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HOI4 Dev Diary - Stability and War Support

Hello everyone! Today we are going to be talking about National Unity, or rather the fact that it no longer exists…

National Unity
National Unity first made its appearance in Hearts of Iron III, basically as a mechanic to make France surrender at an appropriate time (when Paris fell essentially). It was largely moved over to HOI4 unchanged. While it does accomplish what we wanted it's also a very restrictive currency to work with design wise. A player who is winning doesn't really care what their NU is, making a lot of focus choices meaningless in those instances (or almost, there is always that time your country gets blanketed in nukes and someone dropping paras on one of your big cities seals the deal in multiplayer). We wanted to model different nations better and make sure we could do more interesting focuses and events where picking a loss of NU wasn't always the better choice compared to giving up, say, political power. So what's the answer?

Stability and War Support
These are two new values shown in the topbar that replace National Unity. Stability models the people's unity and support for the current government. War Support on the other hand represent the people’s support of war and of fully committing to fighting that war. As an example Britain in 1936 would be a pretty stable nation, but with very low war support. A nation like France would be much more unstable and with equally low war support, while Japan would have high war support and also high stability (mostly due to the emperor’s influence).

Stability average is 50% and nations with higher stability than that gain bonuses to industry, political power and consumer goods. Once you drop below 50% there are penalties instead as well as lowering your surrender limit (although nothing as extreme as how NU affected things). Strong party support helps increase stability, but being in a war - no matter how well supported - is going to lower your stability. Stability also works to protect against coups against your nation as well.

War Support has several passive effects and also limits several of the laws. You can’t switch to full War Economy without enough war support for example.

Note that in the picture below France is getting +30% war support because they have been attacked by Germany. An offensive war on the other hand for Germany actually hurts their war support. This comes with some interesting balancing effects:
  • Democracies challenging Germany early over Rhineland etc would put themselves as attackers, forcing them to fight hindered by the war support penalty.
  • Fascist or aggressive nations will generally have more initial war support but are likely to be surpassed by democracies in a defensive war when it comes to war support.
  • Defensive nations will be able to ramp up army sizes faster due to mobilization speed while attackers need to play a bit more carefully. The return of “national pride” from HOI3 in the form of combat bonuses on core territory will help here too.
Speaking of mobilization speed, you no longer get a chunk of manpower instantly when enacting conscription laws or other changes to recruitable manpower. Instead how quickly the manpower is made available by the law change is controlled by your mobilization speed. The higher the war support the faster new manpower trickles in.
pasted image 3.png


The air war also affects things as successful enemy bombing (or nuking) will lower War Support. Shooting down enemy bombers will offset this somewhat, as people are seeing you fight back against the enemy.

Here is an example on what can happen in a nation with low war support and low stability in a war. The severity of these particular options depends on exactly how low your stability/war support are. Here it's pretty bad.
pasted image 2.png


For Germany a good way of raising war support is to pull off its diplomatic expansions without being opposed:
pasted image 1.png


War support is also affected by how your allies manage. If a major ally surrenders it will lower your war support, so make sure to keep your friends in the war. On the flip side successfully capitulating major enemies increases your war support.

There are also some new ways to affect War Support and Stability outside events, ministers and national focuses that we aren't ready to show off yet ;)

See you again next week!
 
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WeissRaben said:
That makes the historical Italian situation impossible, though - shouldn't it be tied to War Support instead? I mean.

> Italy starts with low-ish War Support. Player Mussolini invades Ethiopia to prop it up and is successful, but that does alienate his allies, thus he moves to Germany instead. So far, so good.
> Germany starts gobbling stuff without shooting a bullet, and that's good for his War Support. Mussolini watches and decides to try it himself in Albania - it's not bloodless, but close enough. So far, so good.
> Germany starts a war. Italy's War Support is still very low, but the war might end soon, so he declares on France. No plans prepared at all, and mostly clicking garrison units with garrison units, results in embarrassment. War Support shudders.
> Needing a shining victory to prop up War Support, Mussolini invades Greece, but it backfires horribly; losses mount and mount and mount, and in the end Germany is the one that wins the war, resulting in a net loss of Support for Italy. Losses in the African theater do not help, either.
> The Allies invade Sicily. This is not 80% of Italy's VPs occupied, by far, but Italian War Support is now hovering at 0 or so, and the taken VPs in Sicily (core VPs, not even colonies) are the straw that breaks the camel's back. Italy surrenders, Mussolini is deposed, allies with the Allies, and is counter-invaded by Germany.
> BUT NOW Italy is invaded, rather than the invader, which gives a hefty push to War Support - while the RSI, being a puppet, doesn't care for such tiny problems. Partisans, though...
Click to expand...

What you are talking about here is a war willingness (interventionism) scale. The way I read the devs, they want to add a popularity rating for the specific war for the participants. A stable country can still hate a war they are participating in.

That said, your idea of war willingness in addition to war support and stability sounds very interesting.
 
Just a heads up to please fix this exploit - as India you can make a division with whatever you want in it (eg. 50w of heavy tanks) and call it the 'Red Eagles Division', then when you finish that focus in the NF tree, that division will apear fully equipped as you set - in this case giving 2000 heavy tanks! It works for any other nation that is given a division through a focus, eg. NZ, Australia.
 
podcat said:
while Japan would have high war support and also high stability (mostly due to the emperor’s influence).
Click to expand...
I understand it is a relative thing & you are European focused, but Japan was not stable in the 1930-40 period. I would say the Emperor had actual less influence on government than the King of England did and it was only in 1945 with the implementing Imperial Rule allowed Japan to surrender. If you look at the number of Prime Ministers & cabinet re-shuffles 1936-40 and political assassination of an elected Prime Minister & coup attempts 1930-40 it would not be seen as stable. Now it was not likely to go Communist or Fascist, but it between democratic & military dictatorship type of governments that were in play.

Now with Tojo coming to power, first as Minister of War in 1940 & more importantly also (held both jobs) as Prime Minister in Oct 1941 the Japanese government becomes much more stable. There is a reason Japan didn't enter the larger war earlier and it was because the government was not stable, France falls in June 1940 & Britain is on the ropes at that point but they wait until almost the end of 1941 to go after the European colonies. I have been doing research for my government mod.

Your Stability mechanic will be very important in the development of HOI IV.
 
Archangel85 said:
France should have gotten its truck icon in 1.4.2
Click to expand...
How about the airplane issues that I brought up some months back? You answered in that thread, and it's in my signature.
 
Gamer_1745 said:
I understand it is a relative thing & you are European focused, but Japan was not stable in the 1930-40 period. I would say the Emperor had actual less influence on government than the King of England did and it was only in 1945 with the implementing Imperial Rule allowed Japan to surrender. If you look at the number of Prime Ministers & cabinet re-shuffles 1936-40 and political assassination of an elected Prime Minister & coup attempts 1930-40 it would not be seen as stable. Now it was not likely to go Communist or Fascist, but it between democratic & military dictatorship type of governments that were in play.

Now with Tojo coming to power, first as Minister of War in 1940 & more importantly also (held both jobs) as Prime Minister in Oct 1941 the Japanese government becomes much more stable. There is a reason Japan didn't enter the larger war earlier and it was because the government was not stable, France falls in June 1940 & Britain is on the ropes at that point but they wait until almost the end of 1941 to go after the European colonies. I have been doing research for my government mod.

Your Stability mechanic will be very important in the development of HOI IV.
Click to expand...
This reminds me the Showa Restoration.
Nice old times.
 
Both CoC and NU revisions are Free content...And substantial content at that. @podcat please preview some of the paid content within the next 2 weeks.
 
Gamer_1745 said:
I understand it is a relative thing & you are European focused, but Japan was not stable in the 1930-40 period. I would say the Emperor had actual less influence on government than the King of England did and it was only in 1945 with the implementing Imperial Rule allowed Japan to surrender. If you look at the number of Prime Ministers & cabinet re-shuffles 1936-40 and political assassination of an elected Prime Minister & coup attempts 1930-40 it would not be seen as stable. Now it was not likely to go Communist or Fascist, but it between democratic & military dictatorship type of governments that were in play.

Now with Tojo coming to power, first as Minister of War in 1940 & more importantly also (held both jobs) as Prime Minister in Oct 1941 the Japanese government becomes much more stable. There is a reason Japan didn't enter the larger war earlier and it was because the government was not stable, France falls in June 1940 & Britain is on the ropes at that point but they wait until almost the end of 1941 to go after the European colonies. I have been doing research for my government mod.

Your Stability mechanic will be very important in the development of HOI IV.
Click to expand...

Imagine you are in a crowded bar and shout "I'm going to bring down the government, who's with me?". Stability is the amount of people who will tell you sit down and shut up. While Japan's politics were quite unstable in the period, the Emperor himself was almost untouchable. Any government would, in the final instance, still adhere to the idea of the Emperor being part of the system near the top. the Emperor would therefore legitimize any government that had him as a part (however large or small his actual role may be). On the contrary, I think you would agree that removing the Emperor would force any government to find a new source of legitimacy, which would no doubt be a long process.

Daelyn75 said:
How about the airplane issues that I brought up some months back? You answered in that thread, and it's in my signature.
Click to expand...

It's on the list, but art time is limited. Very limited. In fact, if any of you could look between the sofa cushions for lost art time, we would really appreciate it.
 
Yes, @NaRen13AnnexYourself

Japan is often seen through the propaganda movies of WW II. The War in Asia is a thing of it's own. I have a background in Japanese history & language from study many years ago, but I am far from an expert on it.
 
I have some America related pondering, because I like being everyone's friendly arms merchant for as long as possible, guns for both sides of the war!
How is lend-lease going to affect war support if you're not in a war? What if you're supplying both sides? What about if you're in an unrelated war? What if you're in the war with someone you're supplying? What if you're the one receiving equipment?
What does sending volunteers do to war support? What about when the die?
Since war support seems to be an aggregate of all wars, is there anything to prevent a high support for a defensive war being used to start an offensive war? Japan attacks the US, US uses the war support to declare war on Cuba for their chromium.
 
podcat said:
Well, early on China had pretty bad war support also. I dont think it was until there were major losses of territory that the people rallied fully
Click to expand...

This opens up an interesting but difficult can of worms. I suppose "War Support" could go either way on this depending on what the attacker intends to do with the population after victory. i.e. France losing territory to the Germans in 1940 would lower French war support, as German victory means a return to some sort of peace; but German victory to a Russian or Japanese victory over China meant something far more sinister.

I am not sure how the "War Support" modifier can take that into perspective. Maybe a "different culture" modifier?
 
Whit the current focus tree italy as the way to gain war support seems to take the "Italy Frist" and making as much allies as possible whit out really expanding...
But could in the future be added more possibility for italy to gain territory whit out war? like pressing yugoslavia to cede Slovenia and Dalmatia insted of going to war?
Or the possibility of siding whit the allies and they cede colonial territories to Italy?...

It's just that the new sistem seems to favor a lot germany now and going to play as italy is going to be more hard (not that i hate the challenge)
 
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