Hearts of Iron IV News

We are presenting you with a new startup menu (or launcher some call it) for Hearts of Iron IV. The reason for doing this is to create a base on which we can continue to develop features and enrich your experience in many ways.

Important! The first time you start Hearts of Iron IV after this update, all mods will be disabled. Steam Workshop mods will show an error about something looking wrong with the downloaded files. Any local mods not associated with Steam will not appear in the list at all. Boot up the game completely, exit and start again, and then all your mods should appear as normal, both Steam Workshop mods and local mods.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but it was a necessary step.

For additional information, questions or to report issues with it, please visit our official forum here! You can also seek assistance for technical issues by submitting a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com

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 (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 :)

Read today's Dev Diary by Podcat



Hi everyone! We are now back from PdxCon (most of us) and landing in our new offices, so brace for a ton of pictures! Oh and we announced the new expansion! If you haven't see the trailer
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

PdxCon 2019
PdxCon this year was imo one of the best ones so far. It was held in the Funkhaus Berlin. This place was super cool, and was basically the center of all radio and recording for DDR from the 50s until the german reunification.



We had announcements (among them CK3 and La Résistance!), LAN parties, presentations and Q&A sessions with fans as well as a scramble-for-africa multiplayer game on sunday. Most of all though it was super fun to chat with fans and modding groups (several ones were there!)

WW2.. in hot pink!

A very humble picture of Bratyn on a throne ;D

HOI boardgame preview

Animals in the audience?

In our booth we ran a challenge which we plan to be an achivement for LaR, just like we did with 30min of Hel last year. It was called "Don't Die for your Country" and was to capitulate France and Poland as Germany with as few of your own casualties as possible (and no using paratroopers). The final score was 475 casualties :O


Voigt was the winner, and you can read about how he did it here.

We had a ton of fun and basically just crashed when we got home ;D it felt a lot like coming home from a music festival :)

La Résistance

So 'ere we go... Our next expansion is now announced: La Résistance!

Its main theme is Espionage and Resistance and the main country focuses are France, both sides of the Spanish Civil War as well as Portugal. We will be starting off by going through espionage in the coming weeks in details

For more info check out the announce post and there will probably be uploads of videos from PDXCon and my talks popping up on youtube in the near future.
also here is a fresh unused screenshot to wet your appetites...



New Office
We have a new office, and it is INSANELY COOL. Me and Daniel have been cruising around and checking it out this morning. Here are some highlights:


Meeting rooms with battleplans and maps!


armed artists...


Mugshot-wall for employees :)


WILD ANIMALS


Toilets with inspirational quotes o_O


Aliens


A space wall where you can literally sit and stare into space...


Casual meeting areas :)


Extra big meeting rooms


The Bar :)


And finally our awesome lobby


Thats it for today. See you again next week when we will start digging into the new LaR features!

Tune in to The Paradox Twitch Channel at 17:00CEST tonight to watch some prominent streamers clash in a World War in a 4+ Hour Streaming Session - LIVE from PDXCON 2019 in Berlin!

Each team will be manned with one developer Captain that will not play themselves, but instead help their team achieve greatness by offering assistance with synchronization as well as tips for those participants that are not as experienced.











The stream will as usual be available as VOD on our Twitch Channel, and uploaded to YouTube next week

BERLIN - 19 October 2019 - The quickest way to kill an enemy is to do it from within. Learn its secrets. Sabotage its industry. break its codes. Strike at vulnerable points behind the front lines. Send agents to build a network of informants and a secret army that will rise against the occupiers. Resistance is never futile.

Paradox Development Studios is happy to announce Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance, an expansion to the best-selling grand strategy wargame. La Résistance introduces a new espionage system to the game, and also increases the range of interactions and options with resistance movements in occupied territory.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance includes:

• 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 Civil War: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, as well as an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict..
  
• Portuguese Focuses: Navigate the pressure of the World War, or involve yourself in the Spanish Conflict with the new Focus Tree for Portugal (updated point)
  
• Espionage: Use you Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and develop passive resistance to enemy espionage, then send them on special operations.
  
• 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

As usual, La Résistance will be accompanied by a significant free update to Hearts of Iron IV, available to all players. This update will include a reworking of the resistance system, interface improvements to battleplans and air operations, and many other quality of life improvements.