HOI4 Dev Diary - The Intelligence Agency

[FoolManChoo]

This update should be codenamed "game-ception"

 

[GrimReaper]

Awesome

 

[Vohen]

Hi everyone! Today we will start going through the Espionage features announced at PdxCon in greater detail. First off is the hub of everything - Your Intelligence Agency.


The Agency
The Agency is something you need to construct on game start if you plan to involve yourself in the shadow war that will be running now. We recommend at least an investment in defence eventually to help protect yourself even if you do not plan to dedicate resources to offensive operations. Notice that I said ‘construct’? The Agency will take up several of your factories for a while to be created. Civilian factories is the closest we have to a money budget so we felt this was the most appropriate cost to use. When you decide to make the agency you are free to name it (a historical name will be suggested) and you can also pick from a mix of historical logos as well as generic made up ones (surprise - a lot of agencies did not advertise themselves to heavily).

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In the Agency you can recruit Operatives (more about them and what they can do in a future diary), work on cryptology (also a topic of a future diary) and upgrade the different branches of the agency as well as update training or develop new gadgets to help your Operatives.


Branch Upgrades
Just like the creation of an agency it will cost you some industry time to develop its capabilities. The time is always the same, but the cost itself can vary with how powerful the option is.

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Lets have some examples of the many options:

• Naval Department - This is one of the basic branches that improves your intelligence gathering in that field. It will ensure that you get the most out of any naval intel you get.
• Passive Defense - This boosts your agencies counterintelligence rating which together with Operatives help you defend against enemy Operatives.
• Invisible Ink - Improved ways of sneaking intel back through letters or other ways through writing. It means your Operatives will be generating more intel when active somewhere.
• Suicide Pills - Captured Operatives will now have a final way out limiting leaks of intel to the enemy
• Diplomatic Training - Operatives learn to operate among high society and politics and would no longer dream of ordering their Martinis stirred. This one helps with missions such as diplomatic pressure and control of foreign trade (yup.. future diary)
• Cryptology Department - this sets up a department of math wizards and crossword puzzlers. Why shall be covered in a future diary

The Spy Master
If you have enough upgrades and are in a faction you can become the faction’s Spy Master.

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This is the logical path for people who want to lean heavily into espionage to get the most of it. There can only be one spy master per faction and the main advantage of being a spy master is that it will let you run a lot more Operatives (depending on the size of your faction). We felt it was mostly historical that only the really big nations truly invested in this, but the most important reason was balance. A lot of spy systems in games fall down on the fact that people can spam you with agents so you either end up super annoyed or the system needs to be toned down to where it’s no longer impactful and fun. In a historical HOI game given this rule, we have then set us up with 3 potentially powerful agencies: Allies, Axis and Comintern.


See you all next week when we take a look at further espionage topics

Spoiler

Rejected Titles

• HOI4 - Mirai Nikki
• This dev diary will auto-destruct after being read, please stand back.
• Popping pills & blowings stuff up with government funds!
• Renamed to iAgency for the Mac version
• The Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare (™)
• There is no department called Military Intelligence because we don’t do oxymorons
• We didn’t manage to make the icon for Commando Training be a man being hit in the nuts, but based on our research 50% of the training seems to have been this.

Will the Chinese have a bonus to this?
The PRC's sabotage ops behind Japanese lines are pretty famous, but they wouldn't have nearly enough industry to back this up in game.

 

[Sigrak]

Hi Podcat,

This looks very interesting! Currently a combination of multiple radars and encryption/decryption techs will allow players to gain certain information about enemy ground forces in the regions where those radars overlap. Will radars be losing that functionality entirely or will some their functionality as listening posts be maintained when it comes to intelligence gathering?

 

[Flight_of_Icarus]

Will the Chinese have a bonus to this?
The PRC's sabotage ops behind Japanese lines are pretty famous, but they wouldn't have nearly enough industry to back this up in game.

They're a minor, so I doubt they will do well in game without any sort of significant help. It would be interesting though, to have Communist China as the spymaster of the United Front, it would give them something useful and interesting to do rather than to be a tiny fly in the Sino-Japanese war. That's unrealistic though, as it's tied to factory count.

I would hope though, that the partisan mechanics are tied to the cores of the country's partisans, that way there would be partisans in manchukuo, even if the japanese haven't marched that much into mainland China while at war yet. It would also be strange for rebels to pop up against the Allies in Italian conquered Ethiopia.

 

[blackpowder320]

Will the Chinese have a bonus to this?
The PRC's sabotage ops behind Japanese lines are pretty famous, but they wouldn't have nearly enough industry to back this up in game.

Finally, AI Japan is going to be more hard-pressed with internal security when invading China.

 

[Xuanzue]

Vanilla will see something of this? or any minor can still provoke cups in the major powers without any risk?

 

[Vohen]

They're a minor, so I doubt they will do well in game without any sort of significant help. It would be interesting though, to have Communist China as the spymaster of the United Front, it would give them something useful and interesting to do rather than to be a tiny fly in the Sino-Japanese war. That's unrealistic though, as it's tied to factory count.

I think the PRC could get a set of decisions upon the formation of the united front, giving them hefty discounts (say, 50%, maybe more) to intelligence stuff and making them the spymaster of the faction.
That'd give historical PRC an interesting job in supporting the war effort much more heavily then they currently can.
Ideally they'd get it as a focus/branch of focuses, but I wouldn't expect them to alter a WtT tree at this point.

I think this could be made as a mod even.
@podcat , will the game have modifiers to agency stuff cost that we can use in mods?

Finally, AI Japan is going to be more hard-pressed with internal security when invading China.

That'd be the idea, but if the Chinese are simply left unaltered, they won't be able to do much with intel, as their economy is severely lacking.

 

[Hubson]

I hope that future focus tree for Poland will have some focuses for their contribution in breacking the Enigmas code

 

[orochi2k]

What's the condition for AI to accept our take over to Spy Master?

And....
Is there any operation against our "allies"? Like...Manchu is already having fun with stealing Japanese equipment in their decision.
Or...at least can we attack Allies as Soviet when we are both fighting Axis, just to make sure we reach Berlin first?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Really pleasantly surprised by how in-depth this is shaping up to be. This looks like it will actually be fun and impactful, unlike espionage in HOI III which usually ended up boiling down to annoying spy spam that could be safely ignored a good chunk of the time. I am starting to agree with with those who are saying that it may be time to bring money back, however. Using civilian factories instead initially seemed like a good idea to cut down on micromanagement, but I'm starting to think that using civilian factories for everything other than producing military equipment is making things more complicated and making the game even harder for minors.

 

[Flight_of_Icarus]

What's the condition for AI to accept our take over to Spy Master?

And....
Is there any operation against our "allies"? Like...Manchu is already having fun with stealing Japanese equipment in their decision.
Or...at least can we attack Allies as Soviet when we are both fighting Axis, just to make sure we reach Berlin first?

Now THAT is a fascinating idea. I would almost expect there to be as much of an intelligence war between the Commitern and the Allies almost as much as there is against the Axis and the Allies. So long as it doesn't help the Germans, of course.

I don't expect Manchukuo to have much of a role to play in intelligence services though, again they're a minor.

 

[safe-keeper]

I like the idea that anyone can spy, but only the faction leaders can do it with any force.

Also like the idea of building an intel agency, would love to see this expanded to building other specialised buildings, like a naval warfare department that made your fleets stronger ,or a police hq to help fight partisans. Doesn't have to be more than stat boosts, mind.

 

[Konigi]

I like the idea of factories being used for intelligence agency -- it's not an opportunity costs, and yes these agents needed offices, resources, equipment and training.

My only concern is: what happens to countries that have little land or have lost its land? Poland and France were, as far as I know, very involved in secret operations, yet did not have the same "factories" as other countries in war. I see it as a way to continue playing as landless nations.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

I think game needs a money mechanic badly.

It can be done by having civilian factories producing money. More civs more money. Of course contruction still be the same.

here a made a argument for bring money back.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stuff-i-miss-from-hoi2.1230982/#post-25729677

 

[marcelo r. r.]

OFFTOPIC: pls make a version for naval invasion of the "spy master", make a "naval operations master", only the "master" can do naval invasions.

 

[Flight_of_Icarus]

Here's an idea: Communist Nations in general should have discounts on espionage and intelligence services, as Communist countries like the Soviet Union were known for their vast networks of spies and subversive activities. It would give an actual reason to decide between Fascism and Communism, intstead of it being a change of paint, with Communism being slightly worse.

 

[KDEstroy]

Will Polish NFs "The Bombe" and "The Cyclometer" get a revamp in order to mesh in with this system?

@podcat ?

 

[Metz]

Will governments in exile be able to use this feature?

 

[Space Hippo]

Will you be increasing the civilian factory base of the countries in the game?, I'm of the impression that, especially minor countries, have a hard time keeping up with so many features that require civilian factories (production licenses, buying resources, decisions, events, etc)