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Dev Corner 2601002 - Thunder at our Gates

(Previously: Dev Corner 2601001 - Thunder at our Gates)

Generals!

It’s time for another Developer CORNER.

On Tuesday we kicked things off with our first Dev Corner of 2026 where we asked you about Siam, and we were pleased to see so many good suggestions and overall thoughts and feedback. There were quite a few topics that came up, and many were in line with thoughts we had as well. While we don’t intend to answer Dev Corner questions every time (just setting expectations), we did feel like reciprocating and giving you some more information on what seemed to be the most common topics.

Limited Wars
Not surprisingly, limited wars are a key concern, something we also saw before. Siam is smack dab in the middle of two majors, so this was an issue that we knew would rear its head again.

To set expectations, TaoG will not have limited wars as a generic feature for all countries, but what we’re looking at is limited wars for Indochina, Burma and certain parts of Malaya, like how limited wars works for Paraguay or how you are able to peace out with Japan after pushing them out of mainland China.

It is not desirable to need to walk all the way to Vichy to end the Franco-Thai war for example.

Currently there is a planned Pan Thaiism subtree that allows you to recover lost territories via limited wars.

Regional Power Fantasy
This can also be grouped into a "more grounded alt-hist/hist" bucket. Agreed, Siam should be more of a regional player, looking more at Hungary, Romania, Sweden, and less of a "let’s take over the world and form X dead state".

Internal Faction Mechanics
Siam was ruled by the Khana Ratsadon party, which mainly consisted of the Civilian Wing and the Military Wing (and some others). Some people were interested in how this inter-rivalry was going to be represented. Let’s show you a bit how the design looks before it's added into the game.

The idea is that you are balancing the interests of the military wing and the civilian wing towards the current leader. It is not a balance of power but represented as two spirits, so you can have the military love you, and the civilians love you (or more likely the military likes you and the civilian government dislikes you).

For example, a Green + means the military wing likes you more, a green - means they like you less.

In this example, holding a military parade means the military likes you more, and the civilian wing less. Conversely, selling privy purse lands makes both factions like you less. Putting Phibun in charge makes the military like you even more. (This is how a tree looks very early in design, so a lot can change)

The idea is that the early game has some focus on this inter-rivalry, but as the game proceeds into mid-game the player manages to cement control, with one wing becoming dominant, so that they can focus on the war itself.


Gathering all the feedback can also be quite interesting, here it is grouped by topics (Steam/Forum/Reddit).

Thoughts? Please chime in!

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Next: Dev Corner 2601003 - Thunder at our Gates

Dev Corner 2601001 - Thunder at our Gates

Generals!

It’s a new year, so we’re preparing for future content. To this end we are starting up a new round of Developer CORNERS.

Before we continue I want to set some expectations and clear things up.
By now you know we have two main types of Developer post:

Developer Diaries
  • Give you more detailed insight into content that’s more or less finished and is being polished
  • Start appearing closer to release
  • Give you a chance to ask our developers questions, and perhaps even let us know if there’s anything glaringly obvious we missed
  • (and may still have time to either fix quickly, or already start planning to include in a future Patch; being a Day-x, or a War Effort.)


Developer Corners, like this one, serve a different purpose.
They:
  • Need your feedback, specific to the DC
  • Should be short and to the point
  • May or may not include any images
  • May generally give you some idea of something that might come in future content, but it’s not guaranteed
  • Are not usually planned far ahead. Instead, if at any point any developer has something they want to get feedback on, we’ll pick an upcoming weekly slot, probably Tuesday or Thursday



With that out of the way, the first topic we’d like your thoughts on is Siam.

The next DLC of Expansion Pass 2, Thunder at our Gates is coming in Q2, so while we continue to work on it we’d like to know:
When you think of Siam in Hearts of Iron, what are you expecting? What’s your player fantasy?
And lastly, are there any interesting characters or equipment they used that you really want to see?

Studio Gold | January Update - What we're working on

Welcome back, everyone, PDX_Gorion here!

We are back from our winter break and I wanted to keep you in the loop of what is going on in snowy Stockholm. Last year was an eventful year for us, with the release of Graveyard of Empires, Prototype Vehicles and No Compromise, No Surrender, and this year is no different with our ten year anniversary happening as well, beyond all the stuff that we promised in Expansion Pass 2. As most of you know we have several teams working in parallel:

  • Warships of the Pacific coming this quarter
  • Peace for our Time is coming in Q2
  • Thunder at our Gates is coming in Q2
  • We’ll be starting new Dev Corners for that next week
  • War Effort patches
  • And more


Let's talk about that next patch (1.17.4), we have a few main points that we are working on.

[h3]Naval AI[/h3]
We’ve been working on improving this continuously and with the release we’ve gotten much more detailed reports of the AI being wonky in certain cases. One of the major aspects we are aware of, albeit not the only one, is the unwillingness of the AI to have large fleet battles, but we are looking at other reports in the community as well. Keep reporting all your bugs here.

[h3]Historical AI performance[/h3]
When playing on historical, Germany should pose a good challenge against the Soviet Union, however at the moment they don’t, due to various reasons. One of them being that with the new airbase access feature, the Soviet Union invites the UK to operate in their airzone once Barbarossa starts. This often causes Germany to have little to no CAS support on the frontlines and making their attacks less effective. Besides that we’re taking a look at mastery gain and other parts of general AI behaviour.

[h3]Multiplayer Performance & Stability[/h3]
We continue to work on this, as we get reports that the stability & performance aren’t great for larger play sessions.

These three areas aren't the only areas we are working on, in the next patch, and we are aiming for an early February release.

And here is a sneak peek of something that we’ve cooked up and hoping to ship in the February patch.


PS: We do recommend to play with an actual keyboard.

Mods Mods Mods! Ready for NCNS (Final)

[p]Generals!

With the conclusion of 2025, and us now moving into the new year, we'll be rounding up our Mods! Mods! Mods! series, with this final post.

Like many of our titles, Hearts of Iron IV has a deep history of mods within the community, and it's been a pleasure showcasing a few of these, that are compatible with No Compromise, No Surrender![/p][p][/p][p]We always value the community feedback, so feel free to let us know down below, if you'd like to see this continue in the future!

If you haven't already, check out the previous mod spotlights below:


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And so without further delay, here is the final expansive list;

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Mods Mods Mods! Ready for NCNS (Part 4)

[p]Generals!

At this point we've already brought you loads of ready to go, NCNS-compatible mods.

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And here is another fun list.

Part 5 coming soon!

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