HOI4 Dev Diary - Future and Cornflakes

[jorishilhorst]

• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems

For this a war of indepence (india) that won't pull you into a war with that countries allies might be nice. Australia/Canada/South Africa fine but why is france fighting brittains war when they have a growing germany to worry about.

Also for the peace conference it would make a lot of sense if your points are split across theaters / regions you control / have fought in.
So if the US ignores europe (and doesn't control it) then they don't get to decide how it is split up (much).

Or perhaps track how many points you scored off each nation (occupation, casualties received/inflicted), and make it costlier to make claims over territories of nations you never interacted with. You could even show a heat map that shows you how much overcharge there will be in points.

This should avoid china losing half of japan / manchuria / korea when they did all the heavy lifting vs japan, just because europe had a longer war and russia/brittain/france/USA scored points there.

 

[Shatter12]

Interesting. New National Focuses for pretty major minor countries (I'd like to see especially how Spain, Finland and China could influence things; especially if they choose a somewhat historical or ahistorical role). I'm honestly pretty excited for a Finland tree (even though I'm Australia) which would be pretty based around the idea of defending and trying to contain the Soviet threat, and joining the Axis (either as an honourary member which Finland was in real life or having a Fascist coup d'etat. And of course, trying to secure Murmansk and the surrounding Areas. Hell, maybe even joining the Comitern for some nice ahistorical gameplay (cough).
Also, a rework for the major countries would be pretty interesting. These could include going between A coup (which was historically planned iirc) or Sudetenland for Germany, a different outcome for the Battle of Cable Street, and perhaps the USA becoming more interested in America (perhaps puppetting the Americas, demanded the annexation or the release of Canada, annexing all of the Americas, etc.) would be pretty fun choices to go through. Also, allowing field marshals to command generals would be an interesting Idea. I could see it being even less micro management then is it already.
Wunderwaffen... I'll have to wait and see. It'll either by something like Moon Germans/Japanese, or ICBMs w/ nukes.

Also, these two:
A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
Make defensive warfare more fun
These will be very interesting to see introduced; especially making a defensive war more fun (i.e. more then just wait half a year to a year and then steam roll the undermanned, severely understocked AI depending on your divisions).

 

[Riekopo]

It's really great to hear that the next addition to the game will be a big expansion. This game is loved, but it needs big improvements and additions.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Correction - ME:A is an Electronic Arts title, not Ubisoft.

Woups, you're entirely right. I have the wrong evil overlord company.

 

[Kipsta]

Why isn't this posted on Steam? I actually thought you gave up on developing HoI 4 until I checked the forums just now... Awesome roadmap, many things which are badly needed for the future of this game!

 

[Sound Of Trance]

Good catch. Will ask the powers that be to make sure everyone is updated.

Why isn't this posted on Steam? I actually thought you gave up on developing HoI 4 until I checked the forums just now... Awesome roadmap, many things which are badly needed for the future of this game!

 

[dasreich]

I think Germany is a little weak. Especially in Multiplayer this is very successful. Germany is usually renewing. Please strengthen almania a little

 

[thenaternator]

I would like to request a change for Australia in Hearts of Iron IV. Even after the release of a DLC making Australia a unique nation, the Prime Minister is still incorrectly portrayed as John Curtin. John Curtin was Prime Minister 1941 until his death in 1945.

I have attached the Wikipedia list of Australia's wartime Prime Ministers (the middle two columns represent their time as Prime Minister), though some (like Sir Earle Page and Frank Forde) were only very temporary leaders, at the very least please include Robert Menzies. Seeing as though a standard game begins in 1936, it is ridiculous to have Curtin at such an early time.

It is also an important change to make historically as the change between Menzies and Curtin altered Australia's foreign policy greatly. Menzies was extremely pro-Britain and pro-Empire, and very much disliked Stalin and communism, whereas Curtin saw the Soviet Union as a valuable ally, and is made famous for his "look to America" line in his speech, 'The Task Ahead' published 27th December 1941. Curtin established the formidable alliance between Australia and The United States that every leader since has maintained. I feel that this extremely important to note, especially considering Australia's position historically and within the game around 1941.

Perhaps even including the 1941 election as an event where the player chooses between Menzies' pro-Empire government or Curtin's progressive Labor government.

Any change would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks.

 

[Col Clown]

I would like to see the technology research cost decoupled from hard coded years, and instead the research cost should be modified by:
1) how long since the prerequisite research was completed
2) how much experience the country has building and using the technology
3) how much time the country has seen other countries, friend or foe, use the technology to be researched
This makes it much more expensive to try to run quickly down a tech tree and much more expensive to be the first country to develop a new tech. IE - jet engines are very difficult for the first country to develop, but once they are developed other countries know it can be done and can possibly capture or spy to get insight into how jet engines work. Another example: it is difficult for the US to design the B-29, but easy for Russia to copy a B-29; or it would have been if they didn't use the metric system.

Continuing with technology, it should not only be more expensive when it is "ahead of time" with the current system, but it should be cheaper when it is behind time. This way if you are a minor country you don't have the resources to research most things at the cutting edge, but you can be 2 years behind the major powers in everything.

Major powers should have a lot more research ability than minor powers, like it was in HOI3. This works if you couple it with cheaper research for behind time research. It is not realistic for Romania to have tanks as good as Germany unless they buy them from a major power.

One other thing that could be done is separating research of technology, versus design of a specific model. For ships you might need to develop new engine technology and new metallurgy for barrels, as a prerequisite for 1938 battle ships, but you shouldn't need to design a 1936 battleship before the 1938 battleship. This change would make catching up to other countries easier for countries that start technologically farther behind, like USSR.


In general I really enjoyed the complexity and depth of research in HOI3, in HOI4 it seems a little nerfed. 30 or more tech slots in HOI3 was more fun than the 5 in HOI4. Please bring back this aspect of play.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

I would like to see the technology research cost decoupled from hard coded years, and instead the research cost should be modified by:
1) how long since the prerequisite research was completed
2) how much experience the country has building and using the technology
3) how much time the country has seen other countries, friend or foe, use the technology to be researched
This makes it much more expensive to try to run quickly down a tech tree and much more expensive to be the first country to develop a new tech. IE - jet engines are very difficult for the first country to develop, but once they are developed other countries know it can be done and can possibly capture or spy to get insight into how jet engines work. Another example: it is difficult for the US to design the B-29, but easy for Russia to copy a B-29; or it would have been if they didn't use the metric system.

Continuing with technology, it should not only be more expensive when it is "ahead of time" with the current system, but it should be cheaper when it is behind time. This way if you are a minor country you don't have the resources to research most things at the cutting edge, but you can be 2 years behind the major powers in everything.

Major powers should have a lot more research ability than minor powers, like it was in HOI3. This works if you couple it with cheaper research for behind time research. It is not realistic for Romania to have tanks as good as Germany unless they buy them from a major power.

One other thing that could be done is separating research of technology, versus design of a specific model. For ships you might need to develop new engine technology and new metallurgy for barrels, as a prerequisite for 1938 battle ships, but you shouldn't need to design a 1936 battleship before the 1938 battleship. This change would make catching up to other countries easier for countries that start technologically farther behind, like USSR.


In general I really enjoyed the complexity and depth of research in HOI3, in HOI4 it seems a little nerfed. 30 or more tech slots in HOI3 was more fun than the 5 in HOI4. Please bring back this aspect of play.

The practicals of HOI3 would be a welcome return.
I think the tech sharing amongst faction members is a good/adequate place to start/be too handle that side rather well between friends.
Licensed arms work well for neutrals since you don't export your R&D know-how, just manufacturing, and then not all of it.
Once espionage gets added back I think they'll do a modifier for stealing enemy tech/learning from their existing gear.

The complexity side does need to be addressed. HOI3 did a much better job with how various technologies interacted to form complete fighting platforms.
With the conversion system this may be doable in HOI4, though they'd have to add Ships as an upgrade option.

I think the biggest problem right now with adding depth anywhere in the game is the AI. Until they can find a clean way to get it to keep place with modernizing the army in accordance to it's economy then adding more complexity will just push it further and further behind the player and make everything worse.

I disagree with the not needing to do previous R&D before building modern technology. You don't need to build enough of anything to show up as an on map unit in the game, but R&D is incremental and that needs to be kept in the game.

 

[Dogukan91]

Finally a better path.

It'd be real awesome if you economy more deep. That is such a limiting factor to this game's moddability and life.

 

[GaribaldisFleet]

Looks like more than an expansion, almost a new game. I hope we can see most of these in the next dlc.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Looks like more than an expansion, almost a new game. I hope we can see most of these in the next dlc.

I would argue it will be many more expansions to get the game the Developers envisioned.

I hope we will see a roadmap to getting to all these issues, but in no way should we expect more than one big ticket item to be addressed per DLC.

If they are very good on their execution I can see the game being brought to par in 16-18 months.

I would expect a 3-4 month cadence if there are no problems. It would be great to see something official from PI, but they need to tackle:
Economy and Consumables, Politics and Espionage, Naval Combat, and Air Combat. All the while they need to keep improving their AI and integrating the new, more complex modules.

In terms of tear ups and work to get it right I envision from easiest to hardest:
1. Economy and Consumables
2. Naval Combat
3. Politics and Espionage
4. Air War

Throughout this they need to fix AI problems affecting land warfare, transportation of troops, shuffling troops etc etc. They also need to make sure the AI handles the new systems well and improves the overall immersion.

So buckle up, it's going to be a very long ride.

 

[Stubby_Rex]

I don't know if this has been said yet, but it would be interesting to see the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia have some kind of national focus that saw a monarchy (if they had any left that is) take over, like what was done with the reestablishment of Austria-Hungary in Death or Dishonour. The UK could have some kind of national focus down that path to gain an annex goal against the USA to reclaim their old colonial territory. France could have renewed conflicts with England, Germany could have focuses to reclaim their territory before World War 1. Just a thought...

 

[Dogukan91]

What works best in a paradox game in my opinion is the sense of development and nurturing a nation. After a while, conquering a static world becomes boring and make me question all hours I had put in.

Vicky is the best in this sense as the game directly rewards you for your industrialization and you can also improve living conditions of your pops. (my beef with vicky is that in economic terms, geography means little unlike the below example)

Common Sense was an amazing expansion for the EUIV which gave a sense of dynamism and opened the way for the amazing MEIOU-TAXES mod and its population expansion. I just can't get enough of it. Economy and geographical domination are also strongly tied which makes for a strong immersion, conquest become meaningful.

CK2 brought the prosperity model, it added some dynamism but it was inadequate. Could have had a far better and detailed economy-population system to give a sense of development, it tries to fill that gap with some repeating events and some modifiers. I'll give it to them, medieval period was SOMEWHAT more stagnant but still a lot happens in 400 years...

Now HOI's economy system is very weak. 10 years is neither a short nor a long time, but a lot can happen economically in 10 years. Current system of "build factory" balance what percantage goes to consumer goods feels too bland but understandable for a game that wants to focus on warfare.
It'd still be neat if they could come up with a sense of growth and development of a nation though where.
At least conquest should bring geographical advantages to economy of sorts like in EUIV and give small bonuses.
A deeper economic model also bring moddability and possible time-extension to a better position.
I don't have any strong ideas since the game is already made with some irreversible systems, HOI could have been a far better game if it incorporated some Vicky aspects from the start.

I don't know what to offer for HOI, but please paradox, population systems and dynamic economic systems where geography matter. In the future focus on these please.
Or better yet, make a more detailed vicky with HOI combat model, that should sort it out

 

[SupremeLeaderoftheDPRK]

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
• Spies and espionage
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

I should hope a lot of this is going into free patches too, some of these features are features which you would expect to be in the base game as opposed to the DLC. A lot of these are fine for the DLC, such as custom portraits, post war scenarios, spies and espionage, etc. However, submarine warefare balance, more control over naval warfare, etc. are features which should really be put in the base game.

Please, do not take this as an attack. I love this game, and will continue to do so even if DLC practices I disagree with are put in place. However, it comes of as scummy when devs place features which should be in the base game into DLC packs. HOI4 has been managed very well so far in this regard, TFV trod a very fine line and DOD's only feature which I believe needs to be in the base game was blitzkrieg, which is quite unimportant. So I guess what I'm trying to say is: keep it up!

 

[dasreich]

I have a suggestion. Do not need infantry equipment in motorized and mechanized divisions. Because the lack of equipment is going to happen a lot

 

[Damian_kappa]

Pls add the National Focus thinky and pls add the Ultimatum as a diplomatic action








P.S. How do i rank up in the forums p.g. from recruit to Private

 

[mvm900]

I would first consider real things and not only focus on Germany. Some tech that caused a paradigm change later is clearly missing.
- helicopters (maybe as SAR support brigade)
- guided missiles (anti air and anti tank)
- air search radar
- flying wing

then also a bit more futuristic things that did see adaption to service in the 50s but still might be interesting "Wunderwaffe" options for WW2

- nuclear reactor for carriers and submarines
- ICBMs
- guided A2A missiles
- hydrogen bombs
- airborne tanks/assault guns

And sure some weapons that never saw any use after WW2 but were considers really special would be cool to, e.g.:

- super heavy artillery guns
- submarine/carrier hybrids

What?
Helicopters didn't come until after the war, guided missiles are already in unless you mean on a smaller scale which also didn't come until later
What do you mean air search radar?
And the flying wing was mostly toyed with

Schwerer Gustav is super heavy artillery.

 

[homerCCCP]

What?
Helicopters didn't come until after the war, guided missiles are already in unless you mean on a smaller scale which also didn't come until later
What do you mean air search radar?
And the flying wing was mostly toyed with

Schwerer Gustav is super heavy artillery.

Ever heared about the R-4? Helicopter saw their first real miltary use in WW2...
H2S, first air carried Radar in 1943...
X-4, first guided missile in 1945

The flying wing became a useful thing later, sure not a paradigm change, so fair enough to point it out from your side.

Other than that you should better check your facts.

Ok, I'm a bit harsh here and I guess, you actually know the above mentioned fact but you wanted to point out that these things didn't make a change in WW2.

No Wunderwaffe did, but these things actually became a really useful thing later and from a gameplay perspective the player could take the alternative history path and push these techs, especially if the war takes longer than up to 1945.

I don't know what you try to say by the Gustav, so what?