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podcat

Studio Manager, Game Director <unannounced>
Paradox Staff
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone and welcome back to a new dev diary. We are continuing work on the upcoming 1.5 “Cornflakes” and unannounced expansion. Today we are going to be talking about changes to synthetic refineries and resources.

Synthetic Refineries
Synthetic refineries are a great way to get access to oil and rubber for nations that end up on unfriendly terms with a lot of their neighbours (*cough* Germany *cough*). The technologies for them were however in need of some updating. Most people would only bother with the first to unlock the building unless they were a very small nation (and if so probably not a big consumer of those resources). It also felt unfair that nations that had plenty of one resource and lacked the other would need to do the same investment as someone who lacked both. Even if you had some of each, there was no good way of balancing output and you’d usually end up with a surplus of one or a deficiency in the other. To deal with this we now unlock 3 building levels at once, but the initial output of the refinery is much lower. We have then removed the previous 3 techs giving more levels and replaced them with 8 new techs that increase the output of your chosen resource. That means that if you only need more rubber you only need to research the Rubber Processing techs and can skip the Oil Processing.
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Resources & Infrastructure
This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time. Each level of infrastructure now adds +10% resources in those states. This means that we can have resource amounts that actually grow later in the game. This should give you more reasons to upgrade low infrastructure areas to take advantage of the resources there, and will also allow bombing to impact normal resource gathering and not just refineries. A low infrastructure area with resources is now a great opportunity for expansion.

Together with this change we have improved the construction interface.
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You can now see where resources are located and how much they are impacted. You can also see building slots which makes it so much easier to find the best places to build infrastructure without having to jump between map modes.

Resource mapmode now also indicates effect from infrastructure damage so you can spot potentially important areas for repair:
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We have been rebalancing resource numbers across the world to go with this change. Numbers aren't done yet but I figure I’d spend the rest of the diary showing some areas to explain what we are working with.

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British Malaya and Singapore are nerfed, but are both low infra allowing for a lot of expansion.

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USA has a lot of areas where investing in infrastructure will help them grow into a monster. Texan oil for example.

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As seen above, Japan has several opportunities to improve local resources now.

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France generally got a bit of a resource nerf as it had a lot of very high areas and is also at decent infrastructure level.

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Northern Sweden still has precious tungsten which can be expanded to help Germa...accurately simulate Sweden's complicated role in the war.

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Brazil now has the potential to be a true rubber king (is that even a word?) if invested in. Same goes for some other nations in south america, like tungsten from Bolivia.

This should shake up the resource play a bit we hope. See you all next week for more updates!
 
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Wait, does this mean with the first synthetic refinery tech we can build THREE synthetic refineries in a state? Do I undestand correctly?
yea. saw no reason to limit it to later techs. few ppl ever bothered as I explained in the diary
 
But you should have gone the other way: infra below 100% occurs a penalty to resource output.
It makes damage and such harder to show, and its a core design philosophy for HOI that people like to make stuff better rather than less bad. its mostly a vague difference but green numbers going higher is a lot nicer than red numbers becoming smaller ;)

Can you see the impact of strategic bombing at enemy areas towards the resources and infrastructure a bit better in the future? I find it very complicated to really see my impact on those enemy areas
I agree its something we'd like to have better data on as right now you only really see amount of buildings, not what kinds etc etc. Cant promise anything yet tho, but its something we have discussed a few times.

I guess that balance wise numbers are not final - but what is the initial output of refineries in 'current' build @podcat ? :) (And what +output we can expect increase from those tech?)
right now base level is 3 and you get 2 per level. but thats not something we have playtested on yet at all so didnt want to show those numbers ;) expect them to change a bit once we test them

Is the AI gonna have defines to set that it should improve infra in states with a lot of resources? Or is this just another "improvement" that makes the game even easier for the players?
ai will care more about areas like that yea
 
One of the major consequence of this choice, is that in method 2, no matter what, Region A will always output at least 40 oil. Even when bombed to hell. In method 2, if infra hit 0, then it won't output anything at all. This is really a different philosophy for low infra region.

But in the end, one way ore another, I'm glad infrastucture level has much more effect now that it had when the game was released ! Keep it up !
Yeah you are of course right. we also didnt really want to completely cut off all resources. Stuff like that tend to lead to wierd exploits vs unsuspecting AI etc
 
@podcat will there be changes to trade laws and particularly how trade works among faction members? No point in getting excited that Germany is buffing their steel when they suddenly go closed economy and Italy is left crying over its production lines.

its an area I would like more option. its a little odd that it applies equally to all. Not going to be a thing for 1.5, but its something we are thinking of solutions for.

@podcat does the 10% infrastructure bump also affect the synthetic factories' output or is it just natural resources that improve?

nope, only "natural resources"