Hearts of Iron IV News

New Hearts of Iron 4 mod turns the WW2 epic into a totally different game

Hearts of Iron 4, like most grand strategy games, offers unparalleled replayability. However, some players (myself included) still aren't content with all the tools it has to offer. That's where mods come in, as we tweak and twist our favorite games, sometimes beyond all recogition. Maybe you're making it look better, maybe you're adding another nation to fight. But one mod I didn't expect to find turns the WW2 epic into a fight over soccer supremacy. Yes, really.

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Developer Corner | The Philippines: Pearl of the Orient Seas

Bear in mind that everything you see here is work in progress and subject to change or even removal!

Hello! My name is Mordred Viking, though you may also know me as Gareth. I’d like to welcome you to this Dev Corner about the lovely nation of the Philippines. Wait, the Philippines? What could they have done in the Second World War? Well, turns out that much like Belgium, they had more of an impact than you might expect.

Let’s begin with a little background; in 1936 the Philippines were a surprisingly prosperous American Commonwealth nation, and in 1935 they had been promised a 10 year transition to full independence. Then, in December 1941, just a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese launched an invasion of their islands and a couple of days later, despite General Douglas MacArthur’s best efforts, the American and Filipino defenders surrendered. They were then under Japanese occupation until their liberation by the Americans in 1944 / 45. In 1946, the Americans kept their promise and the nation was granted its independence.

As you might see, this leads to some pretty significant gameplay and design questions; how do you keep a puppet nation interesting until they are attacked in late 1941? How do you portray this path to independence? How do you represent the massive efforts of the resistance? What about their relationship with the USA? How does MacArthur factor into all this?

[h3]Commonwealth of the Philippines - Peace until late 1941[/h3]
The early years of the game are dedicated to the Philippines’ path to independence, and in this they have two options. They can accept the gradual, planned path as happened historically, establishing their own government systems, taxation systems, military, etc with more than a little American help. Alternatively, they can seek Japanese assistance in expediting their independence.

This branch is the central political playground, where you are able to play the USA off against the Japanese. Going down the American path will take you longer, but generally give larger bonuses. Completing the Japanese focuses however, will actually make several of the central focuses complete more quickly (hence the little clock symbols). Therefore, you’ll be able to make your way to freedom more quickly, but at a cost of long term industrial and military power. If you finally manage to sign the Treaty of Manila then you will gain some major economic advantages.

Although you’ll be able to unlock this American Support branch from the start, you’ll only be able to access the lower elements if you continue to remain pro-USA. The more loyal you remain, the more requisitions you will be able to get from them.

Incidentally, did you know that MacArthur’s second in command was a certain Major Dwight D. Eisenhower until 1939? Yes, that Eisenhower. He was even asked to remain as the Police Chief of Quezon City, which he rejected. Well, this is one of those cool “what-if” situations we like to explore in Hearts of Iron!

[h3]Alt History Paths[/h3]
This is the most WIP and the most likely to see things changed or removed!

The alt-history paths are meant to be plausible options that the Philippines could have taken were things to be a little different. The fascist path, where the nation tumbles down the slippery slope of Japanese pressure. There is also the communist path, where you can embrace the ideal of “Maritime Communism”, unleashing a mass naval assault with lots of ships, rather than the usual flood of manpower.

Now, let’s talk about the Philippine military. Historically, the USA provided basically all the war fighting equipment that the Philippines used in the Second World War, they didn’t really have much of a military industry of their own. This is represented by the United States Army in the Far East focus branch we saw earlier.

To unlock your own capabilities, you will need to complete the National Defense Act which is a whopping 245 day focus. This is, I believe, the longest focus on Heart of Iron history. However, each time you complete one tier of align USA / Japan in the Commonwealth of the Philippines branch, this number goes down. It will then be up to you to balance the political development against military necessity on when to embark on your own rearmament.

[h3]Subject Surrender[/h3]
Much like with Belgium, I wanted to keep the game interesting even when you lose, and while Belgium could fall back on the Congo, the Philippines can fall back on daddy USA. You will be able to continue the struggle in your home islands, be able to acquire resources and manpower and ultimately prepare to stage a magnificent return to the Philippines.

And that’s your lot! This is just a glance into the design and intention behind the Philippines focus tree as I wanted to get your thoughts and opinions on how things are shaping up.

I’ve not yet spoken much about the characters involved, shown off new art, nor introduced the various national spirits. The Philippines content is still very much in development, but don’t worry we’ll go through that in a future Dev Diary… but for that, you’ll just have to stay tuned for more.

I Shall Return

Developer Corner | China's War: from Resistance to Civil War

[h3]China's War: From Resistance to Liberation[/h3]

Dàjiā hǎo, (that’s “Hello” for everyone who doesn’t speak Chinese), and welcome to this week’s Dev Corner. With this year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2, we are here to walk you through the major themes and ideas for an extremely important participant in the global war effort: China.

Our intention is for this to be an early view of the Chinese content - some things may disappear, some things may be added, but you can be certain that things will definitely change!

It is a running theme that countries all around the world faced major difficulties in the 1930s, and China was no exception. Embroiled in a fractious state of civil war, the central government under the Kuomintang held only nominal power, while local warlords - regional military leaders - occupied significant tracts of land under privately controlled armies. It would be one of the smallest of these states, led by the Chinese Communist Party, which would defy odds - rising to power and uniting all of China.

[h3]Communist China[/h3]
One of our primary design goals here was to introduce a greater level of detail to Chinese content. This included changing the starting situation for the Communists to be more accurate to the situation in 1936; they’ve been renamed to the Chinese Soviet Republic (the official name from 1931 to 1937), Zhang Wentian is now the nominal leader, and the starting territory is altered as the Communists did not control Yan'an in early 1936.

Like the rest of China, there is an underlying struggle between the true policy-makers in the country, as Mao Zedong and the 28½ Bolsheviks are vying for power.

A Communist China playthrough has always been one of the more challenging in the game as a result of the starting situation, and our revamped approach is no different. As expected, you’ll need to fight off the Empire of Japan, then attempt to reunify the rest of China in several stages.

Conspicuously placed magnifying glass only included subject to availability.

This feeling of overcoming insurmountable odds is something we wanted to hone in on and build the new content around: with great challenge comes great reward. There are both new systems and revamped, familiar ones that have been implemented to achieve this. A familiar face to all of you who have played as Communist China before is the Infiltration system, which is returning, but with some changes and additions. Besides the fact that you can flip the infiltrated state to your side when war breaks out between you and the state controller, the state gets some additional penalties before that.

You will also be able to Establish Guerrilla Cells on enemy territory - as long as they’re not cores of your enemy.

After having established guerrilla cells (or if the state is a core of your enemy), you can scale up your operations there and Launch Sabotage Campaigns.

This might hurt your enemy, which is all fine and dandy - but it doesn’t help you. Well, let me show a first in the game; introducing Land Raids. Having either established guerrilla cells or launched sabotage campaigns in a state, you can now launch a Raid, targeting one of the state’s Supply Hubs. If you’re successful, you’ll be rewarded with the necessary equipment to continue the fight!

All of these features are sprinkled out to varying degrees in the different political branches you can choose from. The main question you have to ask yourself is; do you intend to cozy up to the Nationalists (and if you want to have a greater focus on guerrilla warfare as already outlined, or depend more heavily on Soviet support and usurp the control of the United Front from within), or if you’d rather face off both Japan and the rest of China all alone, and quite possibly all at once? How fiercely will you fight to unify all of China?

[h3]Nationalist China[/h3]
In this time period, the central government is under the control of the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek, the foremost leader of the party. However the KMT isn’t a unitary group and varying groups and factions within it are jostling for control. We’ve chosen to explore this dynamic and when playing as the nationalists your choices will be between these different groups. Who you choose influences which tools will be at your disposal and how you achieve the ultimate goal of unifying China under the KMT flag.

First of all there is the Generalissimo himself, Chiang Kai-Shek. Reflecting his military background Chiang draws his strength from posturing with the armed forces and being successful in defending the country.

Chiang was known for securing great quantities of material support from various foreign powers and we wanted to reflect this by giving him the ability to get a steady stream of arms and financial support from abroad. However, it is worth remembering that there is no such thing as a free lunch and you will have to prove that you’re worth betting on, by holding specific states and capturing specific areas in a timely fashion.

For a long time, the most viable adversary within the KMT to Chiang was Wang Jingwei, more known to the world as a Japanese puppet leader. But what if something would happen to Chiang, say in Xi’an for example, could Wang have stepped forward? Unlike Chiang, Wang is more of a politician and thus his focus isn’t the army which Chiang had secured the loyalty of through a decade of Whampoa Military Academy leadership. Instead, Wang’s power base is made up from the institutions of state: the Yuans. Don’t believe that Wang is building up institutions for the goal of a functioning state though, he is a shrewd powerbroker who puts his own people in power and is willing to cross some lines to solidify his own power before dealing with foreign threats.

The Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People, or more commonly known as the Blue Shirt Society, didn’t amount to much historically beyond being viewed as a rabble by Madame Chiang, but maybe they could have. We’ve chosen to imagine what this organization, under Dai Li, could achieve if they would have been more organised like their European counterparts. The warlords will be hard to convince of your leadership so maybe a more direct route will be needed.

So we’ve talked about unifying the country, but mechanically how is it done? As you are playing the central government in a fractured state we've wanted to give some more gameplay tied to this. We’ve chosen to use the opportunity by the faction rework to incorporate the Chinese power struggle into it. This means that the Chinese United Front as a faction works a bit differently from the other ones as it is meant to end up with only one member, a united China under your leadership.

Without giving away too much, you will be using your influence in the United Front to coerce the different warlords into becoming your subjects. Your influence depends partly on how well you’re fighting in the war and what of the aforementioned paths you’ve chosen in the focus tree.

This might seem a one-sided affair, but the thing about using your influence means that you have relatively less to the other faction members so they will be able to take faction leadership. Overall the idea is that you, as the central government, need to prove that you are the legitimate leader and not just someone making a lot of noise in Nanjing, or Chongqing for that matter, by standing up to foreign aggression.

And that’s it, folks. We have told you what awaits China, but now it’s your turn to tell us what you think. Give us your feedback! Zàijiàn (goodbye) for now!

/pdx_danne & ImaginedPanda

Steam 4x Fest!

Developer Corner | Aerohydrodynamics

Hello everyone!

It has been a while since the last dev corner, as many of us (including myself) went on vacations - but now I have returned, even if it has been quite hard to readjust my brain back to the work frequencies. As usual, keep in mind that everything discussed here is in a relatively early stage, and as such is subject to change, especially all the numbers and values. There is also quite a number of placeholder art.

Today we will talk a bit more about Islands, Carriers (and changes to them) and also about a new branch of Special Forces, so buckle up!

[h3]Strategic Locations[/h3]

Truk is what we call a ‘strategic location’, a place that can have increased building capacity or potential. In this case, currently it is a ‘placeholder’ name of Natural Harbor increasing the level cap of Naval Base Truk in Caroline Islands from 6 to 8. (note, that doesn't mean all the Caroline Islands have that increased level cap). This increased level cap of 8 can be quite important as it will allow…

As I mentioned in the Hydrodynamics Dev Corner, not all islands will be equal under the new system. We have created a concept called ‘Strategic Locations’ - that due to specific circumstances, historical importance, geographical location etc. deserves to be a bit more unique, while also having increased gameplay importance. Those locations will have increased limits for certain buildings, depending on the type of the strategic location. Some of the ‘Islands’ like Truk or Guam, may have increased Naval Base caps, others could have increased Airfield or Fort Caps. Or have a mix of them.

[h3]Defending Against Naval Strikes[/h3]

In this screenshot, you can see that planes from the British Carriers shot down some of the incoming German Naval Bombers performing Naval Strike.

One of the things that didn’t sit quite right with me for a long time, was the fact that whenever Naval Strike was performed on the Taskforce that included Carriers, Carrier Planes would sit idle and twiddle their thumbs. Now, carrier planes will participate in defense of the taskforce against Naval Strikes - with numbers depending on a few factors.

[h3]Carrier Missions[/h3]

In these screenshots you can see that while the task force is executing the mission (in this case it was naval exercises), planes on that carrier can also perform the air missions at the same time. In the second screenshot I’ve selected all planes to do exercises, while in the last screenshot I’ve opted for fighters to provide air cover and superiority, while I ordered my taskforce to operate in the North Pacific Sea Zone.

Another update when it comes to the Carriers that we will be doing, is the ability to set and execute air missions for the Carrier Air Groups, while the taskforce that contains Carriers are performing the missions. Planes will be executing the missions selected in the same region that the taskforce is currently operating in.

[h3]Carrier Hangar Detection Changes[/h3]

And another change for Carriers, is the introduction of ‘Carrier Sub/Surface Detection’ values on the Hangar modules. Essentially what it does - it provides increased Sub / Surface detection to the ship scaled by the % of the planes it currently has.

Deck Space / Hangar for the ‘regular’ carriers provide +2 Carrier Sub Detection and +5 Carrier Surface Detection. For example, a carrier with 3 hangars, will have a Deck Size of 60, and +6 Carrier Sub Detection, +15 Carrier Surface Detection. If it would have a full compartment of 60 planes, then it would get +15 Surface and +6 Sub Detection, while if it would have only 30 planes, it would only provide +3 Sub Detection and +7.5 Surface Detection. As usual, keep in mind those values may be adjusted down the line.

[h3]New Special Forces[/h3]

Who will guess which one is the new branch of Special Forces?

To fight in all the jungles and on the islands, we are introducing a new branch of Special Forces - which we internally called for quite some time ‘Jungle Specialists’. This temporary name was great as long as they remained on the design board, but for the actual implementation finding the right name for them proved to be quite challenging to me. They went under a few ‘name iterations’ (amongst them some like: Jaegers or Chindits), but finally decided to name them Rangers. But hold up, aren’t there Rangers in-game already as a Support Company unlocked by the Mountaineers Special Doctrine, you will ask? Yes, and they will be renamed to Recon Rangers. Recon Rangers will be now unlocked by either picking Mountaineers Special Doctrine OR Rangers Special Doctrine. Rangers specialty will be fighting in the Woods and Jungles, and of course they can be further customized and boosted by the Rangers Special Forces Doctrine branch.

And this is the new special forces doctrine branch in all its FINAL_BACKUP_DRAFT_FINAL_V5 glory and form.

And that’s pretty much it for this dev corner from my side. In time we will return with more dev corners, including me talking more about things that are opposite to dry amongst others. I am really curious to see and read all your feedback and opinions on what I mentioned today.

Thanks for reading and until next time, farewell!

/Zwirbaum

I am going to leave you with another teaser for one of the new ‘toys’ we will talk about in the future. This shouldn’t be a hard guess, I think?