Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[ZeniBot]

Yeah based on Paradox's efforts with Waking tiger it's obvious everytime they add bullshit like this it always breaks the game. We even saw it with the naval overhauls completely ruining naval landings making it impossible to finish the war.
When they added Exiled Governments it broke the manpower pools and became OP, the old meta used to be to befriend China early for Infinite manpower as they are assured to fall against the Japanese most of the time. When they revamped the Germany tree to support the Kaiser they also broke that as well where Germany could go down both paths if executed in a specific order. And never mind the hundreds of times I've played as Allied Hitler which is just so ridiculous to see in the game its surprising it hasn't been patched yet.

Allied Hitler is basically cheating because you can Order 66 everyone in the game.

 

[Destroid]

Maybe this will give them an opportunity to buff certain things in the absence of intel superiority like submarine raiding (although I haven't played the last few expansions so I don't know what the current balance status is). I always felt scout planes should be in the game with how barebones the air warefare system is, so hopefully they do something good with that.

 

[Lagole Gon]

It is kind of funny when you think about it.

Compared to the general view of the heroic french resistance... Allo, Allo is basically a documentary.

 

[Space Satan]

It is kind of funny when you think about it.

Compared to the general view of the heroic french resistance... Allo, Allo is basically a documentary.

I never understoood how french could make so many comedies about resistance and WWII occupation so easily. That was one of the worst periods for their country.
That would never be understood in Russia, Poland, China, Yugoslavia or Byelorussia who experienced the real unspeakable horror and brutality of guerilla warfare.
It was easy for France to make movies about making fool of a Gestapo officer but in those countries memories were still fresh that the consequence of such actions would be not angry shout like "Curse zat Resistance Pierre!" but mass execution or rounding up dozens of children to the city\village square and shooting or strangling them one by one until someone would provide information about participants. or herding and burning half the population as a warning to others.

 

[Alienman]

Because it is romantic. French hot brunette with a Luger in Paris or a babushka with a sharpened spoon in some forsaken forest

 

[Makabb]

Allo Allo is British

 

[Space Satan]

I recall comedies with Louis de Funes and some others

 

[Life of the Party]

Hello!

I'm Treekaru/Transhumanist-Viking, the head writer of Red Flood, and the lead dev of Decorum Est, a new speculative-fiction mod for Hearts of Iron Four! The post's picture is the current state of Europe, albeit subject to change.

Decorum Est takes the standard "what if X won WW1" formula, and mixes it up by adding dieselpunk technology and fantastical, near magical elements and metal that create a much different, far more violent world than before. Mechas stalked the battlefields of the Great War, streams of plasma blasted across the field and reduced bunkers to slag, Nikola Tesla's Teleforce was created, and by God was he wrong about it preventing war.

Our mod starts in 1930, one year after the final conflict of the Great War ends. While the European theater's conflicts ended a decade ago, with Britain and Russia both falling to Revolution and Germany forced to break apart under the strain of conflict for the "safety and peace of Europe," conflicts that grew from the Great War carried on until 1929.

European empires fell, resulting in Africa becoming a mess of colonial governments clinging to survival and nativist movements. China's warlords became bolder in their conflicts with both each other and surrounding nations. The Free Territory of Ukraine clung to life and now exists only due to the instability of the USSR meaning the Red Army is more occupied with protecting its current assets than expansion.

The world teeters on the edge of a cliff, and the winds are growing heavy. What will cause it to tumble? Ultranationalist France breaking out of self-imposed Isolation? The USSR stabilizing and becoming militant? The German state's desperate desire to reunify?

Whatever happens, blood will be spilled, bodies shall be crushed under the treads of tanks and the metal feet of mechas, and far too many men will never see their families again.

So, you may have seen it on this subreddit or on the discord – Haephestium.

Haephestium is the central difference in this mod between our timeline and the others. It is an unobtainium, an element with properties that are damn near magical, something that we don't understand and maybe won't understand for a long time, but that's not going to stop us from using it.

Haephestium comes in two forms: HP-121 and HP-112, with other forms occuring naturally but not really being relevant – they are mostly converted to the other two forms. HP-121 is metallic, shiny, and sort of blue, it's mixed into alloys or used directly to create highly heat-resistent, reflective, strong, and low-friction materials that can benefit the machines of the world – with it, machines thought impossible become quite simple to create, hence mechas and walkers marching through the streets and floating fortresses that seem utterly impossible – without the strength of Haephestium, they are.

HP-112, however, is radioactive, highly so, and can be used in conjunction with its relative to not only contain its own power and produce energy, but to create weapons. The teleforce, the heat-ray, the railgun, all are possible due to the power and heat provided by the Cherenokov-blue glow of HP-112.

It was discovered and isolated in 1899, and very quickly people started trying to use it. It seemed a miracle, a complete, total, miracle – its weapons caused an arms race, its power brought industry across the empires, and those who didn't have any in their nation very quickly tried to obtain it. In Europe, the largest sources were found in Bavaria and Denmark, though the Caucauses and the African lands directly south of Iberia also contain economically viable amounts.

When 1914 came, and the Arch Duke was shot, plunging the world into war, no one knew what would happen. The Central Powers, with their monopoly on European Haephestium, dominated the first half of the war, going so far as to even crush the Royal Navy in several battles, their Haephestium guns longer-ranged, better sighted, and more damaging than those of the Royal Navy. The consequences of this will be discussed in a later dev dairy.

The war left over 45 million dead – civilian and soldier alike. Haephestium and its machines powered much of that bloodshed, and now people see it either as the saviour of mankind, albeit one that can be used for evil, or as the incarnation of evil itself on earth. The Luddites demand it be rid of, the Technocrats demand it be exploited by all means we have.

A metal, albeit a strange one, seems poised to make man kill each other. It seems now that gold is no longer the great, shining metal that all seek – it is the blue glow of Haephestium that is their goal.

 

[Preben]

Snake shaped Prussia wouldn't survive 5 minutes in 20th century with Polish nationalists in both Silesia and Pomerelia, but the powers of autism are beyond such frivolities like realism.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Look it's Red Flood with dieselpunk mecha, I think we can say that realism isn't high on the list of concerns.

(Personally I have no issue with putting in wanzers to the unit tech trees, as long as it's fun and adds something; heck you could throw in wanzers to KR just for lulz and I wouldn't care, it's fictional anyway)

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Average Manatee]

HoI4 devs: managing your divisions is too much for for the game, we need to force players to automate this
Also HoI4 devs: here's a whole screen of dumb bullshit to press and leaders to assign and map shit to fuck with when you want to waste time dealing a minor inconvenience to your enemy.

Seriously the previous system was basically perfect. You just suffered random infrastructure damage over time if things weren't garrisoned. This is basically what happened IRL, the Allies and Soviets never really coordinated with partisans in major operations because it was highly likely that it'd get leaked and spoil the surprise of the attack leading to massively increased resistance. The only thing that needed to be changed was that the actual amount of damage needed to be more punitive and occur even with max policing.

 

[Space Satan]

If you are not China or Japan, then you are sitting on your ass watching your factories being built. Espionage could add some fun to those countries. Even after sending volunteers it is easy to forget about them. For example you are not interested as USSR in sino-jap war ending. You milk the war for military exp with your volunteers and attache. I often leave my mountaneer divisions on some hill or mountain ridge and they can hold entire japanese advance. But I usually have nothing to do during that time.

 

[Malakal]

If you are not China or Japan, then you are sitting on your ass watching your factories being built. Espionage could add some fun to those countries. Even after sending volunteers it is easy to forget about them. For example you are not interested as USSR in sino-jap war ending. You milk the war for military exp with your volunteers and attache. I often leave my mountaneer divisions on some hill or mountain ridge and they can hold entire japanese advance. But I usually have nothing to do during that time.

Umm Spanish Civil war fires up in 1936 so commies and fascists can send volunteers, Japan vs China starts in 1937 so you can intervene there too. Democracies do get shafted tho but they were not known for massive intelligence before the war either so idk if that changes anything.

 

[Space Satan]

Umm Spanish Civil war fires up in 1936 so commies and fascists can send volunteers, Japan vs China starts in 1937 so you can intervene there too. Democracies do get shafted tho but they were not known for massive intelligence before the war either so idk if that changes anything.

UK did have some intel. But democracies are screwed big time with sitting and doing nothing. Skilled Axis player can keep WT low long enough to prolong Allies period of idleness.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

But here's a question: Is this going to force Kaiserreich to become fun again?

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Really missing a "run a public educational documentary about medical advances in dealing with childbirth complications" focus point there. Because SOMEONE clearly needs to know.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Life of the Party]

R5: this is the current progress of Europe in the mod ‘Blackened Skies’. To simplify lore a little, pretty much every country is in the worst state possible. In Russia the Bolshevik revolution failed, leading to the execution of all Soviet supporters, except for Trotsky who fled to the new state of Ukraine. Following the Trotskyist revolution in Ukraine, communist groups were funded in Belarus, and Romania (the Romanian communist supporters formed the state of Moldova after their revolution), and eventually founded the Internationale. In the Balkans, Croatian secessionists and fascists started the Yugoslav civil war, which led to the dissolve of Yugoslavia into the state of Croatia and Serbia (Macedonia was seized by Bulgaria during the conflict, and Slovenia was taken by the Austrians). In a Bulgarian effort of expansion, they allied with Turkey before declaring war on Greece, leading to the Turkish controlling the Aegean while the Bulgarians expanded into Thessaloniki. In Germany, following the failed putsch that led to the death of Adolf Hitler, Bavaria declared its independence from Germany. With the Nazi party dissolved, the Communist Party of Germany would go unchallenged in the following years. (I’m aware some of it isn’t historically accurate, that’s not really my focus, but do let me know if there’s any major things that should be changed <3)

Edit: I'll make a sub for the mod if this post takes off

If you wanna use the graphics mod I'm using, it's Syndie's Dark GFX. I'm trying to make it more cursed i suppose is the best way to put it, like some occult aspects and stuff like that. I'm also trying to make everything as drab as possible, there's no victory for any party, there's only a constant decline (I know this is a feature of some other mods too).

I want to integrate demonic elements into all nations through events, national focuses, decisions, at the expense of stability and stuff like that. I also want to have the possibility that the demon's can start a revolution and enslave the human race. There might be a demonic ww2 or a regular one depending on how you play

Are you trying to say you wouldn't want to see Tsar Nicholas II summoning the blood gods?

The UK and France are going to be less impacted on the map, but fucked over in national focuses and ideas. America is a living hell

 

[Malakal]

So we've been discussing some HoI4 on the polish thread too and I was wondering if you guys would be up for some HoI4 MP?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So, you guys take a loo at OWB since Tlaloc's Demise?

I've been playing it, liking it so far. Lots of good modding they have done.

So far I've played as:

- Brotherhood of Steel: Pretty damn nice, but me plus New Arroyo got rekt by some primitives because I could't inot HOI4 combat

- New Reno: Enclave murders me like three months into the game, holy shit.

- NCR: Doing fine, but my last defeats made me paranoid, so it has been three years and I haven't attacked anybody. About to attack Baja. Once I do that, I'm going after the Mojave and try to make friends with the Brotherhood so I can have one less front to worry about.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I consider OWB to be hands down the best HoI4 mod that exists right now, or we want to be even more specific its Enclave Reborn submod is even more robust and detailed (then again, it focuses solely on a single country, so it makes sense). Heel-face turn Enclave is extremely fun and has lots of different approaches to obstacles it throws at you, and carries naturally to a long haul campaign.

The coffee ghouls were a bit disappointing though, mostly just because they don't really have a longterm goal in their tree. Also the coffee dealing system felt a bit too busyworky due to the annual investor expectations thing (and the benefit didn't really seem like it'd make up for the alternative tree option where by the sound of it you DON'T have to deal with that).

 

[Life of the Party]

Hi everyone! Today we will start going through the Espionage features announced at PdxCon in greater detail. First off is the hub of everything - Your Intelligence Agency.

The Agency

The Agency is something you need to construct on game start if you plan to involve yourself in the shadow war that will be running now. We recommend at least an investment in defence eventually to help protect yourself even if you do not plan to dedicate resources to offensive operations. Notice that I said ‘construct’? The Agency will take up several of your factories for a while to be created. Civilian factories is the closest we have to a money budget so we felt this was the most appropriate cost to use. When you decide to make the agency you are free to name it (a historical name will be suggested) and you can also pick from a mix of historical logos as well as generic made up ones (surprise - a lot of agencies did not advertise themselves to heavily).

In the Agency you can recruit Operatives (more about them and what they can do in a future diary), work on cryptology (also a topic of a future diary) and upgrade the different branches of the agency as well as update training or develop new gadgets to help your Operatives.

Branch Upgrades

Just like the creation of an agency it will cost you some industry time to develop its capabilities. The time is always the same, but the cost itself can vary with how powerful the option is.

Lets have some examples of the many options:

• Naval Department - This is one of the basic branches that improves your intelligence gathering in that field. It will ensure that you get the most out of any naval intel you get.
  
  
• Passive Defense - This boosts your agencies counterintelligence rating which together with Operatives help you defend against enemy Operatives.
  
  
• Invisible Ink - Improved ways of sneaking intel back through letters or other ways through writing. It means your Operatives will be generating more intel when active somewhere.
  
  
• Suicide Pills - Captured Operatives will now have a final way out limiting leaks of intel to the enemy
  
  
• Diplomatic Training - Operatives learn to operate among high society and politics and would no longer dream of ordering their Martinis stirred. This one helps with missions such as diplomatic pressure and control of foreign trade (yup.. future diary)
  
  
• Cryptology Department - this sets up a department of math wizards and crossword puzzlers. Why shall be covered in a future diary
  

The Spy Master

If you have enough upgrades and are in a faction you can become the faction’s Spy Master.

This is the logical path for people who want to lean heavily into espionage to get the most of it. There can only be one spy master per faction and the main advantage of being a spy master is that it will let you run a lot more Operatives (how many depending on the size of your faction). We felt it was mostly historical that only the really big nations truly invested in this, but the most important reason was balance. A lot of spy systems in games fall down on the fact that people can spam you with agents so you either end up super annoyed or the system needs to be toned down to where it’s no longer impactful and fun. In a historical HOI game given this rule, we have then set us up with 3 potentially powerful agencies: Allies, Axis and Comintern.

See you all next week when we take a look at further espionage topics

Rejected Titles

• HOI4 - Mirai Nikki
  
  
• This dev diary will auto-destruct after being read, please stand back.
  
  
• Popping pills & blowings stuff up with government funds!
  
  
• Renamed to iAgency for the Mac version
  
  
• The Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare (™)
  
  
• There is no department called Military Intelligence because we don’t do oxymorons
  
  
• We didn’t manage to make the icon for Commando Training be a man being hit in the nuts, but based on our research 50% of the training seems to have been this.
  

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

A bit disappointing. Simply having the spare IC will mean that all the major intelligence agencies (or at least the intelligence agencies of Kwa and Germany) will only be differentiated by order of unlocking everything and whatever national bonuses are on top. IMO simply having a hard cap you have to operate within would be better so your agency has a speciality or is a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none (though this is a balancing puzzle).


Also the icon for Commando Training should either be a huge Austrian man carrying a log on his shoulder, a huge Austrian man letting someone go, Bennett, or an interpretative dance of We Fight For Love.

EDIT: Actually scratch that. ALL of the icons should be Commando references.