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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.
I think this is very much true. What I think would help is adjusting the the existing major trees when you're done with the minors of a faction. Certain foci from majors should enable/prevent foci from the minors.
The reason why UK is probably the least preferred country is because their Tree is restricted the most by world tension. UK is supposed to put their foci into boosting their commonwealth ally but there is no interaction between the focus trees of UK and her minors. Worst case they develop the Raj and it turns fascist!
I think there is a lot of potential for improvements of major focus trees once the important minors have one of their own.
 
You also have to remember what they said about only showing off features already prepared. There's a good chance the air portion is either not ready, or they simply want to show it off later

I don't have to remember because I stated it. :) See:
I understand that the HOI4 team doesn't want to over-commit or overstate features still being worked on. Perhaps at this point in development the Romania focus tree and such was the more responsible choice for a dev diary.

my point really is that people would also complain if Paradox let the modders do some of their work.

And I didn't disagree with that. My disagreement is that (if) those who would make that point, would be a minority and not have the legitimacy and support of the criticisms being expressed now.

Second, when people assume nothing has been done because they don't have the details here and now, that's tiresome.

I agree. But that is not me, and that is not Meglok who is getting hammered by "respectfully disagrees". Some people have expressed their opinion that lack of an AI update or whatever means/implies nothing is being done, but they are the minority in terms of criticism about this DD. I don't feel such a fanatical minority that might believe such a thing are worth addressing at all. On the other hand your comment comes off to me as trying to marginalize the legitimate complaints as being equal to those that would complain about PDS hating minors / focus trees. Which is why I responded.

Criticizing the game is fine. Talking like this DD somehow vindicates the opinion that the game is bad is nonsense. Would people feel better if artists and designers had done nothing at all? I can guarantee that it wouldn't make the AI improve any faster.

If you check my history, you will see that I make similar comments. Especially in terms of UI / Artists needing to do something too, and putting them to work on the AI or whatever would not be productive. See this post for an example. I even had 2 respectfully disagrees for making it.
 
Well, I'm glad I kept my expectations so low for this DD. And yeah, it does seem like a big troll, but I have a feeling that there a several weeks of DDs to come, with this thing launching in June, right before their holiday.
 
As a Romanian I read with interest the Developers Diary When I saw that the next update will includes Romania. However When I Started to read the text I had observed some mistakes about the historical stuff:
When Romania had switched sides, it had switched from Axis to Allies. After Yalta Conference Churchill promise Romania to Stalin with the condition to keep the democracy in Greece (also Romania was the last East-European country which entrated under Soviet influence in 1947).​

Moreover when I had saw the Focus named ''Michaels coup'' I start putting myself some questions and I hope that the Paradox Dev. team will help me to find some answers. Here are my questions:
  • What that mean? That focus will make Romania Constitutional Monarchy again? (If it is not that would make sense because Michael was and is a defender of democracy).
  • What ''Force abdication'' means? Because Carol 2 has abdicated after appointed as the new king his son Michael and as prime-minister Ion Antonescu (who wasn't a fascist and also suppres the fascist movements, but in game terms it can be named a ''fascist''). In this scenario monarchy wasn't abolished and the monarch was used as a popular fugure. On the other hand, the communist obliged Michael to abdicate.
  • How ''His Majesty's Loyal Government" works? It would make sense only if Carol II is still in charge as a King, because as I said above, Michael was andhe is a democrat.
  • As I said before Antonescu wasn't the main fascist representant in Romania. The head of the Movement Leginonary was Zelea Codreanu (killed in 1938 by Carol II becouse he was envolve in political assasionation) and after him came Horia Sima (Who Was not in good relations with Antonescu). In this context would you include some events?
  • And my 5th and my last question is that if you will add some events about 1937 elections? ( Historically that parliamentary election showed the political instability between the democratic parties: they didn't succeed to form a democratic cualition and prime-minister for a short perdion become Octavian Goga, a man with pro-fascist ideas. And open the way to a short political crisis )
 
Back on the topic of Romania - a question for the devs.

Italy has a focus which gives Romania a national spirit which influences party popularity. I have to complaints with that. One is if I'm trying to stay democratic and they try to make me fascist. And the other is if Italy has changed to democratic and I'm fascist.

Basically that spirit gives me popularity from Italy's ruling ideology.

Is there any way in this new DLC that I can tell Italy (or anyone else for that matter) to kindly F*** off?

Since this spirit was created by focus, it would be ok if it could be canceled via focus.

It's kind of immersion breaking to have a bastion of democratic neutrality be overthrown because Mussolini had a brain fart.

"Sir, Italian fascist agitators have entered the country."
"Fine. Expel these unwanted elements from our glorious democracy."
"We can't, sir. Mussolini said having an Italian fascist in every Romanian home is who we all are now."
"Wait-a. Just-a because-a... oh dammit. Welp. There-a goes-a the neighbourhood... time to attack the Soviet Union..."

Very annoying.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with influencing politics, if you spend the fuhrermana to do it. What I find annoying is the free national spirit which benefits Italy mostly.
 
I really hope the devs have some way of filtering out all these responses that complain about the DD being too short, about the wrong things, not funny enough, whatever their problem is. The decision of taking a break from weekly DDs was a good one because of exactly this complaining going overboard. By all means give your feedback but before you complain about whatever a DD is talking about realise that they are there for you to take a peek into the current state of the game. You can express your eagerness to get an AI update but you don't know how far the development has gone. Being forced to show off half finished fixes for problems is bad for the development process. You can start complaining again when the patch is released and it's clear what you are talking about.
 
I dont like that you cant keep the King as a Fascist Romania in the focuses... :(
 
I really hope the devs have some way of filtering out all these responses that complain about the DD being too short, about the wrong things, not funny enough, whatever their problem is. The decision of taking a break from weekly DDs was a good one because of exactly this complaining going overboard. By all means give your feedback but before you complain about whatever a DD is talking about realise that they are there for you to take a peek into the current state of the game. You can express your eagerness to get an AI update but you don't know how far the development has gone. Being forced to show off half finished fixes for problems is bad for the development process. You can start complaining again when the patch is released and it's clear what you are talking about.


The antithesis to this open ended post would be that there are some individuals who need to develope thicker skin and deal with the criticisms. Not all criticisms are going to be positive. If that were true, the game would ultimately suffer for it.


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As a Romanian I read with interest the Developers Diary When I saw that the next update will includes Romania. However When I Started to read the text I had observed some mistakes about the historical stuff:
When Romania had switched sides, it had switched from Axis to Allies. After Yalta Conference Churchill promise Romania to Stalin with the condition to keep the democracy in Greece (also Romania was the last East-European country which entrated under Soviet influence in 1947).​

Moreover when I had saw the Focus named ''Michaels coup'' I start putting myself some questions and I hope that the Paradox Dev. team will help me to find some answers. Here are my questions:
  • What that mean? That focus will make Romania Constitutional Monarchy again? (If it is not that would make sense because Michael was and is a defender of democracy).
  • What ''Force abdication'' means? Because Carol 2 has abdicated after appointed as the new king his son Michael and as prime-minister Ion Antonescu (who wasn't a fascist and also suppres the fascist movements, but in game terms it can be named a ''fascist''). In this scenario monarchy wasn't abolished and the monarch was used as a popular fugure. On the other hand, the communist obliged Michael to abdicate.
  • How ''His Majesty's Loyal Government" works? It would make sense only if Carol II is still in charge as a King, because as I said above, Michael was andhe is a democrat.
  • As I said before Antonescu wasn't the main fascist representant in Romania. The head of the Movement Leginonary was Zelea Codreanu (killed in 1938 by Carol II becouse he was envolve in political assasionation) and after him came Horia Sima (Who Was not in good relations with Antonescu). In this context would you include some events?
  • And my 5th and my last question is that if you will add some events about 1937 elections? ( Historically that parliamentary election showed the political instability between the democratic parties: they didn't succeed to form a democratic cualition and prime-minister for a short perdion become Octavian Goga, a man with pro-fascist ideas. And open the way to a short political crisis )

King Michael's Coup is fairly high up the tree, but it is intended more as an emergency option. Historically, King Michael was a mere figurehead from 1940 until 1944, when he led a coup that deposed Antonescu and put him in charge, switching sides to the Allies in the process. We don't expect you to take it unless you are in a situation where you need to replace the government RIGHT NOW. Force Abdication and handle the king both focus on how you would deal with King Carol and his...lifestyle. His majesty's loyal government is another branch where Carol remains in charge throughout, though you get a way to make him less extravagant near the end of the branch.
 
Alright I recognize Carol II, who are the other portraits?

Guy in the suit isn't as uncomfortably handsome as Condreanu.

I would say in the order Petre Dumitrescu, King Mihail I, King Karol II, Gheorghe Awramescu, Horia Macellariu & Ioan Michael Racovita
 
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I dont like that you cant keep the King as a Fascist Romania in the focuses... :(
These types of things is partly why I think we need more political parties. There are better experts on Romania than I, but I feel a Nationalist Romania with a king should be able to be in a faction with Fascist (National Socialist) Germany.
 
@podcat From what i see there appears to be a new licensing mechanic. If this is true, can you give any guarantees that this will be a part of the patch and not the DLC? This would add great new possibilities for total conversion mods such as those set in the the modern day where licensing is standard practice.
 
Does this admission mean they will be lowering the price of the DLC? It's massively over-priced for what it offers and that's why it is the only EU/CK/VIC/HoI/Stellaris DLC I don't own (minus the graphics packs, I mean seriously). It's little better than a mod and yet it's being priced similar to other DLC that added new mechanics.
 
But I agree with Meglok here. It's kind of ironic (or maybe their point was to soften the blow of a DD on Romania) that Podcat acknowledges the criticisms about the mixed reviews on TfV, (IE Most played nation = Germany, then Majors, then Minors. Minor's Focus Tree improvements ony matter to Majors when AI Historical Mode is off) then gives us a DD which is a focus tree for Romania (an interesting minor no doubt). So I think Meglok is right in expressing disappointment with this as their intro dev diary to 1.4 when some of us in the community are really hoping for and expecting something that is really going to affect the gameplay of the most played nations.

As someone who really enjoyed TfV and pretty much never plays Germany, I'm kind of sad to hear that the development is going to be Germany-centric from now on, but if that's what the community wants I'm very happy to be receiving new content. Really glad to see Romania is getting some flavour too.

Reading these two I think I should have been clearer. The Point was not that we should be germany centric, but that we should do things that interact with major nations, like Romania does a lot. So that means that several of the majors get to interact with the new content even if they dont play that one nation. Of course, Germany is the most popular so it makes sense to put stuff there.

Thanks for the diary Podcat. Nice to see these additions. The reflections are interesting, but you must know that a least a small part of the German domination in terms of nations played is in part due to their frequent quick fail against SU.
Even in patch versions where germany was beating soviets with a decent frequency had no real difference in % playing germany so that doesnt seem to impact.

- Mr. Lind, based on your knowledge of how the development of HOI4 goes, how much time do you think would it roughly take to improve the game to the point when people will generally stop telling others to stay away from SP game? I'm not talking about pleasing everyone, but specific major problems that the game has since what looks like 1.0. A rough, general estimate.
Looking at telemetry numbers we are already pleasing the majority very well. We keep getting more and more active players playing more time. If we are referencing a previous discussion on people with 1k hours played telling people not to play on steam reviews that is a minority who sadly might be scaring away some new blood, but clearly cant stop playing the game either. So its already happened and I can't give you an estimate. As for those I dont think there will ever be a point no matter how many years we put into it where they will be 100% happy. Player skills increase faster than you can code a better AI so its simply an impossible task. We have improved the AI a lot, and the biggest stuff was probably 1.3 where people started having issues beating the AI who had actually played a bunch.

What I don't think you understand is the AI is the biggest problem of the game, and has been since launch. It's the thing that's most complained about, and what most of the bigger threads have been about since launch.

Which is why I talked about it in the diary but said we couldnt give you details yet. Although even in dev diaries where 50% of it was talking about AI in the past I'v had people complain that we arent talkign about ai ;D

EDIT: Just to drive the point home that criticism of this dev diary is not just haters hating. If Podcat conducted a poll (preferably SurveyMonkey, but twitter if he must) laying out the possible topics for this Dev Diary that he was willing to discuss, where do you think Focus Trees or Romania would've weighed in at?
Look, as I said in diary we talk about stuff that is completed. The list would have had 2 options, and the 2nd part wouldn't make as much sense to talk about without the first (Romania), so I couldnt really have polled it.

Where do I start... The community is not "perfectly content" to let the modders do their thing. For example, look at the number of people who say one should use No Man's Land "because vanilla sucks". They have the mod, and they still complain about the base game. Note that I agree that some lands should be impassable, my point really is that people would also complain if Paradox let the modders do some of their work.

Second, when people assume nothing has been done because they don't have the details here and now, that's tiresome. If Podcat hadn't talked about the minors, would people also assume no work is done on them?
The current complains are worse than that, because Podcat DID say they worked on the AI. He said it everywhere, including this DD.

Criticizing the game is fine. Talking like this DD somehow vindicates the opinion that the game is bad is nonsense. Would people feel better if artists and designers had done nothing at all? I can guarantee that it wouldn't make the AI improve any faster.

Just going to quote a good post full of truth.

Great diary! I hope you guys are planning something for Turkey too. It seems like Turkey is the most played generic country.

China is the most popular of the generics. I think Brazil is more popular than Turkey as well, but I could remember wrong. They are close at least. The reason we are not doing china as part of this update is that it really needs to come with some big code changes to work well. Stuff we decided not to do for this one because we think improving ai instead is more important.