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HOI4 Dev Diary - The Intelligence Agency

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).

Screenshot_1.png


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.

Screenshot_2.png



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.

Screenshot_3.png


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 (how many 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 :)
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.
 
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Well hopefully this means y'all will fix the decryption bug :p

On a more serious note, after all the majors are reworked in DLC, we really need a hiatus from constant DLCs and some updates to consolidate the previous content to use the new mechanics, and fix long standing bugs.
 
interesting , at a cost of civ...
stealing blueprints allow to build a vehicle/ etc? or give the tech or a massive discount on it?
defensive options exist too , i think they will secure your conquests?
we'll see... the agency allows for more , so i assume there is some cap other than the amount of civ you can dedicate to it.. hmm inteeresting
 
BrotherJonathan said:
My mistake. I knew he worked for British intelligence in some fairly major way, but wasn't exactly sure of details.


This is actually a good general idea. Now that intelligence agencies and spies will be a thing, maybe there could be an additional minister slot, "Spymaster". Whoever you appoint to this slot would give bonuses to different aspects of your intelligence service. For examples, the Germans could have Skorzeny, who gives a boost to covert operations like assassinations and coups, or Canaris, who gives a bonus to naval intelligence.
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I don't like the idea of buffs based on persons, whose accoplishments are more based on fiction than facts. Ian Fleming is one of them: a novelist after the war, with very little input in intelligence during the war. Some documentaries tell, that many real spies made jokes of Fleming's books.

And Otto Skorzeny: he was not good in covert operations, he was good to represent himself as a larger hero then he was, both to the Nazi leaders and to the general public. He happened to be in place when the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger saved Mussolini, but he posed in the photo taken there as if he did it. He did not catch Tito, he did not hit the Teheran conference, his troops achieved practically nothing during the Battle of the Bulge. No buff for him either.
 
Ossiv said:
I don't like the idea of buffs based on persons, whose accoplishments are more based on fiction than facts. Ian Fleming is one of them: a novelist after the war, with very little input in intelligence during the war. Some documentaries tell, that many real spies made jokes of Fleming's books.

And Otto Skorzeny: he was not good in covert operations, he was good to represent himself as a larger hero then he was, both to the Nazi leaders and to the general public. He happened to be in place when the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger saved Mussolini, but he posed in the photo taken there as if he did it. He did not catch Tito, he did not hit the Teheran conference, his troops achieved practically nothing during the Battle of the Bulge. No buff for him either.
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You make good points. I guess that's one of the hard things with studying the history of espionage; because everything was supposed to be secret, it can make it hard to tell fact from myth.
 
CornishScotsman said:
For anyone who is interested in those logos and their nationalities, this is what I could figure out from top left to bottom right. As much of the words are too small and are blurred when zoomed in, I've had to rely on national markings and historical symbols of some of them, and I couldn't work out all of them.

Unknown - Netherlands?

If anyone can help me identify the last ones, I would be grateful!
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Is indeed the dutch one. The words are "Bureau Inlichtingen" (Intelligence office), the logo is probably fictional but it has the national color orange and the sword was used by the dutch resistance (Raad van Verzet) were the sword kills a german eagle and destoys a swastika.
 
durfal said:
Is indeed the dutch one. The words are "Bureau Inlichtingen" (Intelligence office), the logo is probably fictional but it has the national color orange and the sword was used by the dutch resistance (Raad van Verzet) were the sword kills a german eagle and destoys a swastika.
Click to expand...

Good man! Thank you very much, I'll change that now.
 
MaryC said:
The idea of playing as a completely neutral nation with the greatest intelligence agency in the world sounds incredible. You'd sell top secrets to the highest bidder, and not really care who got the intel. I get why we can't play that way, but it would be great xD.

"Well, we have spies in Washington, London, Berlin, Kyoto, and Moscow. Whose secrets would you like today?"
Click to expand...

And suddenly playing as the Swiss became more interesting.
 
starkwolf said:
Hopefully South America as well. I almost want to play as Brazil to spy on Paraguay and see if they are consorting with Nazis. Noddy noddy! :p
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I'd love a South America DLC too. Considering Brazil's Smoking Snakes fought hard in WW2. It can be connected with the incoming Portugal Focus Tree.

And of course, a Southeast Asia DLC as well. The upcoming guerilla mechanics and espionage (US-aligned and Communist guerrillas in the Philippines, Viet Minh, Sukarno etc.) may make the region more interesting for partisans and collaborators alike. :D
 
Ossiv said:
I don't like the idea of buffs based on persons, whose accoplishments are more based on fiction than facts. Ian Fleming is one of them: a novelist after the war, with very little input in intelligence during the war. Some documentaries tell, that many real spies made jokes of Fleming's books.

And Otto Skorzeny: he was not good in covert operations, he was good to represent himself as a larger hero then he was, both to the Nazi leaders and to the general public. He happened to be in place when the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger saved Mussolini, but he posed in the photo taken there as if he did it. He did not catch Tito, he did not hit the Teheran conference, his troops achieved practically nothing during the Battle of the Bulge. No buff for him either.
Click to expand...

He "didnt happen to be in place". He actually planned and led the operation. He failed getting at Tito, yes, nothing was planned for Tehran though. thats an urban legend. His troops did achieve a lot during the battle of the Bulge, they werent meant to be a game changer. What about operation Shamil? I dont recall if he was involved in it somehow but the operation was a success.
 
Palaiologos said:
He "didnt happen to be in place". He actually planned and led the operation. He failed getting at Tito, yes, nothing was planned for Tehran though. thats an urban legend. His troops did achieve a lot during the battle of the Bulge, they werent meant to be a game changer. What about operation Shamil? I dont recall if he was involved in it somehow but the operation was a success.
Click to expand...

Operation Schamil was an Abwehr operation that was done by the Brandenburgers in Aug-Sept 1942. At that time, Scorzeny was still fighting in the Eastern Front in the 2nd SS-Division Das Reich; he only joined the SS special operations in 1943 after recovering from a head wound he received in Dec 1942.

Both the SS and the Luftwaffe participated in the rescue of Mussolini. Hitler ordered the SS to locate Mussolini, and then Luftwaffe paras to rescue him. Scorzeny was not ordered to lead the raid to Gran Sasso, that part belonged to the Fallschirmjäger officers. According to wikipedia:
Major Harald-Otto Mors (1910 – 11 February 2001) was a battalion commander with the Fallschirmjäger who planned and led the Gran Sasso raid to rescue Benito Mussolini following his arrest in September 1943. He received the German Cross in Gold on 26 September 1943.

Maybe I was too critical towards Scorzeny's accomplishments, but then, you were praising him too much. James Lucas "Kommando: German Special Forces of World War Two" gives him credit, but also says that he exaggerated his accomplisments. According to Lucas, much of the real planning in Mussolini's rescue had been carried out by the Lufwaffe paras, but after the operation the SS presented it in public as if it had been only their own operation.
 
Getting really excited for this expansion. I do hope they address some of the current problems in the game though. For example peace conferences and how allies allocate troops to shared fronts are two extremely important things I would like to see fixed.
 
Ossiv said:
Operation Schamil was an Abwehr operation that was done by the Brandenburgers in Aug-Sept 1942. At that time, Scorzeny was still fighting in the Eastern Front in the 2nd SS-Division Das Reich; he only joined the SS special operations in 1943 after recovering from a head wound he received in Dec 1942.

Both the SS and the Luftwaffe participated in the rescue of Mussolini. Hitler ordered the SS to locate Mussolini, and then Luftwaffe paras to rescue him. Scorzeny was not ordered to lead the raid to Gran Sasso, that part belonged to the Fallschirmjäger officers. According to wikipedia:
Major Harald-Otto Mors (1910 – 11 February 2001) was a battalion commander with the Fallschirmjäger who planned and led the Gran Sasso raid to rescue Benito Mussolini following his arrest in September 1943. He received the German Cross in Gold on 26 September 1943.

Maybe I was too critical towards Scorzeny's accomplishments, but then, you were praising him too much. James Lucas "Kommando: German Special Forces of World War Two" gives him credit, but also says that he exaggerated his accomplisments. According to Lucas, much of the real planning in Mussolini's rescue had been carried out by the Lufwaffe paras, but after the operation the SS presented it in public as if it had been only their own operation.
Click to expand...


Well I happened to have read Scorzeni's book, twice, and he claims he led the operation. Truth be told I never thought of questioning that claim or looking into it. He even describes details how he had ordered his men not to shoot, but to sprint towards the guards that were taken by surprise. Now he might have been boss of the assault element, while the brigade commander the overall boss. He did claim the gliders were his idea. He does mention that three agencies were looking for Musolini's wherebouts, I cant recall what he claimed his part was in that. And he straight out denies that that false operation the Soviets had(dont remember the name) with some lost group in northern Russia that they kept supplying was a soviet operation all along-he ostensibly met one of their officers after the war. So he is not the most credible source, no.
 
For some reason genuinely excited - intelligence was a weaker area of HOI3 (and so far non-existent in HOI4), hoping for great things here.
 
Palaiologos said:
Well I happened to have read Scorzeni's book, twice, and he claims he led the operation. Truth be told I never thought of questioning that claim or looking into it. He even describes details how he had ordered his men not to shoot, but to sprint towards the guards that were taken by surprise. Now he might have been boss of the assault element, while the brigade commander the overall boss. He did claim the gliders were his idea. He does mention that three agencies were looking for Musolini's wherebouts, I cant recall what he claimed his part was in that. And he straight out denies that that false operation the Soviets had(dont remember the name) with some lost group in northern Russia that they kept supplying was a soviet operation all along-he ostensibly met one of their officers after the war. So he is not the most credible source, no.
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War stories can be like fishing stories: afterwards everyone remembers he got a bigger fish than he really got. Some overclaim a little, others overclaim a lot. I think Scorzeny had a huge ego, since he liked to be a public figure in Germany already during the war while he worked with covert operations; mostly covert operators keep low profile until they retire, and only then tell about their deeds in their memories.
 
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