Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Raghar]

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.


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.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN actor was bit exception, most Austrian men are wimps.

 

[Sergiu64]

Seriously... what do Intelligence Agencies have to do with Industrial Capacity of a nation? Where does Paradox come up with this stuff...

 

[Average Manatee]

Seriously... what do Intelligence Agencies have to do with Industrial Capacity of a nation? Where does Paradox come up with this stuff...

Every since they dumped the much more sensible Leadership system (scales with nation power but represents a sort of intangible "smart people" resource) from HoI3 they've had to divvy everything out between the completely inflexible research system (limit 3-5 research slots), PP system (Roughly the same value for most nations) and IC system (scales with nation power but should obviously be only for producing stuff). Of the three choices the only place you can throw intelligence is to IC, because otherwise Guatemala would be as good at infiltration as the UK if you tied intelligence to research or PP.

Of course this means that there are roughly two possibilities for intelligence:
1. Its very OP and every major nation dumps a ton of IC into it.
2. Its not very OP and no one gives a shit because intelligence doesn't make up for being a few thousand panzers behind schedule when its time to launch Barbarossa.

 

[Raghar]

Well, I remember Varna was saying how horrible is leadership system in HoI3 for small countries.
I remember during socialism, high ranked czech republic school officials wanted to have at least as high research as Poland, and because czech republic had smaller population than Poland, the only way they thought they can do that is to force schools to try to provide higher quality education than Poland, and try to show students that research is more important than just have high salaries and do stuff for profit.

They were kinda sucessful. During socialism research kicked far above its weight, when compared to situation 20 after revolution.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Leadership system was and is basically dogshit without any redeeming qualities. It wasn't shit just for smaller countries either (who'd spend just about all of it on NCOs), it was basically shit for anyone that wasn't Germany (so you could say it did have one merit, it was a good Wehraboo detector!) in some respect, while Germany had an overabundance of Leadership to such a point we ended up with the "and then Germany researched everything" problem, and it doesn't have the problems of the Research Teams from HoI2.

Research is something where I feel HoI4 managed to hit a fairly decent spot, there is just the right amount of too much tech compared to the major cap, and you can't do something like abuse blueprints like in HoI2 or be Germany like in HoI3. The closest thing to being able to research everything is if you pull tricks with Kwa and manage to get BOTH of their bonus slots for default and commie path.

EDIT: The current state of naval tech is I feel a good example of this due to how many boats and components there are, albeit in practice it's pretty hard to gauge and ultimately it's Destroyer going head to head with Submarine because they're the two fundamentals (since you can't see submarines without destroyers or light cruisers, but destroyers are way cheaper than LCs). You can end up researching everything, but you will have to set priorities all the time.

Seriously... what do Intelligence Agencies have to do with Industrial Capacity of a nation? Where does Paradox come up with this stuff...

Well, they explain their logic in the Dev Diary: It's the closest abstraction to allocating budget to it.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Leadership system was and is basically dogshit without any redeeming qualities. It wasn't shit just for smaller countries either (who'd spend just about all of it on NCOs), it was basically shit for anyone that wasn't Germany (so you could say it did have one merit, it was a good Wehraboo detector!) in some respect, while Germany had an overabundance of Leadership to such a point we ended up with the "and then Germany researched everything" problem, and it doesn't have the problems of the Research Teams from HoI2.

Research is something where I feel HoI4 managed to hit a fairly decent spot, there is just the right amount of too much tech compared to the major cap, and you can't do something like abuse blueprints like in HoI2 or be Germany like in HoI3. The closest thing to being able to research everything is if you pull tricks with Kwa and manage to get BOTH of their bonus slots for default and commie path.

Leadership was perfect. Don't waste research on low-efficiency stuff, you aren't supposed to enter the war with maxed doctrines, tech and 140% officers. Only Japan and Italy really fail to max everything they need eventually and that's by design. Finland is designed to get stepped on.

Research in HoI4 is completely awful, it's simultaneously flavorless (all nations have basically the same number of slots and slots are just fucking slots, unlocked by shitty NFs), micro-intensive (can't queue a single fucking thing and have to constantly be hunting around to find all of the pages to find which tech isn't ahead of time), and unrealistic (lololol Nepal has nukes! Random minors are 4 years ahead of majors in tanks or planes or some dumb shit!).

 

[Life of the Party]

Godspeed: A Flame for Winter

Development Diary VIII: The Man who Sold the World

Intro

Happy Halloween and welcome back to another reliably unreliable Godspeed dev diary! I’m one of your lead devs Woodrow Wilson, and today I’ll be guiding you through a tour of what the team has been up to for the past two months. There will be thrills! Chills! But sadly no kills....

Introduction to GS

Before we begin, as it has been awhile since the last diary I figured it would be good to give a brief summary of the mod itself. If you are already aware of what GS is/don’t care about this feel free to skip ahead to the section labeled Map.

GS as a mod focuses more on telling a compelling narrative than necessarily providing a super accurate and plausible alternate history. In fact I would not call GS alternate history as much as its historical fiction featuring some real people from our history. The mod itself features nearly three thousand years of divergences, which has created a world unrecognizable yet still familiar to our own. From a centralized HRE on the brink of collapse to a diverse and completely divergent North America, GS aims to provide an original and highly immersive scenario.

If you wish to know more about the nitty gritty of the scenario, I would suggest going back and skimming our previous diaries though be warned, they are somewhat out of date. Now onto the diary itself.

Map

As some of you may have noticed, it has been a while since our last diary, but fear not! For the team has been quite productive, and we are proud to announce that the map is, definitely, absolutely positively 100% done.

And when I say done, I mean done. Country populations, supply areas, industry, resources, the whole shebang. That might not sound that impressive, but consider that Godspeed uses a completely custom state map with more than fourteen hundred states. It's an important reminder that a lot more goes into mods then just focus trees and events, especially if your mod is running with nearly two millenniums of divergences.

Along with this work has progressed on victory points, though they are sadly not yet 100% complete like the other, arguably more important parts of the map.

While it is great that this is done, it has sadly come at the cost of development being totally refocused around it. This has meant unfortunately that nation development has largely been pushed to the back burner, though the fact that Africa can now actually raise a division outweighs this if you ask me. Despite this, there has been a significant amount of work done to one particular area of the map since the last time you’ve seen it… Take it away Mop!

Asia Rework

For all who don’t know me, I’m mop, and I have been in charge of East Asia (In particular China and Nihon) in Godspeed since there was any content for them. For those who do know me, it is nice to see you again! I am here with an important announcement– the Godspeed team and I have decided to retcon the Qing Dynasty as the overlords of China, for the reasons of more creative freedom, distancing ourselves from our timeline, and justifying a China that is strong and stable in 1934. Fans of our good friend Puyi, do not fret– I am sure that this is not the last time you will see him...

And with that, a new era has begun. A quick interregnum of Mongol Yuan dominance over China collapses almost as quick as it began, leading to an age where brother fights brother. to After half a decade of fighting, Manichean Dzungar Oirats invade from the west and establish the Great Guang, ending the tumultuous age of warlords. One Mongol replaced by another, the Guang dynasty consolidated their power over the middle kingdom and led an age of uncertainty for China despite the strength that China had during this time. In the 17th century, a Manichean preacher in a small town in the Shandong Peninsula was murdered by locals, and the local Manichean temple was looted and burnt. A shockwave began throughout China, a revolution began with peasants organizing into militias to fight the Oirat Guang. One particular Han noble led the crusade, and soon the Guang dynasty was no more. That particular noble became the first of the Yue Dynasty

The Yue dynasty focused on projecting China’s power outwards as much as possible, bringing China to a golden age not seen since the Tang dynasty. The tributary system was reformed, turning almost all of East Asia and Southeast Asia into pseudo-colonial protectorates that the Yue regularly extorted raw resources from. Europe feared the beast that was forming, with weapons, military tactics, and naval technology evolving to fit any competitors. When Europe industrialized, so did the Yue.

The Yue Empire in 1933 is amongst the world’s most powerful nations, but their bureaucratic system of governance has severely fallen behind the rest of the world. The imperial court in Luoyang has lost power to the jiedushi, appointed provincial commanders in imperial provinces known as circuits.

However, the Emperor Longqing has spent much of his reign attempting to reform the system. Although factions within the court has severely slowed down this process, most of them had been taken care of and now the gates are open for him to finish what he had begun. He hopes to leave China as a constitutional monarchy with well defined branches of government where the Chinese people can express their popular will through elections.

However, he is aging– already in his seventies, most of the nation is unsure if he can finish his reforms before he kicks the bucket. And if he is unable to reform the empire before he dies, much of China worries that his incompetent son will attempt to destroy everything that he has built.

While the democratic experiments in Jinghu Circuit, the model province, has proven to China that constitutional democracy can work, the cracks within the empire have popularized radical ideologies. From republicans to socialists to even the most unthinkable of options.

And no matter what happens, many jiedushi such as Jiang Jieshi, the jiedushi of Jiangnan, have become extremely ambitious and are waiting for just the right opportunity to make a move…

Can you save China? Or will you bring it into a new era?

Tis the Season

Finally, as it is Halloween, I think it's worth taking a moment to talk about the supernatural. GS, as some of you may be aware, does have a few more… esoteric elements in it. With a world as emaciated GS, it's only natural that some would turn to it for answers. Some of these answers are mostly harmless…. others not so much…. Whatever the case, perhaps the world was like this before the Great War… perhaps it has always been like this.... Whatever the case, happy Halloween from the GS team!

Closing Announcements

Thank you for taking the time to read another Godspeed dev diary! Before we wrap this completely, I have two announcements to make:

1. It has been decided that, in the interests of ensuring the best possible release, that the team will be focusing on having the following nations ready for first release: the Angevin Empire, the HRE, Italy, the Mostafids, Russia, China, Japan, and New England. While this news may be disappointing, please know that the team would not have adapted it if we did not feel that it was necessary to ensure a polished and playable first release.
   
   
2. The GS team is currently looking for coders and artists! We are willing to take any skill level as long as you are willing to put in the time to learn. Our application form is attached below!
   

Our Discord Recruitment Form

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Life of the Party]

Decorum Est

Dev Diary 2 - The Great War

Please listen to this while reading

The Great War (1914-1919)

The Great War happened much as it did in our timeline – the Duke Ferdinand was shot, the world collapsed, and everything went to shit. Sooner or later, of course, the war came to the seas, and the British navy and German navy fought – the Germans crushed the Royal Navy in several engagements, thanks to the Hephaestus-imbued guns of the German Navy having a longer range and more accuracy than the conventional guns of the Royal Navy.

While the Royal Navy had experimented with Haephestium, they could not refit their ships with the guns, particularly after the war started, cutting off their great supplier in the German Empire. The Royal Navy couldn't keep up, and soon collapsed.

After a while, the war ground to a halt, as it did in our timeline, with brutal trench warfare largely negating the Haephestium advantage. After all, what good is a bullet that goes twice the distance, if you are stuck in trenches and there's a stone's throw between your enemies? The grinding warfare was only interrupted by the occasional breakthrough, until 1916, when the impossible happened.

The Germans launched a naval invasion, and landed at Dover. They were able to advance within 15 miles of London before being stopped, warfare grinding down into the same awful slog that the Western Front saw, London suburbs being within range of the shells of the Haephestium guns.

This action shocked the world, and was paired with multiple offensives by the Central Powers – The Austro-Hungarian Empire managed to push into Romania and Russia, Turkey ended up grinding its way through the Caucauses and down into Africa. Things were going well for the Central Powers, and it seemed as though victory was about to come to those who waited.

It all went south for them after the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire died, though. With an anti-war advocate (at least, it seemed like that to the Germans, as Charles the First did not want the war to continue further) suddenly in power in one of the three Central Powers, one who was actively calling for an end to the war, internal fighting broke out. Nothing violent, but enough to demoralize the army as news of disagreements and disorganization trickled in through the news.

As the internal fighting grew and the plans for Europe each Central Power had changed and shifted, their alliance collapsed. Bit by bit, the Germans were driven back from London, their supply lines stretched thin over the sea, harried by the submarines and remaining vessels of the Royal Navy. One by one, each of the Central Powers sought a separate peace, some fairing better than others. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was permitted to exist, at least partially, and Germany was dismantled utterly, the Bavarian Haephestium mines were seized by an International Commission, and slowly, the world settled down and demobilized from the state of war.

A shame that peace never lasts long.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

 

[Malakal]

I fail to see how double the gun range would be game changing in the age of pre-radar naval combat. Like whats the point when you cant see where you hit and cant adjust your firing solution? Quite certain that warships fired well within their maximum range historically at that time.

Sure its just an excuse for an alternative history scenario but please...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea it's a case of where you try and make a fantastical element seem realistic by trying to downplay it, and end up shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[Dayyālu]

I mean, as we RTW autists down at the Playground can prove, there's a shitton of easier ways to magically give the Germans a fighting chance.

Unobtainium giving them lighter armour with better performance or improved penetration, or breakthroughs in industrial development giving them the chance to overcome British numerical advantage. Because giving "artillery with longer range and improved accuracy" can be theoretically important up to a point in Dreadnaught-era naval warfare, but for trench warfare?

It's huge. Not that anyone cares.

 

[Malakal]

Yea it's a case of where you try and make a fantastical element seem realistic by trying to downplay it, and end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Yea WW1 is really easy actually, even without magic elements or unobtanium.

Just have Italy stick with the Central Powers, they had a reasonably strong navy, together with Austro-Hungarian one they could have forced UK to send more ships to the Mediterranean thus giving the High seas fleet more of a fighting chance.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

These alternative history mods get dumber and dumber as the years ago by.

 

[Life of the Party]

there's a shitton of easier ways to magically give the Germans a fighting chance

 

[Fedora Master]

These alternative history mods get dumber and dumber as the years ago by.

The people working on them are all retarded gay commies, so what do you expect.

 

[Life of the Party]

This is stranger than Red Flood.

The team also has much less nazis than red flood does.

What?

Ever wondered why Montenegro got content on the first release of Red Flood, and why Montenegro of all countries has its only path be the restoration of the Roman Empire?

It's because a major member of the Red Flood team, who goes by Diavolo/Skeletor, is a Montenegrin neofascist and ultranationalist who thinks that Montenegro should actually really do that. I don't think he's the only far-right team member either, but he's the only one I'm certain about.

Skeletor is also a self-proclaimed expert on Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, and is pretty obsessed with the guy. He believes all mods that use Sternberg incorrectly are doomed to fail. Pleasant guy, no?

How did you know that ?

Because the team's open about it lol. I asked a team member why they had so many Montenegrin neofascists on the team as a joke and the response I got was "we only have one and he's great".

It’s probably a joke then

Or maybe he’s just using his influence for having meme foci for his country

The response was a joke, the fact that a team member is a neofascist isn't, especially since that's something most hoi4 mod teams would be very quick to deny. It was also on the Godspeed server (where Skeletor/Diavolo is banned for antisemitism and racism), so it's either true, or they're more than happy to make the hoi4 modding community think that they have neofascists on their team. Either way, I'm happy to help spread the word.

I would also like to point out the weird antisemitic stuff in Russia and France which indicates a lot of sketchy stuff about the team as a whole.

Edit: Said team member also has "1488" as his discord tag and has nitro. He's at least willing to present himself as a Nazi, have people tell others he's a Nazi, and spit out nazi dogwhistles.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Ok, which one of you is it? Do we have anyone from Montenegro here?

 

[Life of the Party]

I like the part when he points out weird antisemitic stuff in a mod that forces France to choose between going back to the Iron Age, going back to the Stone Age, banning individual existence and embracing cannibalism of stillborn babies.

 

[Life of the Party]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...i4-dev-diary-operatives-and-missions.1273741/

 

[Life of the Party]

Godspeed's Russia:

Seems like this is their flag:

 

[Life of the Party]

https://www.reddit.com/r/FdRmod/

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Now that looks like something a lot of mods could use. Definately far more elegant than the extremely clunky thing that Millenium Dawn debuted in the summer (I can't even play that mod anyway since it has a lot of peace deal crashes and other random crashes, and they never had a purely bugfixing patch for their mod after the new version).

 

[Life of the Party]

Took a look at some of the older dev diaries for Godspeed.

Spoiler

Lastly, before we go, we’d like to show off something that we hope will shed extra light on the makeup of Godspeed’s world: Victory Points! While obviously existing in the base game, Victory Points in Godspeed are significantly more dense and tightly-packed, giving a more immersive, realistic look at a country’s population. It has the added bonus of making countries feel larger and more expansive, improving wartime gameplay.

Spoiler

We’ll get into more of the lore when it comes to the countries themselves - but we’d be remiss not to show off Godspeed’s first original mechanic: religion.

Godspeed will use a custom UI to show the majority religion of any state you click on, courtesy of our dear Co-Op friends at EOANB! We’ve reskinned their culture UI to religion, offering a huge amount of information on the makeup of Godspeed’s world. Religion is a big theme in this timeline - big enough that not including it would be a travesty.

Unlike other Paradox mods and games, religion in Godspeed is purely cosmetic and does not offer stat bonuses. We want to make sure that the religions feel natural and coherent, without bias or colonialist views. (I’m looking at you, Totemism in EU4.)

Spoiler

Food And Rations

Yes, we're adding an additional layer to gameplay! The world of Godspeed is a cold and dark place, so controlling the food resources puts you in a very important position.

(some food placements are WIP and may change)

Producing rations is absolutely necessary for every nation, as every unit needs rations in order to work sufficiently. As technology progresses, rations actually become cheaper to make, so prioritizing the research might be better for you if you don’t have much food to work on.

Ration research also has its own tree. It is fairly small, but also important for all combat considered. All divisions require food the same way they require equipment and oil.

Misery: Inside and Outside

To put it short, Misery is a simplified system of “karma” in Godspeed, created to assist the narrative and help you feel the consequences of your actions. It’s an objective measurement of how good human life is; any ideology can attain any level of misery, but Ultranationalism is locked to high misery, as it’s hard to get a good standard of living when you have more death camps than hospitals. Also worth noting: Misery graphics are WIP!

Misery is divided into two branches: Local Misery and World Misery. Local Misery represents the actions you commit inside your country, while World Misery represents the “boiling pot”, in which every country’s commitment to misery is calculated and added to the pot. As Local Misery changes, World Misery is being recalculated. The calculations are based on an algorithm (credits to uncountablyInfinite) that counts both Local Miseries of every country and their "misery weight", that can be unique for various countries. Misery weight is tied to the population of each tag, so some countries produce more Misery compared to others.

To make it easier to track, levels of Misery have different colors: white, yellow and red, depending on how hard is the situation.

Remember: Misery can be either acceptable or absolutely dire depending on your playstyle and country you’re playing on. As the light goes out, new possibilities can unlock, but only for certain countries…

Absolutely Expanded Sub-Ideologies

We have finally implemented sub-ideologies in the game! Now we have around 50 sub-ideologies, with ~5 for each ideology. These will all have icons on a custom UI element on your nation’s politics screen.

Here are some examples:

With a separate sub-ideology that can be used by about every country, we (and you) can represent about every single relevant (as long as it’s relevant to ’30s) political theory in the game!

It allows us to make countries more ideologically accurate while making your game feel more immersive.

Spoiler

 

[Life of the Party]

Fallout: Pre-War