely :)
 
- sauce? And should we assume that soviet union was much bigger and influential considering that myth is alive and well even today in the west? Also those ellipsis...o_O
Zbigniew Załuski was one of (if not the only one) communist party members that stood against that propaganda in his "The Polish Seven Deadly Sins" from '62. The debate lasted well into the seventies.

I haven't managed to find sources on it being taught in school.

And the prevalence of the myth in the west is just a matter of PRL not disproving them after it's inception and West Germany re-using nazi propaganda material.
 

This Guardian link says they themselves reported the myth two years prior to the article (2009), which not only shows that the reporter thinks it enough to report it without checking, but that everyone who read the article and not the correction will think it true as well. It's definitely still out there.

Edit: to be clear, 2011 is when the article was written, not 2009. 2009 is the year referred to when I said "two years prior". That wasn't very clear.
 
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- Ability to control naval routes and block areas you dont want units to travel through
It'd be very useful if you'd also make a toggle for convoys only. Fleets could still go in there, but convoys would avoid the region.

I say this because in MP there's a few problem zones that can be exploited very successfully, by the Axis in particular. There's not always much the Allies can do about it either, especially if they didn't prepare enough.

In such a scenario the Allies will lose all their thousands of convoys within months and can never come back and it's GG. Fun stuff if you're Russia or USA and haven't even got to fight yet; you just wasted 4-5 hours playing pre-war SimCity.

IRL the convoys would've of course been re-routed to not go through an enemy controlled Mediterranean, Straits of Malacca, Bay of Biscay, Spanish coast, English Channel etc.

It'd also be nice to get back the functionality of previous HoIs where you could set up the beginning and destination ports of convoys.
 
Why can't you make that if you have hoi4 and you want the diorama you can just buy it alone
The base game included there is essentially there as a bonus. We felt it would be a bit silly not to and you can always give the code to a friend.