HOI4 Dev Diary - Stability and War Support

[billcorr]

this game is slowly turning into a game I actually want to play all the way to 1948 . Looking good.

Given the discussion about mid-to-late game lag, is the the statement actually...

"this game is turning into a game I actually want to play slowly all the way to 1948 ."

Looking good.

Yes, the Paradox team deserves credit for responding to previous bug reports and concerns. Based on previous performance, the chances of them addressing issues brought up in this thread (and other locations) are looking good!

 

[Gamer_1745]

Given the discussion about mid-to-late game lag, is the the statement actually...

"this game is turning into a game I actually want to play slowly all the way to 1948 ."

The point, I think, is that many liked the pre-war build up phase of the game but were let down once the war started.

 

[Axe99]

To be fair, that's almost exactly what happened in the actual war... the air forces didn't just constantly pound one target. The difference is that the interception could occur more often in the actual flight than can happen in the game.

There was definitely all sorts of deception used to try and minimise the number of intercepting fighters. That said, at the moment the gameplay element feels very micro-ey - such that whoever micros more wins, rather than whoever has set up the best air defence/air offence system. Longer term, my angle on it is that gameplay would be better served by the players' role being to set up a system of air defence (or air offence) and then give general orders which both elements respond to (and then the gameplay would be in adjusting the system of defence more periodically, rather than playing whack-a-mole with strategic bombers). As always, just my 2 cents, I could well be off .

 

[Yossarian23]

This looks incredible. Thanks for all your hard work guys.

And @podcat: please don't retreat on the issue of bringing back money.

The current system, which relies on access to natural resources, industrial technology, economic policy, political organization, civilian infrastructure, and economies of scale, makes infinitely more sense than the system in HOI3, which seemed to distort the degree of abstraction to a jarring extent.

I am not an economist, and I know you guys know the material, but my understanding is: The actual printed/stamped/coin money, and the numbers listed in the account books of large banks and national treasuries, are the most mutable, ductile elements of the global financial system during war. As noted by a previous poster, national treasuries can and will print more notes with reckless abandon during total war. That is to say: Money can be essentially conjured out of thin air. Flour, and iron, and rubber, bread, and gun barrels, and tires, they can't be conjured.

The factories that build the stuff, the people who operate the factories day and night, whether they are healthy and able to work, whether the infrastructure to transport the fruits of their labor to its destination exists, none of that can be conjured from thin air, and all of those either exist in the game (possibly abstracted), or can be derived from systems which exist in the game.

I'm perfectly happy to set policies or handle decision points which refer directly to cash money $$$ and affect resources which are not explicitly labeled "money." The game can very reasonably refer to money. But I respectfully assert that by adding money to HOI4 as it stands (without introducing a full-expansion addition of content laser-focused on national financial management/policy), in the sense of tracking integer representations of national treasuries, you would be making the following error:

You would be introducing a level of magnification to the game which does not currently exist, and you would be introducing this new level of magnification in only one context: economics, and only in the sense that money is now a thing. I strongly suspect you would not attempt to simulate international banking, or the national treasury cycle in re: taxation schedules and the fiscal year. I'm not sure I would want money if you DID simulate the treasury cycle (whatever it's called, I'm almost definitely using the wrong terminology), but I would HATE using money if there was no cycle related to tax collection, no system in place to model tax morale per nation per year, no system in place to model the ability of a nation, practically speaking, to collect taxes and run the national treasury. Will each nation have a national archives located in a specific province, a mint located in a province, a treasury located in a province, and a national bank HQ located in a province, each vulnerable to enemy capture?

If we have money, when can we start doing some real heinous/awesome stuff, a la China's current outstanding Go encirclement/vicegrip of the US, described in Foreign Policy Magazine here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/08/cheap-chinese-aluminum-is-a-national-security-threat/

Lovingly yours,
Yossarian

 

[aMaschina]

Will submarine warfare also have an impact? Right now all you can do is hamper england in bringing in ressources by sinking convoys while they have more than enough docks to make up for it. I really miss a way to force england out of the war via subs or strategic warfare. While this may sound fubar for some it was a real danger for them being starved

 

[Porkman]

Snip

I think you've hit the nail on the head. China, for example, underwent massive hyperinflation starting in 1940. It wasn't that the government couldn't print money... they could and they did. It was that the people being paid with it thought it was useless. The tax morale as terrible, collection was rudimentary, and production suffered a lot.

In China's case, you could also do a lot of fun events around the taxes like the creation of the Ministry of Finance's army. These were special units of the army whose purpose was to escort the tax revenue from the provinces back to Nanjing. They were better funded, better armed, and better trained than most of the other units. A very interesting thing about them was that, while the rest of the Chinese army was hampered by patronage networks based on which military academy you went to, (Huangpu/Whampoah for Chiang Kai Shek and Baoding for a lot of the warlords) the finance ministry troops had a patronage network that hired all of the American trained Chinese officers. T.v. Soong, the finance minister, and Kong Xiangxi, also the finance minister at a different time, had both gone to university in the US and they had classmates who had gone to West Point but couldn't break in to the regular army back in China. So they hired them for the finance ministry army and then they hired more American trained officers.

When the Chinese went into Burma, one of the units was a finance ministry unit and the Brits were often surprised to meet Chinese officers talking to them in fluent English with a Southern US accent. The American trained Chinese officers were also generally very, very good. Most had come over on a Boxer Indemnity scholarship... which was super competitive to get. Following that, they had to get into a US university. Then, after that, they had to get into one of the US military academies (The Citadel, West Point, the Virginia Military Institute, and Norwich University). This is a biography of one of them... "Qinghua graduate Wang Geng ’11, son of a Shanghai businessman, studied engineering at both Michigan and Columbia universities before taking a B.Litt. in history, with honors, from Princeton in 1915. Changing his plans to pursue graduate studies at Harvard, Wang accepted an appointment to West Point and earned a second baccalaureate in 1918, standing 12th in his class of 227.

When the Japanese wrote the History of the War. (Senshi sosho a massive 45 volume history) they rated the Chinese units in Burma as the best that they fought, above the British. This was because the Chinese units sent there had a huge proportion of troops from the former finance ministry units. That many got squandered and destroyed by Stilwell's incompetence was a big source of friction between the two.

 

[Secret Master]

In HoI4 they are, meaning in theory it should be pretty simple to limit the manpower to X% of max while a division have full equipment strength!

Make a new policy for setting reserve division manpower levels (or tie it to conscription laws), and you can effectively have training cadres.

You'd still have divisions with lower XP than regular army forces (the reinforcements reduce unit XP as they should), but I'm fine with that.

It might also mean that disbanding the army and training one division would be extra pointless. Have the game compute staffing levels on reserve forces, and only use up equipment at a rate comparable to what the staffing level is.

 

[Bane5]

Just a thought: having large amounts of non-core territory could affect stability as well. It would represent the driving force behind decolonization as well as the need to make puppets.

 

[Loophole Rabbit]

I would argue that we should think very carefully in terms of game balance before Belgium and the Netherlands get their own trees

A good NF tree would probably nerf them compared to the OP default one, like what happened to the Raj.
A seperate NF tree for the Dutch East Indies would be nice too. They joined the US oil embargo and were among the first nations to declare war on Japan after PH if I remember correctly. (Japan actually never officially declared on them - but offcourse attacked them nevertheless.) Their part in ABDA command is also interesting. After Japan's surrender Indonesia declared itself independent. And the Dutch found themselves facing a rebellion in their soon to be lost colony.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

A good NF tree would probably nerf them compared to the OP default one, like what happened to the Raj.

People always mention the Raj when talking about the default NF tree, but the main reason that the default tree is OP for the Raj is because of the absurd default manpower. Of course there is also the option to rush modern tanks early but other than that and the manpower problem I don't really see how its that OP.

 

[Alex_brunius]

People always mention the Raj when talking about the default NF tree, but the main reason that the default tree is OP for the Raj is because of the absurd default manpower. Of course there is also the option to rush modern tanks early but other than that and the manpower problem I don't really see how its that OP.

Another big nerf in the case of the Raj whas that techslots were reduced from 5 in the default NF tree to 3 if you stay in the commonwealth.

 

[pvt.conners]

Becoming independent does not lock you out of the Commonwealth research group as far as I remember, leaving the Allies does.

 

[kaguravitro]

weeeeee great more geopolitical tool. good work.
i only wank fix fuel usage but this ideas are great!

 

[Slavicist]

Speaking of mobilization speed, you no longer get a chunk of manpower instantly when enacting conscription laws or other changes to recruitable manpower. Instead how quickly the manpower is made available by the law change is controlled by your mobilization speed. The higher the war support the faster new manpower trickles in.

What? No, why? This is not a good choice.

It would ruin a large portion of games where that's the only viable strategy to quickly get manpower as a tiny country. It would render playing small nations...impossible.

Could you clarify what precisely this means? Cuz if you pass a law saying EVERYONE, GET YOUR GUNS AND GO AND DIE FOR THE MOTHERLAND it's not gonna be a process where people slowly apply.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

Another big nerf in the case of the Raj whas that techslots were reduced from 5 in the default NF tree to 3 if you stay in the commonwealth.

Yes that is very true, the Raj was easily able to get 5 tech slots and more than 5 million manpower in the field with volunteer only and modern tanks in 1944 before they got their own national focuses and tech tree.

 

[Armacalic]

Could you clarify what precisely this means? Cuz if you pass a law saying EVERYONE, GET YOUR GUNS AND GO AND DIE FOR THE MOTHERLAND it's not gonna be a process where people slowly apply.

My good man, you got something wrong. This is a process where "Shit, this war really sucks, everyone's dying in it. I'll dodge the draft, I know some folk here and there."

If your population does NOT support the war, they won't do what the government orders, period.

 

[Captured Joe]

i only wank fix fuel usage but this ideas are great!

If that's what you're into...

 

[Echo_foxtrot]

When does the changes apply? My game still uses national unity..

 

[Axe99]

When does the changes apply? My game still uses national unity..

These are dev diaries relating to patch 1.5 and it's accompanying DLC - there still a ways off yet (we don't have a name for the DLC yet). Normally there's a few weeks after the DLC's announced before the patch and DLC hit - look out for the announcement and you'll get an idea of when it's coming. If we're lucky, we'll get an idea of the release date before that, but it's probably a tad early for us punters to know yet . My best guess is a release in early December or late January, but that's a wild guess.

 

[Echo_foxtrot]

These are dev diaries relating to patch 1.5 and it's accompanying DLC - there still a ways off yet (we don't have a name for the DLC yet). Normally there's a few weeks after the DLC's announced before the patch and DLC hit - look out for the announcement and you'll get an idea of when it's coming. If we're lucky, we'll get an idea of the release date before that, but it's probably a tad early for us punters to know yet . My best guess is a release in early December or late January, but that's a wild guess.

Aah okey I was sure everybody already used it, looking forward for the realese