This is a little underwhelming in my opinion. My biggest fear was that the development team would focus on focus trees and events, something that modders can easily do. To reignite people's interest in HOI4, you need to add new mechanics especially in terms of diplomacy, espionnage, economy, politics & trade, not custom focus trees which can be easily looked up in the workshop.
I hope that the next dlc will cover MUCH more than this. I'm just not interested in buying a dlc that mainly adds some custom focus trees.
Some people don't play modded, also coding and scripting are two very different things which are done by different people at paradox. The scripters adding content does not take time away from the coders adding mechanics, becuase as a general rule, coders are paid way to much to waste their time scripting and scripters usually can't code.
Myself I like small DLCs focusing on content like the leviathan story pack for Stellaris. I really hope they do those for most of their games, if you don't like them don't buy them, their existance takes nothign away from you because as I have already pointed out
scripters don't code!
So, according to event DOD_romania.81, expansion name is? Any guesses?
Devel Opment Diary?
DOD is likely an acronym for the DLC. What could it stand for, given that the context is Axis? My money is on Day of Defeat.
Except that would mean infringing on another brand (Is the term day of defeat even a thing outside of the title of a game?) also why would a axis focused DLC be called Day of defeat?
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the Chinese theater, and Nationalist/Communist China need some love. China, as a whole, was a major participant in the war.
Yeah I was really surprised when I realized that they were not already one of the ones with a unique focus tree. Probably because of difficulties relating to their unique situation.
Nice, looking forward to Romania getting some agency! A bit discouraging to hear that things need to tie back to Germany specifically, but I'm sure it can be balanced with other majors and the rest of the world.
Yeah I can agree there, if they do that then they'll just increase the fact that everyone plays germany if they want to change that they got to add things elsewhere.
Yeah that doesn't make sense. The community is perfectly content to let modders pick up the slack on unique focus trees (especially for minors) as that is something they can do. The community really wants to see fixes to things modders can't fix or really change that need to be improved. And if one crazy person did make your complaint, so what, it is no way comparable or equal to the current disappointment and criticism of the current dev diary by the community. I can't even understand how you could reason this to be a relevant comment or counter point to what is being expressed here.
You don't speak for all of the community, I am as much a part of the community as you are and I much prefer their content DLCs to mods. Also content does not conflict with mechianics as I have already pointed out since it's not the same people working on it.
Focus tree seems a little too big
Nah the vanilla ones are just too small.
People were upset because the new DLC added zero depth to the game in areas where it was lacking.
It added plenty of depth and content to places it was lacking, the place in question being the rest of the world. It's
world war two because it was fought on every continent, just staring oneself blind on Europe fails to show the magnitude of the conflict.
Focus trees do not work, create really weird interactions, are railroady as all hell and completely unbalanced and impossible to balance without making them pointless. Just remove the whole concept please and work on deeper mechanics that could benefit all countries, then people will see a benefit regardless of which nations they like to play.
They need some improvement but as a whole they are a great idea. They capture that every countries position is unique and their options limited. Having the same mechanics for everyone would be stupid.
Do a search for "1.3.3 Germany Russia" Many posts and break downs about the problems with Germany. TLDR version is that AI Germany loses to AI Russia by 1941 in like 80-90% of the games. Even a max boosted AI Germany can lose to non-boosted AI Russia in 1941. Posts, saves, pics etc... all provide ample evidence that it's a problem.
Argument by analogy, you can have a hundred ones where it happened but without knowing the rate that's kind of pointless. Germany always stood a chance to lose to the soviet union.
In fact I rarely see them do, I usually see them do very well against the soviets until the allies manage to open up a new front in the west.
Podcat said that Asia/Pacific will be the focus for the Expansion after this one.
Great but it seems like an odd coupling I would have guessed China to come along with Spain in a DLC focusing on internal conflicts. While the pacfic would come with better aerial mechanics which wouldn't be super relevant to china.
Thanks for pointing out your impressions young Padawan.
Since you didnt see it completely:
1. DLCs in other PDX games add new mechanics aka Art of War, El Dorado,... while the base Ai worked fine from day one besides minor hickups.
2. DLC in HOI IV add... new focus trees and some stuff, which most (eg in case of TfW) wont even see.
So there is a gross difference from what I and others expect to what we receive. Point is: there is no point for NFs for minor, when the AI for major powers is broken.
And half the time those mechanics feel tacked on and unnecessary. I prefer when they simply release content dlc and release fewer and better made mechanics DLCs. Much better they keep revenue flowing by overcharging for content DLCs which are helping to pay for say one major mechanics DLC per year at most.
We have been discussing this a lot recently. We are trying to sharpen the narrative position of the player as the "Government". That is not the leader, but the entirety of the decision making group. The country leader is outside of that group and might be thrown out, depending on your choices. Have you ever watched Yes, Minister? The player is Sir Appleby.
That would be Sir Humphrey Appelby?
I love that, if there were more such event for the British one might actually have a lot of fun even before world tension ticks up.
Yes, I have & the series is one of my favorites.
Then I dare say good sir that you have an exquisite sense of taste.
Defense of Deutschland? 
Not a bad guess.
Torpedo Boats.... does that mean.... Hmmm
Mean what? Though smaller crafts showing up would be nice. Destroyers being the smallest ships in the game has a very pacific feel to it.
Their are a lot of complaints about the
i think that this is a great i idea and can help make each country feel unique. As long as it gives options and doesn't railroad you with poor events.
Poor events are part of the fun. We have the benefit of hindsight which the people in the time did not that's why limiting our option is important. We know what technologies and strategies worked and what failed miserably. Railoading help mitigate that advantage, if not completely.
I find railroad is a bit of a subjective term. Sometimes things just happen to a country other times you will have options.
I am getting some disagrees which is OK, but I am very interesting in what/why.
Sometimes things are outside a governments control. If a nation is subject to an embargo it just is. Now it is up to a nation (player/AI get a choice) weather it wants to embargo another nation or not. So they player/AI should get choices to proactive event & often have choices on how to react to other events.
Exactly.
No landlocked nation as had a tech tree added yet. How would Hungary deal without a navy tech tree? Would it have one there just in case it takes coastal provinces?
My guess is that they have a naval part which is fairly generic but to start it they need to actually own ports. Perhaps it could even be foudn under parts where you are set to capture ports say in croatia (which hungary has held in the past).
I think you are misunderstanding the majority of the criticism about this Dev Diary. In Podcat's own words:
- When we released Together for Victory, the feedback we got for the focus trees was somewhat mixed.
- a lot of people felt that that the new trees wasn't adding much to the way they played.
- 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.
- People don’t like filler diaries, so if we don't have anything exciting to talk about it just means people not getting to read stuff they want and taking up the team's development time actually making stuff. I prefer not to make them if that is the alternative.
Objectively, do a search for Romania Focus Tree and tally up how many posts there are about it. Now do search for anything else, like Air Warfare, Naval Warfare, Trade, AI, etc... So how does it make sense to lead off with a DD about Romania (a minor nation) and their focus tree and not expect some disgruntled / disapproving community feedback? Given the sentiment and frustrations of the community, it should've been obvious that the first DD for 1.4. have a bit more substance on something that matters to the majority of the players.
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. Whatever the case may be though, it is understandable for the community to have some criticism about this. Especially when you consider what Podcat had just said and compare it with what he just did, and the current sentiment/frustrations of the community. IMHO anyway.
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? So, isn't it reasonable to conclude that those that are disappointed and expressing that disappointment are not simply haters hating? That there is some legitimacy to the criticisms being expressed?
You do chose very freely how you interpret his post.
Also how are they going to make people play other countries if they don't add content for them? You get a viscous cycle. No one plays non majors because they have no content and because no one plays them they get no content.
As others have stated, there are far more pressing issues than Romania, which almost no one plays as. The naval mechanics really need to be fixed. I have a lone danish destroyer that has tied up six destroyers in the danish straits. Then there is the matter that the Battle of the Atlantic, ie uboat war, is just broken.
Again of course no one plays them because they are woefully generic at the moment.
And again content is added by scripters mechanics by coders. These do not conflict, in fact by selling us content paradox generates revenue which it can apply to designing mechanic which is much more expensive to get make and balance.
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.
I can back this up very much. Like how the US has no say in if they and canada go isolationist, or how I can't convince the british to invest in my industry as south Africa (before backstabbing them and asking Germany to do the same thing
)
Damn now I feel like playing a game as south Africa again.
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.
Yeah I really hope there is some back and forth there. Atleast when you spend mana to do it it's usually for a limited time.
I dont like that you cant keep the King as a Fascist Romania in the focuses...
Royalists and fascists don't have much in common. Royalists are conservatories, fascists are revolutionaries, reactionaries. If Bismarck met Hitler he'd have executed him on the spot. Also you just force one king to abdicate another one rises in his stead.
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.
I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Romania but generally monarchies were not very fond of the fascist revolutionaries.
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.
You risk running into a vicious cycle if you only add where people already play. Just like you did with EU4s later start dates, the less they were supported the fewer people actually played them.
Only for the new countries so far, but i suspect we will add more of them in time.
I would very much like that, especially for Germany who feel very railroaded today. Could one for an example get to take control of a certain person on Hitlers staff and not move a certain briefcase on a certain day at the end of july in -44. Or perhaps aid an even earlier assassination attempt on him.
I really like how the Romanians are shaping up! I really hope that if it's in the DLC, that it's not the only nation. Hopefully something like Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia in this update, and maybe Scandinavia in the next one ;P
Well China got to get in there before the nordics. But when that's done, Finlands sak är vår! Which should totally be a national sprit and or focus for Sweden.
