HOI4 Dev Diary - Reflections and Romania

[grandad1982]

Thanks for the diary podcat.

There's some really bad blood in the comments today. I'm not really sure what more people want considering podcat a already said that they have since big AI announcements to make and that they will only comment on stuff that they feel is ready.

Is not like I don't have complaints and hopes for mechanics etc but this is the first dd of a major update, maybe we should see what they are come up with between now and release before panning the whole thing?

 

[Spartanlemur]

Improving the Soviet Eastern Front AI would make the game so much more fun.

Also, people would be inclined to play countries other than Germany if the German AI was more aggressive and dangerous.

Right now, you feel like you have to play Germany in order to drive the game forward (because the AI is better at defending than attacking).

 

[ashbery76]

Breaking news people mainly play the major nations in WW2 and don't care about Botswana getting focus trees.Like EU4 too much development is being wasted on nations not relevant.

 

[Flipity]

Thanks for the diary podcat.

There's some really bad blood in the comments today. I'm not really sure what more people want considering podcat a already said that they have since big AI announcements to make and that they will only comment on stuff that they feel is ready.

Is not like I don't have complaints and hopes for mechanics etc but this is the first dd of a major update, maybe we should see what they are come up with between now and release before panning the whole thing?

do you know what i wanted... a game that functioned properly when i purchased it. 10 months in, and it not only still does not work properly, but the last patch broke the game for the main protagonist.

what i think is truly amazing is that so few really complain about this. its my opinion that most of the people playing this game have no idea how World War II, combat, and real world military strategy actually function. Just to let you know, in real life, airplanes don't magically teleport to their targets.

 

[keynes2.0]

So that was the first big lesson: new content needs to tie back to major countries, particularly Germany. Thankfully, we had already decided that our next DLC should focus more on the Axis, so we wouldn’t have to try too hard to come up with reasons why Germany should be involved.

Ugh...

Suppose you are interested in carrier battles. You play Japan or the US, right? Well no because carrier battles dont really have any depth. You just put together a doomstack and throw it at the enemy. So honestly it doesn't matter who you are playing. So a huge reason to play the US or Japan is removed from the game. I wish that Paradox would tackle this head on, let a Japanese player or AI plan the aggressive six month campaign that followed Pearl Harbor. Let an American player have a reason to go Island hopping. Give a reason why naval battles are part of an operation not just two fleets being in the same province.

Suppose you are interested in the North African battles. Good reason to play any Commonwealth nation or Italy and focus on that theater, right? Well no, because the North African theater doesn't exist. None of the constraints that turned North Africa into a war of maneuver and planning are represented. You just put more infantry in the desert then your opponent and then march straight to Cairo or Tripoli. So the theater is just kinda boring.

And of course there is the massive showdown between Germany and the Soviets. Well the problem is that it doesn't feel that way. There is no fun in planning out a massive operation, seeing what troops will move into what positions. There is no ability to even planning something like the Soviet defenses at Kursk. The struggle is only interesting at the really high level, build the better army then your opponent. And this makes anyone other then Germany kinda boring. As soon as the Soviets have the upper hand over Germany it's GG. As soon as any allied nation has the upper hand over Germany it's GG.

There are so many things that could be added into the game to make it better. It really disappoints me that you just did the Commonwealth patch but didn't do ANYTHING to make the North Africa campaign or Battle of Britain have any depth. Instead you just made a bunch of national focuses that I do not give the slightest crap about. Why on earth do I need a mechanic to turn Australia Fascist or Communist??? If I play Australia I want to be fighting Japan in Indonesia while fighting the desert fox in the desert! But neither of those presents any challenge.

I am a customer who was super interested in this game and bought it on release but I see very little chance of me ever buying a DLC given the path of development that you are taking. You seem to have no interest whatsoever in adding mechanics that would make the game capture the interesting parts of history. Instead you are just putting in a bunch of dumb arcade and cosmetic crap.

 

[Daimon Frey]

Renew Polish-Romanian alliance - what actaully it does? It won't join Intermarum faction as below we can see Join Allies focus. Also, what is The Cordon Sanitaire?

 

[Atomcreator]

It's took you this long ( about 17 years ) to realise that a lot of people like to play Germany ?
I find that quite incredible. Especially as I've seen numerous people telling you in the forums before.
When Hoi4 came out i know it was mentioned that there was too much emphasis on minor nations.
I'll bet 60-70% play Germany , Japan or Italy most of the time

 

[Nevrion]

Hopefully that makes things a little clearer. When we are quiet it's not because we don't love you, it's because we are working extra hard on stuff.

Reading some reactions to your announcement, I start to think it's a very one-sided love. Nevertheless, I am happy with your first announcement after ... It felt like years!!! .... and now I got a feeling what's coming next.

We started digging into telemetry data on what countries people actually played after TFV, and things got a lot clearer: About 40% of players play Germany, with other major nations following behind at quite a distance. The expansion gave the commonwealth minors a healthy bump, but still - the only content we really added for 40% of our players only happened extremely rarely in singleplayer games. Only when historical focuses were switched off, and the AI decided to go down the fascist path, did the German player get to see any new content (news events aside). And even then, the content was usually little more than an alliance request.

Well, the Commonwealth and the expanded puppet system was nice, but not that important. In non-historical games, it was interesting to see, what way those nations went. It was one of these incalculable variables in the game. It was even more interesting, if a human player used that nations, but people will rarely see such games, because Multiplayer is a kind of exploit-game, if you don't play with friends only or don't use rules.

So that was the first big lesson: new content needs to tie back to major countries, particularly Germany. Thankfully, we had already decided that our next DLC should focus more on the Axis, so we wouldn’t have to try too hard to come up with reasons why Germany should be involved.

So I bet on your next diary you will show us Spain with its own focus tree ....
Besides that, I think it's a good way to focus the development on the "forgotten" countries of world war 2 as long as you add more than some focus trees as a new feature. Focus trees are important, but there are so many suggestions, so many potential for other stuff.

The other issue we noted ourselves was that the Commonwealth nations had very little interaction with each other. They each sat in their own little part of the world, mostly doing their own thing with their AI neighbours. That meant that even if you were playing one of the countries that got a new focus tree, you were surrounded by countries that still used the generic trees. All the interesting developments in your region were caused by you. We wanted to change that as well, and force you to pay attention to the world around you.

Besides that, the AI often was unable to do something surprising with the commonwealth states, even in non historical games. Do Canada, New Zealand and Australia have any request for conquest in their focus trees? Only South Africa has some reason to get into its own war, to free Africa.

But now you are back with new DDs and I am sure, you give us a lot of thrilling announcements in the next weeks.

 

[wildbillhdmax01]

Thanks for the diary podcat.

There's some really bad blood in the comments today. I'm not really sure what more people want considering podcat a already said that they have since big AI announcements to make and that they will only comment on stuff that they feel is ready.

Is not like I don't have complaints and hopes for mechanics etc but this is the first dd of a major update, maybe we should see what they are come up with between now and release before panning the whole thing?

What do you expect? I didn't stop playing the game because it's boring. I didn't quit most of my games because it's boring. It's because the AI sucks. Now that doesn't mean that I don't want more content. Especially since I own the Field Marshal edition. They could make a DLC as big as the base game, but wouldn't matter if the AI is broken. We're almost a year in, and we're still having major problems.

It's a real bummer to see such negativity because it really made my day! @podcat don't let others get you down. You really started the new dev diaries with a boom and deserve a pat on the back!

If you're referring to the people who are unhappy about the AI, weren't you just in another thread expressing the same thing?

 

[paranoidsteve]

I just hope that the Italian army will no longer walk slowly to the north German coast then take ships to Somalia via the English channel

 

[lihp]

Why should he though if, as he said, it's not ready to be talked about in depth because it still needs work? I would rather they wait a week or two, get it working, and then tell us about it.

You missed the part on minor tweaks in his post.... anyways.

 

[Atomcreator]

Ugh...

Suppose you are interested in carrier battles. You play Japan or the US, right? Well no because carrier battles dont really have any depth. You just put together a doomstack and throw it at the enemy. So honestly it doesn't matter who you are playing. So a huge reason to play the US or Japan is removed from the game. I wish that Paradox would tackle this head on, let a Japanese player or AI plan the aggressive six month campaign that followed Pearl Harbor. Let an American player have a reason to go Island hopping. Give a reason why naval battles are part of an operation not just two fleets being in the same province.

Suppose you are interested in the North African battles. Good reason to play any Commonwealth nation or Italy and focus on that theater, right? Well no, because the North African theater doesn't exist. None of the constraints that turned North Africa into a war of maneuver and planning are represented. You just put more infantry in the desert then your opponent and then march straight to Cairo or Tripoli. So the theater is just kinda boring.

And of course there is the massive showdown between Germany and the Soviets. Well the problem is that it doesn't feel that way. There is no fun in planning out a massive operation, seeing what troops will move into what positions. There is no ability to even planning something like the Soviet defenses at Kursk. The struggle is only interesting at the really high level, build the better army then your opponent. And this makes anyone other then Germany kinda boring. As soon as the Soviets have the upper hand over Germany it's GG. As soon as any allied nation has the upper hand over Germany it's GG.

There are so many things that could be added into the game to make it better. It really disappoints me that you just did the Commonwealth patch but didn't do ANYTHING to make the North Africa campaign or Battle of Britain have any depth. Instead you just made a bunch of national focuses that I do not give the slightest crap about. Why on earth do I need a mechanic to turn Australia Fascist or Communist??? If I play Australia I want to be fighting Japan in Indonesia while fighting the desert fox in the desert! But neither of those presents any challenge.

I am a customer who was super interested in this game and bought it on release but I see very little chance of me ever buying a DLC given the path of development that you are taking. You seem to have no interest whatsoever in adding mechanics that would make the game capture the interesting parts of history. Instead you are just putting in a bunch of dumb arcade and cosmetic crap.

Very true. But then Hoi has morphed into a period sandbox. If you want to play WW2, you have to look elsewhere to be honest. Too much ahistorical claptrap. In my opinion.

 

[Tehrozer]

1st thing : Add possibility to join little entente/międzymorze for romania

2nd thing : Guys the problem isn't the content of DLC ( but to say it was too small and not game changing ) but the game itself bugs , mistakes and problems have been reported but not fixed and instead of focusing on fixing the game from day one you just announce DLC . Also when you need to incorporate a mod to fix things beacuse you didn't fixed it isn't the greatest move its showing how many problems stockpiled .
3rd thing : New mechanics and new features not NFs and graphics

 

[Starisc]

Uhm, thanks?

So to reiterate your brilliant conclusion about why people were not thrilled about TfV:

1. People play major nations
2. Spending all development resources on elaborate focus trees for small, rarely played nations benefits only a tiny portion of our playerbase.
3. Lets make some more focus trees for one province minors BUT...this side on the AXIS!

I'm sure the reaction will be vastly different with this new approach.

 

[lihp]

Like always we talk about bugfixes towards the end. Diary also tells you we have been working on some major AI stuff but that its not ready to be shown yet.

Apparently I missed the part about major AI stuff (yet I found the minor AI part).

Please elaborate on it - no need for promises and none expects you on a promise. Yet a short summary on:

• thats what we perceive wrogn witht he AI from feedback
• thats what our propsed solutions should be like
• thats what we are working on hopefully to be released within 6 months.

those three points would be a major relief for many - imho. And yes, it upsets longterm fans that it isnt mentioned.

PS: And hey, dont forget to click my footer for input

 

[supreme]

As one of the 40% who pretty much only play Germany I am glad the focus will be on Axis, not too keen on the focus tree stuff really but lets see what other improvements will be made. Have not bought TfV yet due to the lack of interest in what was added in it so will be happy to get back into HOI4 again when this DLC arrives, hoping for some improvements to the air war and the AI capability to react better to changing situations in the war. Lets be optimistic for a change!

 

[Temudhun Khan]

So I bet on your next diary you will show us Spain with its own focus tree ....

I don't think so. Spain is quite a big deal, if it's in this dlc I don't think they will announce it until the last new FT dev diary (since they didn't do it in the first one), and Podcat stated that the next dev diary won't be about focus trees anyway. Besides, since Spain historically never joined the Axis and isn't in the same geographic area than the other countries, I doubt it will be covered now unless it's introduced in a separate free dlc (like they did with Poland).

 

[Archangel85]

Some nerf of the generic focus tree, similar to the one the Commonwealth received, with a lot of "filler" focuses to lengthen the focus tree. At least, for the fist glance.

1/ Romania gets only 3 industry focuses. Most probably 3-4 IC total, less than the 7 available from the generic tree. ROM already lacked build slots by 1937, it will be worse.

We actually considered the generic tree to be baseline for where we want the country specific trees to be, balance wise 8unless we think the country should be weaker or stronger than generic, see Indian manpower)

2/ Only a single research team focus, so apparently Romania is limited to 4 research slots.

That is under balance discussion. Personally, I would like countries to be more limited in research slots because it forces the player to make harder choices on where to put their focus, but if 4 is too harsh, we will go with 5.

3/ No "Axis/Comintern Research" focus for the Fascist/Communist political branch, unlike what the CW nations already have. Another unused feature.

There is no general research sharing, no. But you do get research sharing in various focuses, for specific topics. Allied Staff College gives tech sharing with the allies for land doctrines, for example.

 

[lihp]

Let's be honest: if the dev diary had not included a new focus tree, someone would inevitably complain that lazy Paradox relies on the modders to do the job, and how can they say it focuses on the Axis when the minors don't get any love.

It was sarcasm and yes, you and I know you are right with this statement.

 

[Khor]

Not to sound an a..hole, but Align Hungary option is beyond unrealistic. Hungary would demand land concessions for it to happen. They would demand the entire Transylvanian part, and giving them half would mean they think about it... There is just no realistic way to it. It is similar, if you would add a tzarist option the Soviet Union, in which the communist could elect a new tzar.
If Romania would annex Hungary and release them, than they do have an option to release them as allies, but than Romania would claim the Eastern part of Hungary, which they also did after ww1 and which they also do now. And having a weak ally is not that useful. I would take out the Align Hungary option and add a Claim Eastern Hungary option.