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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 :)

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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 :)

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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 have something I would like you to try and address for the next patch or expansion.

I was playing a co-op game with a friend, we planned to play as China & Japan in an alliance to conquer the world. Japan went Support Kodoha Faction and China went Prioritise the Interior.... So neither of us could found a faction, so we had to play a whole game co-cooperatively with no faction. Which is ok, but somehow not as satisfying.
 
Destroy the infrastructure in a province and the supply/fuel cannot flow through. Those mechanics already exist.


Ships and aircraft do not use infrastructure.

K
 
Ships and aircraft do not use infrastructure.

Destroy the infrastructure in a province and the supply/fuel cannot flow through for ground units.
Destroy airfields and naval bases in a province and the supply/fuel cannot flow through for air and naval units.

Those mechanics already exist.
 
Apologies if this has already been asked, but will the new spotting mechanic reflect the historic involvement of aircraft in that role? Making maritime patrol aircraft key would be amazing and add a lot to the Battle of the Atlantic...
 
In fact Archangel85, since I cannot edit my old link since it would be necroing. A look into maritime patrol aircraft shows that Germany had another naval bomber for the 1940 slot that I didn't see when I first made that old thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_&_Voss_Ha_142

This would fit better than what I had proposed since what I knew at the time was simply using a variant of the Ju-188 bombers or one of the later Dornier bombers. I didn't know that Germany had a prototype for the 1940 naval bomber.

The Blohm & Voss Ha 142, would fit fine. German naval bombers should look like this -

  • 1936 - Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor

  • 1940 - Blohm & Voss Ha 142

  • 1944 - Fw 300 (It's in the game but the icon shows a single engine float plane which looks like another recon plane, when the Fw 300 was a four engine non-float plane)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_300
Well sorry,but IMO there're better planes that would fit (more historic).
just a few that were used in fact:
BV 138 '41 - Do 18 '39 - Do 24 - Do 217 E/M/K '40 - Fw 200 - He 111 F/J/H '38 - He 115 '37 - Ju 88 A - Ju 188 E2/A3 - Ju 288 G - Ju 388 M
sorry that I didn't had the time to link them all to their proper variants, but why always find projects that never did it IRL when others were used ?
 
I would like to see one better place for carrier dive bombers in naval combat, they should give more HP damage or organization damage against enemy carriers since in real life they could disable carriers due to the holes they do in the carriers flight deck and others kinds of more serious damage.

I think battleships should be able to do some kind of "strategic bombing" in enemy shores, this way the Navy will still have some use after the sea war is won.
 
As I understand it will be a Component system which sound like stellaris (or Maybe HOI4 division designer) so Maybe Carriers and battleship use the same base template but with different Components?

In such case it should be possible to convert a battleship into a carrier, Assuming you can change the needed Components.

I suspect we will create ship templates much like division templates but a bit more restricted and if you want to refit a ship it would be just to change template.
 
Well sorry,but IMO there're better planes that would fit (more historic).
just a few that were used in fact:
BV 138 '41 - Do 18 '39 - Do 24 - Do 217 E/M/K '40 - Fw 200 - He 111 F/J/H '38 - He 115 '37 - Ju 88 A - Ju 188 E2/A3 - Ju 288 G - Ju 388 M
sorry that I didn't had the time to link them all to their proper variants, but why always find projects that never did it IRL when others were used ?
Did you bother to look at the information that I supplied? Check the link from my signature?

First off the Fw 200 was in there, second off attack planes not just reconnaissance planes were there for a reason. Recon only planes don't attack ships. I was also trying to avoid using variants of airplanes. The planes I listed were also used for reconnaissance but could attack ships as well.

The BV 138 only had just over 200 built, and was hardly used for anti-shipping. It's armament was too light. It could possibly attack submarines, but when did Germany have a real use for that? The 1940 naval bomber slot is debatable, but I would rather have an aircraft that had prototypes already constructed for a dedicated anti-ship aircraft than using a reconnaissance airplane or a variant of one of the Junkers or Dornier medium bombers.

IMO, the 1936 and 1944 naval bombers are indisputably for the Fw 200, and the Fw 300, even though the Fw 300 was never built and was only on paper.


BV 138

Armament


  • 2 × 20 mm MG 151 cannon, one in a nose turret and one in the rear fuselage covering upper rear area
  • 1 × 13 mm (.51 in) MG 131 machine gun in open position behind the central engine, covering the top rear area
  • 1–3 × 7.92 mm MG 15 machine guns (optional)
  • up to 6 × 50kg bombs or 4 × 150kg depth charges under starboard wing root only (optional)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_&_Voss_BV_138

This is not something that was made for taking out ships.
 
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Well sorry,but IMO there're better planes that would fit (more historic).
just a few that were used in fact:
BV 138 '41 - Do 18 '39 - Do 24 - Do 217 E/M/K '40 - Fw 200 - He 111 F/J/H '38 - He 115 '37 - Ju 88 A - Ju 188 E2/A3 - Ju 288 G - Ju 388 M
sorry that I didn't had the time to link them all to their proper variants, but why always find projects that never did it IRL when others were used ?


For the same reason that the Hawker Horsley is used when it went out of service in 1935, why the Blackburn Shark is used when it went out of service by 1938, why the Blackburn Roc is considered a bomber, why the Skua is a 1940 technology when it entered service in 1938, why there are no Sunderlands, Catalinas, Hudsons, Ansons or...oh you get the picture.

K
 
There really aren't more than 2, non-variant, dedicated anti-shipping aircraft that Germany had, and only one of them was constructed.

The list is here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aircraft_of_Germany#Patrol_and_reconnaissance_2

The one I listed, the Blohm & Voss Ha 142 was not an exceptional aircraft for it's role, even though it could carry more of an armament than any of the naval reconnaissance planes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_&_Voss_Ha_142

Using a variant of the medium bombers, especially the Ju - 188, which had pretty good success with it's torpedoes, is just as relevant as anything else for the 1940 naval bombers. So, it's up to the dev's to do whatever they want of course. My biggest gripe was just using single engine float planes that were only ever used for reconnaissance as the naval bombers for the 1936, and the 1940 slots.
 
Sorry but Poland being capable of inflicting this many kills on an AI Germany just goes to prove what is really wrong with the game.
 
But will we finally be able to have our officers executed/purged outside of events? It feels like every single strategy game I play, I want to hang an admiral at one time or another.
 
Can you please teach the British and American AI how to play? Their position means they are really terrible. In my current game as the USA, the British have 2 million dead, about a million from Germany, and have only inflicted about 200k dead on the Germans. It is silly how they throw piecemeal forces into battle time and time again, only to be crushed every time.
 
Can you please teach the British and American AI how to play? Their position means they are really terrible. In my current game as the USA, the British have 2 million dead, about a million from Germany, and have only inflicted about 200k dead on the Germans. It is silly how they throw piecemeal forces into battle time and time again, only to be crushed every time.
Its much better now though. At least when they land forces they try and take a nearby port. Before they could land 25 divisions and they would just sit on the coast and do nothing but lose org until you destroy them.

However, I still think there is a delay after landing and an attack on a nearby port right? I've only played one German game since WtT. They need to have the AI UK wait until a landing makes sense. Like if Germany is busy with Barbarossa first. They should also target Italy IMO once North Africa is lost.

One weakness of the AI and how it has been since HOI I is that the UK, and the US don't organize an offensive together to say liberate France or Italy. Until somehow some unity of command or some cooperation of forces is made, there can never really be a serious threat to invade Western Europe to defeat a human player by the AI. In Multiplayer, sure, but not with an AI involved.

Perhaps there will be an Overlord expansion in the future where a big expedition force is created by the UK (and it's Commonwealth forces) and the USA, or just any alliance among nations, properly supported by airforce and naval forces (shore bombardment), and lands in France.
 
More navy things you say, hmm ok, I can deal with that if I have to.:) The navel aspects of almost any game is my favorite but HoiIV kinda killed it a little.20 mins in the game as the UK and still assigning fleets around the place, not quite my idea of fun navy so this got me really exited.
Long Live The Paradox Empire!(or republic or something)