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HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #3

Hi everyone, today it's time for another bag of tricks diary (the previous two can be found here and here). Let's jump straight in!

Attachés
Sending a military Attaché is a new diplomacy action coming in Waking the Tiger. It’s something you can only do while you yourself are at peace and the receiver is at war. It requires good relations and ties up a lot of your command power. In exchange you get army XP back as well as intel so you can see the receiver nation’s war. This is a pretty good way to get XP if you are a nation that isn’t able to send volunteers for example. The receiver gains also benefits from the attaché:
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Sending attachés will make any country the receiver is at war with dislike you, and they may issue a diplomatic protest that can seriously hurt your standing with them as well as cause a stability loss depending on the relevant ideology (so if you refuse a demand from a communist country, you will lose stability depending on the strength of communists in your country).

Extra ground crews
Another good place to spend command power when you don't need it for your armies is by prioritizing strategic air areas to receive extra ground crews. A prioritized area get +10% efficiency for planes operating there which can be great in certain areas to allow your planes to fly more effectively. Prioritizing ties up 20 Command Power per area while active.
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This ability as part of 1.5 Cornflakes and thus available to all.

Historical Army Insignias
As part of the effort to make the game feel a little more immersive and allow you to better recognize your armies, we have added Historical Army Insignias to Germany, France, Britain and the US (the Soviet Union and Japan didn’t really do Army Insignias). They can be assigned to any army like any other army insignia but won’t take the army color. All told there are 18 German icons, 11 British icons, 8 US and 3 French ones as well as 10 shared icons that are available to everyone else (some of them are locked to certain ideologies).
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If this is a popular feature, we might consider expanding it to include historical division insignias also in future DLCs.

Volunteer Air Wings
In Waking the Tiger will be possible to send volunteer air forces. Where before you could only lend-lease planes and hope the AI knows how to use them, you now get to control them yourself (you can still lend-lease planes as well, of course). This means you can have the Condor Legion or The Flying Tigers and help out your own volunteer forces.
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Rather than being sent to another theater like with regular volunteer forces you simply get access for a certain amount of planes to base in and operate in the receiver nation and you can just transfer them as normally. The amount of planes you can use depends both on the size of your airforce and the receiver airbase capacity.
Speaking of Flying Tigers, they actually get a special decision. China can invite the Flying Tigers which will unlock a decision for USA where they can decide to respond. This will both give fighters to China as well as increase their volunteer cap allowing them to send more wings over to assist.
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I’m home with stupid winter influenza so today we got @Da9L and @Archangel85 playing historical Japan in World War Wednesday, so tune in at 16:00 CET if you want to see how that looks or want in-depth info about focus tree design!

Next week we will be taking a look at a hopeful little empire on the rise for Waking the Tiger…
Best possible use of the new Historical Army Insignias:
Capture_ggez.JPG
 
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It’s something you can only do while you yourself are at peace and the receiver is at war
Would be good to be able to do it when you're at war too, so the Western Allies and Soviets, and Axis and Japan, can swap attaches and see what each other's doing.
 
Mongolian Empire on the rise? :rolleyes:
 
I hope the last diary before release will summarize all the changes and added features. There has been so many I've lost track.
Yeah was thinking this myself :D we usually dont do a "recap episode" but might be a good idea this time :D
 
If this is a popular feature, we might consider expanding it to include historical division insignias also in future DLCs.

It is already popular with me!
The Cat +1
 
Volunteer Aircraft
If Germany sends volunteer aircraft to Spain for example, and one or more of the planes/pilots are shot down over enemy territory, are there any repercussions? Could there be?

Flying Tiger shot down over China held territory, no repercussions. Flying defensive missions. Found and aided by Chinese troops.
Flying Tiger shot down over Japan held territory. Japan army finds plane and pilot. USA accused of killing Japanese soldiers while not declaring war. Japan demands League of Nations respond. And they do by opening up a new branch on Japan focus tree providing Japan with many political and military options i.e. demanding retribution, demanding land, demanding raw materials, etc. etc. etc.
 
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good news i realy like them.

But:
Pleas make Bicycle Battalions and a upgreat to Motorcycle Battalions for all nations! they are not that good like real Motorized Version but easyer to build. many nations use them in high Numbers like Germany and Russia.

German tankdivisions often had one Motorcycle Battalion instead of a real motorizzed battalion because of the lack of Trucks and the easyer to produce Motorcycle.
this trupps get called Krad Truppen (Kraftrad).

Russian also wasnt able to motorises his truppes and try to compansate with Motorcycle and build complet Divisions with them till the USA send so much Trucks that this problem get solved.

This and the missing Assaultguns (Germany and Russia Realy use them in high numbers, StugIII A-D and Brumbär, Sturmtiger, Su122 great britan use a variant of the Churchill but this are important taktical war Mashines and a Part of the Wunderwaffe as well, only the lack of Numbers dont make them that impressive) i realy miss them in this game... in HoI 2 and 3 Assaultguns and Bicycle and there upgrade Motorcycle Battalions where in game why not in HoI4?
 
No Tanna Tuva tree. Rip. :(
 
Aircraft and Ground Crews should use manpower. And pilots should have to be trained. There could be a pool of pilots with different levels of training and you could decide where to send them. You could keep veterans in the rear to better train new pilots. If it gets desperate you would have to send up barely trained pilots into air combat (like late war Japan).

Historical Division icons is definitely a good idea. And the more interactive historical events the better. The game is severely lacking those in my opinion.
 
No special additions to Mengkukuo apart from a special puppet type. Can't say I'm terribly dissapointed but it would have been nice to give them something, even if its just giving them the novelty of the warlord tree. surely someone out there plays tiny countries!
 
Aircraft and Ground Crews should use manpower. And pilots should have to be trained. There could be a pool of pilots with different levels of training and you could decide where to send them. You could keep veterans in the rear to better train new pilots. If it gets desperate you would have to send up barely trained pilots into air combat (like late war Japan).
If I may add onto your thought I would like to see that carried out a step further and have to train pilots for specific planes. That is not to say that a pilot could not learn to fly more than one type of plane, he/she would have to be trained to do such.
 
Volunteer Aircraft
Flying Tiger shot down over Japan held territory. Japan army finds plane and pilot. USA accused of killing Japanese soldiers while not declaring war. Japan demands League of Nations respond. And they do by opening up a new branch on Japan focus tree providing Japan with many political and military options i.e. demanding retribution, demanding land, demanding raw materials, etc. etc. etc.

Unlikely, as by that time, Japan was not a member of the LoN, having withdrawn after their invasion of Manchuria.
 
Unlikely, as by that time, Japan was not a member of the LoN, having withdrawn after their invasion of Manchuria.
Maybe in an Ahistorical game?