Hearts of Iron IV News

Today's Development Diary by Podcat:




Hi everyone, I hope you are all having fun with La Résistance! This weekend had a new active users record for HOI4 and its great to see this happen for a game thats been out now for quite a while with a very growing community still :) Since release we have been busy working on bugs reported, talking to you guys on different communities and enjoying watching influencers stream the game :)

[h3]Statistics[/h3]

Who doesn't love statistics?! After each release we like to dig into data and check what the most popular focus branches and nations are.

Portugal Stats
As it could be expected, the Monarchist path is the player’s favorite for Portugal, with almost 60% of the players supporting A Royal Wedding. The most popular paths after that are the Fascist one at 15% (The Fifth Empire being the favorite choice, but with a slight advantage) and the Communist one at 10.5%. Democratic and Historical Salazarist paths are far less popular (roughly 7% and 4.5% respectively).

Regarding the Spanish Civil War, 21% of the players Supported a Spanish Monarchy (aka Carlists). That being 1/3 of the total Monarchist players. It is worth noting that Carlists might not spawn, so I’m sure a lot more people were eager to support the Spanish Monarchists!

19% supported the Spanish Nationalists (but only 11% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war), 10.5% supported the Spanish Republic and roughly 7% of the players kept Strict Neutrality and let the Spaniards manage by themselves.

Involvement in Spanish Civil War:
10.3% supported the Spanish Republic
18.8% supported the Spanish Nationalists (10.7% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war)
21.1% supported the Carlists, but only 13.8% actually Joined the Carlist Fight
6.8% kept Strict Neutrality

After supporting the Nationalists:
- 4.4% followed historical path
- 14.8% went Fascist


France Stats
For France, we have a number of surprising, and some not so surprising, observations. As it turns out, our community is evidently made up of unrepentant Monarchists. The monarchist branch as a whole was played by roughly 45% of playthroughs, compared to communists and fascists at 9% and 8%, respectively. About a quarter of playthroughs stuck with the republic.

Of the people who decided to restore yet another monarchy (when did HoI become Monarchy Simulator 2020? Dan edit: with DoD ;) ), a whooping 84% decided to side with his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Napoleon VI. It’s about 5 times as many people than the people who played the communist branch in total. I’m not bitter.

The new Vichy and Free French trees have seen very little play in the past week - about as many people played either of them as decided to form the Latin Entente. Special mention goes to the 200-odd people who decided to continue on as Vichy and then decided to stop without giving Petain special powers: we see you.

Of the people who went fascist, about two thirds formed the Latin Entente. Of the communists, about 60% did not compromise on their revolutionary ideals by allying with Moscow or forming an anti-fascist coalition. It appears that there is still some revolutionary spirit left in France!


Spain Stats
For Spain, there is almost exactly a 50-50 split between Republicans and Nationalists playthroughs. For Nationalists, 40% chooses the Carlists, and 30% equally between Falange and Francoists. For the Republicans: a whopping 70% choose to go Anarchist, and the remainder is split between 6% POUM (Independent Communist), 11% Stalinist Communist, and 13% Democratic. Of these combined Stalinist and Democratic runs, over half (56%) Expand Soviet Aid. The vast majority of Democratic players (84%) thereafter do Oppose the Communists, rather than be a loyal subject of the Soviets, but almost none (13%) take Subvert Soviet Control, seeming to indicate that the vast majority of players who select Maintain the Second Republic finish the Civil War without Expanding Soviet Aid, and therefore never need to wage a war of independence. But for those who do, the vast majority (85%) have trouble stomaching accepting aid from those who helped their enemies during the SCW, and so in their war of independence against the Soviets they seek help from the Allies, rather than the Axis.

Republicans and Stalinists are far more inclined to let the Anarchist uprising happen rather than crack down on them, with only ~15% selecting the Crush the Revolution focus. Anarchists and Independent Communists, however, select the Masters of Our Own Fate focus in over 50% of the games. For Nationalists there is a similar discrepancy (though less extreme), with about 50% of Carlist players selecting the No Compromise on Carlist Ideals focus, but only 37% of Falange players selecting Eliminate the Carlists. It would also seem that Anarchist tenacity knows no bounds, with 80% of players making it all the way to the very end of the focus tree ;)
[h3]
Open Beta Patch[/h3]

To make sure the 1.9.1 patch is as stable as possible we will be running an open opt-in beta for anyone to take part in. We had our first update on friday and it fixes a lot of reported issues. Today is the second update of it. The plan is that 1.9.1 goes live mid-April so look forward to more beta updates until then.

See the full updated patchlog on the forums: https://pdxint.at/2TmDbti

The thread for the beta patch is here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...usky-1-9-1-beta-hotfix-checksum-8eaf.1342931/

This beta also includes a cool little QoL thing we couldnt finish in time for the release, to help with airwing management and tedium of controlling airplane equipment in them.

Here is a breakdown of how it works:

• You can now duplicate selected air wings as long as there is some planes in stockpile they can use. This copies settings etc so you will only need to access the reorg window fairly rarely.
  
  
• You can set reinforcement rules for air wings in the reorg window With 4 settings to pick from:
  - Reserves - will only use equipment marked outdated
  - Regular - doesnt care, uses anything and acts like old air wings did
  - Elite - only uses up to date equipment
  - Specialized - Will never add plane variants not in the wing already giving you 100% control.
  
  
• Foreign planes will look at your equipment for reference for the auto updating. If for some reason you want to use a foreign variant and have disabled your own of same tech level you should set up specialized wings to consume those.
  

Make sure to let us know how you like it!

As promised we are also working on some art. We only just started so its not in the beta yet, but here is a sneak peak of a Portugese general:



See you all next week with another update, and if you or a friend is wondering about how stuff works in the new expansion I recommend checking out some of the tutorial videos we made here. Later today at 16:00CET we will also have a stream where Daniel and Björn will show some patch stuff. I'm home sick but will try to hang out on the chat a bit!

Don't forget to tune in to today's Heart of Iron IV stream!

We're going to be talking about today's Dev Diary (out in a few hours) and the 1.9.1 hotfix patch that has been available in BETA since Friday.

NOTE: We aren't pushing the hotfix live today

Expect to hear about what is being fixed and worked on at the moment, and how we intend to develop the patch going forwards.

Tune in at 16:00 CET: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

STOCKHOLM - 25 February 2020 - Conquest is never easy, but the 20th Century brings new challenges. More infrastructure means more opportunities for disruption. Radio links saboteurs and freedom fighters across occupied territory. It is never hard to find willing collaborators, but it takes a lot of work to put them in place. Direct resisters, special agents, and quislings can all be found in Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance.

La Résistance is the newest expansion to Paradox’s best-selling grand strategy wargame about the Second World War. In La Résistance, your nation has new resources at its disposal. At the center of the game is the Intelligence Agency that lets you train and deploy spies to undertake special missions cracking codes, stealing secrets and assisting resistance activities in the occupied lands of your conquered allies.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance include:

• New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
  
• More in-Depth Spanish Campaign: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, including an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict.
  
• Portuguese National Focuses: New unique focus tree for Portugal. Restore Portuguese naval power, strengthen the overseas empire or intervene in the Civil War next door.
  
• Espionage: Use your Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and send them on special operations, or develop passive resistance to enemy espionage.
  
• Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
  
• Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once you’ve conquered your target.
  
• Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
  
• Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities.
  
• New music tracks

As usual, the expansion is accompanied by the release of a significant update available to all Hearts of Iron IV players.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158100/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_La_Rsistance/

Hello!

1.9 Husky is now live including tons of bugfixes, improvements and new features. The patch should be downloading through Steam as we speak.

Please note that 1.9 will not be save game compatible with 1.8.2. If you want to finish off any ongoing ironman games, please remain on 1.8.2 for now. Here are instructions on how you revert patch levels.

Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9, or your game might not run properly (seriously)

Unfortunately we won't be able to collect bug reports from Steam. If you experience issues, please visit our official forum or submit a ticket to our support.

Changelog:
##################################
# Free Features and Important
##################################
- Revamped Resistance system with offmap garrisons
- Added zooming feature for focus trees
- Added search functionality and filters for focus trees
- new recon support companies
- Neutral ideology can now be externally boosted
- MEFO bills will now auto-renew and player can decide ahead of time if they want to opt out
- New mapmodes for resistance & Compliance
- Licensing now requires permission to be seen
- New Spanish Fragmentation game rule, Spain Fragmented: Galicia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia will exist as independent states at game start
- New Spanish Fragmentation game rule, 11th of November: splits Spain into Castille, Aragon, Navarra, Galicia, and the Emirate of Granada at game start.
- New Oceania Colonization Status game rule, Oceania Decolonised: all releasable nations in Oceania will be independent at game start
- New Oceania Colonization Status game rule, Polynesian Empire: all Polynesian nations will be united into a single state at game start with extra factories and dockyards.
- New country tags in Oceania: Tahiti, the Mariana Federation, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Hawai’i.
- Error dog has a new change of clothes


##################################
# Balance
##################################
- xp gained on air wings in combat now scale with actual amount of planes in combat
- air superiority formula now linear instead of square with respect to planes. e.g plane amounts matter less
- Air superiority now scales from 0 to max penalty for enemy from the 50/50 state rather than giving the side with >1% advantage most of the benefit right away
- Various industry buildup focuses for romania now prioritize better or historical states for their location
- improved penetration of all medium ship guns
- Frequency of tactics picking in combat is now doubled
- Entering close combat tactic phase is now a lot less likely unless in urban fighting
- Superior Firepower tech soft attack bonus changed from 20% to 10%
- Shock and Awe tech soft attack gets an additional 5% soft attack to all fighting battalions
- Mobile Defense tech defense bonus changed from 20% to 10%
- lowered requirements for support rocket artillery equipment to be in line with normal artillery equipment/mechanized.txt
- removed hardness modifier from mech and added those benefits into base stats
- increased armor on amph tank 1 from 10 to 20
- increased armor on amph tank 2 from 60 to 80
- reduced effectiveness of heavy armor amphibious assault from 20% to 10%
- reduced effectiveness of medium armor amphibious assault from 30% to 20%
- Researches can no longer claim two different research bonuses at the same time if they only have one of ahead of time and research bonuses each
- Made the lack of fuel penalty on torpedoes -80% rather than -50%
- Australia can now take the Advisory War Council focus if at war
- Tech bonuses in the Italian Focus tree now apply to categories rather than specific techs (thanks xMer!)
- Rebalanced carrier fighter disruption and fixed bugs with its calculation
- lowered base mil factory output by 10%
- Increased Panzerschiff HP from 100 to 220 to make them more inline with heavy cruisers
- CSA can now core multiple territories at once
- Japan now gains wargoals on Indochina if France rejects Japanese demands
- Czech war college bonus improved
- lowered screen ratio for navies from 4 to 3
- added a suppression value of 3 to all tanks
- Austria Hungary now gets -40% tension needed for justification
- changed IC cost of infantry equipment 0 to 0.43
- lowered IC cost of infantry equipment 2 to 0.58
- lowered IC cost of infantry equipment 3 to 0.69
- increased malus from "war to end all wars" UK spirit to 30% to account for extra manpower from colonies
- lowered manpower requirement on germanys Anchluss focus slightly
- reduced air wing experience gain from 2nd and 3rd level reformer air chief
- reduced ship experience gains from naval combat by ~20%
- increased bombing reduction from 12% to 15% for dispersed industry 1
- decreased bombing reduction from 12% to 10% for dispersed industry 2, 3, 4, and 5
- reduced loss in stability from no further appeasement branch of UK focuses from losses of 15 stability to losses of 10 stability
- reduced experience gains for airwings to 5% from 10% in air doctrines

Plus bugfixes - click here for extended changelog!

The release of La Resistance is upon us!

Tune in to a special release stream at 09:00 CET February 25th, for some chaotic spanish multiplayer and the release of the expansion!

We'll be live over at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive