Hi everyone! The HOI team is now back after recharging batteries on summer vacation (although yet again I failed to go visit the submarine museum in Kiel 
).
We decided to start our time off with a little patch (Oak 1.4.2) since there were still a bunch of things we wanted to deal with for which there was no time before summer.
Here is changelog:
As usual for patches between DLC releases we put them in public beta first. I snuck this one up yesterday and it was updated with some extra fixes today. If you want to test it out in beta you can find out how here. If all looks ok we may update live tomorrow evening (earliest), or on monday.
Looking over changelog list you'll notice how we have again added more portraits for free. This is part of our ongoing project to make sure all starting nations have unique portraits and its not that much left now either. I expect us to have accomplished it by 1.5 hopefully! Here are the portraits that were added:
We have also been working at an old and very difficult AI problem. The classic where Italy ships troops to Germany to help out (often from africa) leading to slaughter as they go through the channel. Our solution for 1.4.2 is specifically to deal with issues in the channel and the Mediterranean and works by us highlighting particularly dangerous areas to AI. Whenever AI needs to transport through such an area to reach another front and danger is high enough it will instead use those troops somewhere else. So for example Italy would leave troops in africa and fight on those fronts rather than get them killed moving to more high priority fronts. Long term we want to come up with a dynamic solution for this that doesnt need us pointing our danger to the AI and ways it can adapt its strategies based on this. AI however is always a work in progress for improvements and I think we have made a good step forward for a more competent transportation AI.
For today's World War Wednesday stream we are going to try something different: A massive co-op game where each general in germany is a different player on the dev team and me and Daniel run the government. Its going to get interesting so tune in at 16:00CEST on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!
See you next week for another diary!
).We decided to start our time off with a little patch (Oak 1.4.2) since there were still a bunch of things we wanted to deal with for which there was no time before summer.
Here is changelog:
Code:
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########### Hotfix 1.4.2 "Oak" ###########
#####################################
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# AI
##################################
- Added AI strategy to avoid some naval strategic regions
- AI now realises that puppets will also join the war when their overlord does ( fixes situation where China does not put any troops on their border with Japan's puppets )
- AI should now prefer even shorter naval routes when picking what ports to navally transfer between
- Nations with low manpower are now less likely to burn pp on relation boosting as they need it for laws
- AI should be less likely to waste PP on guarantees when low on manpower and at war
- Removed AI weight modifier is_in_faction from JAP axis leaning focus
- Tweaked ai weights for carrier plane research. AI will now always research the most modern carrier version available and not research any carrier planes if they don't have carriers, the US and Japan will also be more eager to research carrier planes and particularly so when at war with each other
- Tweaked AT gun research to take enemy armor values into account (AI will be more willing to research AT upgrades if facing an enemy with high armor divisions)
- AI will no longer research basic heavy tanks if it can already research improved heavy tanks
- AI now clears the trades that are not being fulfilled due to having no access to trade country
- Italy should now be more careful about transports across the Med
- Enemies of UK will now be wary of transporting through the english channel
##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Can now use "relation" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy
- Can now use "guarantee" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy
##################################
# Database
##################################
- Added flavor names for German named fighter squadrons
- Added namelist for FAA squadrons in the 800-list
- Added a number of shipnames to the German roster (thanks davewolf!)
- Added Night Witches to the Soviet “Women in Aviation” focus
- Added German historic airwing names after player feedback
- New icons for Italian small arms and truck
- New icons for French infantry weapons (prime condition, only dropped once)
- Added a flavor name for a Yugoslavian light cruiser class
- New leader portraits for Yemen, Haiti, Malaysia, Luxembourg, Indonesia/Dutch East Indies, El Salvador, Buthan, Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Netherlands (alternative)
- Commonwealth leaders now fallback on British portraits if TfV is not activated
##################################
# Audio
##################################
- Adjusted volume on some of the airplane sound effects
##################################
# Balance
##################################
- First level Radar now have a much longer range to make initial investment more attractive
- Expanded bypass criteria for puppet Bulgaria focus to allow focus to bypass if Romania holds all of Bulgaria in a war
- Albania should now not fold to Italian pressure if in a faction with Yugoslavia
- Added bypass to anschluss if AUS is a puppet
- Turkey will now only join the Axis through the German focus if they are fascist.
- Anschluss event now takes guarantees into account
- Lowered upgrade bonus to self propelled AA variants air attack from 30% per level to 15%
- Changed Demand Sudetenland focus to fire fallback event if England is a subject
- Changed South Tyrol to be a core of Austria
- Nerfed CZE fascism gain through focus by 50%
- Reduced starting fascism in CZE to 5% (down from 25%)
- Fixed wrong tech bonus in a Romanian focus
- A country that initiates coup on an another country gets a bonus while inviting revolting country to its faction
##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Fixed an issue where frontlines could sometimes dissapear
- It is now ok to transfer resources from your territories through subjects at war time
- Fixed issue where declaring war on a puppet could pull the puppet into an existing war on the wrong side of the war
- Subjects are now added to a faction if their master is
- Convoys used for naval transfers are no longer locked in a state of being permanently "in use" when saving/loading while navally transferring
- Fixed issue where merged wars made it impossible to surrender because you were not marked as war leader
- License production description now updates properly
- Fixed bug where division size affected how much attrition they took and how their supply status was affected by being out of supply
- Fixed a bug where volunteers could appear in an impassible area
- Fix for incorrect use of has_government = fascist/communist instead of fascism/communism
- Fixed a horrific bordergore issue in Romanian "Split CZE" focus
- Ensured that split CZE event chain did not result in CZE units sitting around after their country got annexed
- Doing the Indian focus "Battaglione Azad Hindoustan" should now fire the proper event for Italy rather than give them the option to collect money for the RAF
- Cheating on the Austria-Hungary Referendum and going with the annexation should no longer report that Hitler was assassinated. (the proper news event should fire instead)
- France now joins the Czech entente if they decide to support the Czechs and Czechs have their own faction
- Fixed a wrong tag in URG loc string
- Fixed Italy Befriend Bulgaria strategy not requiring Bulgaria to exist
- Reenabled Vichy France cosmetic tag in a cynical move to squeeze out a tiny bit of profit
- Fixed an event firing several times for Romania
- Fixed an issue with continuous naval/air production idea not being localised
- Fixed a situation that could cause an infinite loop of naval transports
- Made game several times less fun ( Fixed an exploit with nukes persisting after loading or starting new game )
- Design companies should no longer be lost when loading and older savegame in a new version (from next patch update on, it wont work with older sadly)
##################################
# Stability
##################################
- Fixed a division by zero CTD in airmissions when aircraft are fighting missiles
- Fixed various rare CTDsAs usual for patches between DLC releases we put them in public beta first. I snuck this one up yesterday and it was updated with some extra fixes today. If you want to test it out in beta you can find out how here. If all looks ok we may update live tomorrow evening (earliest), or on monday.
Looking over changelog list you'll notice how we have again added more portraits for free. This is part of our ongoing project to make sure all starting nations have unique portraits and its not that much left now either. I expect us to have accomplished it by 1.5 hopefully! Here are the portraits that were added:
We have also been working at an old and very difficult AI problem. The classic where Italy ships troops to Germany to help out (often from africa) leading to slaughter as they go through the channel. Our solution for 1.4.2 is specifically to deal with issues in the channel and the Mediterranean and works by us highlighting particularly dangerous areas to AI. Whenever AI needs to transport through such an area to reach another front and danger is high enough it will instead use those troops somewhere else. So for example Italy would leave troops in africa and fight on those fronts rather than get them killed moving to more high priority fronts. Long term we want to come up with a dynamic solution for this that doesnt need us pointing our danger to the AI and ways it can adapt its strategies based on this. AI however is always a work in progress for improvements and I think we have made a good step forward for a more competent transportation AI.
For today's World War Wednesday stream we are going to try something different: A massive co-op game where each general in germany is a different player on the dev team and me and Daniel run the government. Its going to get interesting so tune in at 16:00CEST on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!
See you next week for another diary!
