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Hearts of Iron IV News

Live: An Absolute Beginner Learns Hearts of Iron



In this week's 'World War Work From Home', our tutorial streams enter their third week.

If you're new to the game or can't wrap your head around a certain mechanic, then this might be the stream for you!

Tune in at 14:00 CEST at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Dev Diary: 1.9.1 Patch + Roadmap Update

Today's Development Diary by Podcat



Hi everyone and surprise! We just released 1.9.1 to make sure you guys get all the fixes by easter. We are currently investigating some out of sync MP issues that are proven to be incredibly stubborn to nail down, so a 1.9.2 is planned after 1.9.1 to address that. Otherwise 1.9.1 has shaped up to be one of the bigger patches we have done with tons of fixes and I want to thank everyone who has helped out by reporting bugs and testing the open beta.

Today I also want to share another update to the roadmap like we usually do to the end of a patch cycle. Its both grown in some entries as well as had a couple checked off as of La Resistance.

1.9.1 Patch

This weeks update to the patch is a mix of bugfixes and balance. We noticed that after fixing various ai problems and tweaking balance that Germany and Japan was performing way too good again, so we've tightened up effects from resistance in occupation a bit more compared to last week and given china and soviets some more factories as well as made soviet build a better air force to meet the german air power. This should push back the war winning point further again and give a more average breakdown between soviet&german european victories.
With this we think its good to go so you guys can play with all these fixes over easter.

For those who have been following every week, these are the changes since last beta update:

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- Medium Aircraft Designers now affect scout planes
- Added 4 civ factories to USSR
- added 1 mil and 2 civ factory to china
- changed one civ to 1 mil for PRC
- increased manpower damage from resistance from 1.5% to 1.8%
- reduced compliance gain a little bit

##################################
# AI
##################################
- soviet will now build less naval bombers and a bit more fighters

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Fixed issue with Spanish cores at the end of the SCW. Now the SCW winner will get resistance in the initial states of the "major" (SPD/SPA) Spanish enemy, until they get cored via decisions.
- Fixed annexation effects not being triggered after defeating non-anarchist Portugal.
- French Coup operations should now correctly display their potential outcomes
- fixed air mission icons in intel ledger air map mode having wrong frame
- Fixed a typo in Belarusian spelling and cleaned up spacing.
- The Chinese "Communist threat defeated" event is now suppressed after firing once until a new Communist infiltration is detected (WtT only)
- fixed remove_unit_leader effect not working correctly in some cases
- Fixed "Expand Garrison Control in Burgos" decision not increasing garrison control for the Republicans
- Fix instigate workers revolution britain not working properly
- fixed arguments not being passed to effects when using the effect console command

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed CTD on Windows caused by the assumption of the presence of the popcnt instruction
- Fixed a CTD caused by missing pie chart UI element in the diplomacy view
- Fixed CTD while loading a save game for some mods

##################################
# UI
##################################
- Specified Cyrillic script fallback fonts for an old fonts used in a limited number of places, most notably the Autosaving message.
- Fixed untranslated OK and CANCEL buttons in various confirmation dialogs.

##################################
# Modding
##################################
- added MAX_NUMBER_OF_TEXTURES define which can be increased for mods that had more than previously hardcoded 10k texture limit

##################################
# Database
##################################
- Improved French intervention in SCW so that now France, if fighting in the SCW, will be at war with any new Spanish tag spawned.
- Any Spanish tag revived by a foreign ally will now declare war on any foreign country allied to any other Spanish tag.
- Chinese decision to move the capital to Beijing/Nanjing will no longer be available for subjects. This change fixes the issue with Portuguese China moving their capital and making the achievement "Go ahead, Macau my Day" impossible to complete.
- Pierre Laval now starts out as the French starting leader
- Prevented Monarchist France from being able to join the Spanish Civil War on the Anarchist side.
- Portuguese "Volunteers in the War" National Spirits will be removed when the SCW is over
- Added advisor portrait for Agustin Munoz Grandes


To view the full patchnotes for 1.9.1, click here

[h3]The five year plan[/h3]

As I said last time we did this, its not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future as well as follow up what we have been up to. The list below has been posted before and added to, and stuff that is crossed off we now consider handled (although we might of course return to some items again).

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.


    Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
    A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
    Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
    A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
    Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
    Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
    Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
    Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
    More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
    Improved naval combat
    Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
    Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
    More player control over rules. HOI is played in many different ways and say competitive MP and single player rulesets often clash
    A more robust and expansive mapmode system. Having a player mapmode in MP would be helpful etc
    Spies and espionage
    An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
  • Improvements to frontline stability
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
  • Improving peace conferences
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan, Poland)
  • Wunderwaffen projects
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
  • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
  • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
  • More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
  • Rebalance ministers and ideas to give more interesting choices.
    Improve weather mechanics
    Strategic and tactical AI improvements

(bold ones were added this update. Striked out ones are done)

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented.

Now is also a good time to get your friends into HOI4 as Daniel is doing a learn to play stream (part 2) at 14:00 CEST here.

See you all next week!

Patch 1.9.1: New Releasables, Art, Balance Tweaks and More!



It's Patch time!

Over the last few weeks we've been running an extensive Beta patch to add some extra content as well as balance and bugfix changes introduced in 1.9.

1.9.1 "Husky" is now live and downloadable through Steam, with a slew of fixes and improvements to 1.9.1. Checksum is 6d23.

We should be compatible with 1.9.0, but if you for some reason want to remain on 1.9.0 or older Here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4.

Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9.1, or your game might not run properly (seriously)

If you discover any bugs in patch 1.9.1, please report them in the bug report forum as usual.

The full patchlog is too long to copy into steam, so to see its entirety, click here



Live: An Absolute Beginner Learns Hearts of Iron



In this week's 'World War Work From Home', we're continuing our tutorial series which began last week.

We'll be covering all the basics, including national focuses, research choices, template and ship designs, and much more. We'll be running this tutorial for a few weeks to make sure we can fit all the important bits in.

If you're new to the game or can't wrap your head around a certain mechanic, then this might be the stream for you!

Tune in at 14:00 CEST at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Dev Diary: Beta Patch Update 4

Today's Development Diary by Podcat



Hi guys, another week another patch update. We are now focusing on stabilizing it and preparing it for release once its gone through testing.

A cool thing we have added this week is new 3d models for Spain and Portugal. All the different civil war sides in Spain now look different. Here is a fancy render of what they look like in detail:

(pardon the german guns for the renders tho ;D)

Check out the changelog since last week:

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- neutral government can do collaborations now
- If Britain or France decide to abandon Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia in their respective event chains, any guarantees they have made to those countries are revoked

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- fixed civil war flags not being cleared when country is annexed by an effect and causing script issues
- fixed some occupation modifiers wrongly being applied after loading a save game
- impassable terrains no longer has resistance
- fixed some issues with resources that was causing inconsistencies with the last added resource type
- "Give up Baleares" and "Refuse to Give up Baleares" events are now fired to Italy instead of Spain.
- fixed china uprising decision not working in some cases
- France should no longer abandon all bonds of fellowship by leaving their faction if they decide to support the Czechs together with Britain, because IT IS NOT THIS DAY
- The EU should now correctly gain cores on Belgium and the Netherlands, Byzanthium and Imperium Romanum now also both gain cores on new states that were previously missing
- Airwing duplication now also copies missions as well as the "auto turn off" training setting
- fixed some bugs that was changing resistance country (by cancelling and recreating resistance) not working
- Evade Blockade decisions will now be properly removed after a country capitulates.
- Germany and Soviet air volunteers can fight each other in the civil war
- Fix a case where carrier combat disruption was not working
- Gibraltar will not generate resistance to any Spanish nation if it is transferred during the SCW.


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- fixed a bug that was leaking memory in decision scripted guis
- fixed a ctd that happens when you have invalid color characters
- fixed a ctd that can happen when loading a save that has gie with units in naval transfer
- fixed a crash that happens when saving when a border war ordergroup is invalid
- fixed a ctd that happens during peace conf when the game tries getting tooltip for a deleted action


##################################
# UI & Graphics
##################################
- Added text-to-speech (Win/Mac) and speech-to-text (Win) to the multiplayer chat
- Added large font support and visual message notification to the multiplayer chat
- Added new 3D models for the various Spanish sides and Portuguese units in La Résistance
- Fixed overflow of resource icons in the state view
- added 'lack of fuel' icon for combat view for the divisions that are lacking fuel


##################################
# AI
##################################
- Soviets are discouraged from sending volunteers to western Europe
- neutral ai countries won't create collaborations unless it is past 1944 and they are at peace
- ai will not create single state collaborations
- The US should now declare war on Vichy france closer to the historical date
- ITA now no longer invades NOR until FRA falls


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- added army_ledger navy_ledger air_ledger civilian_ledger tokens for parent_window_token scripted gui entries
- added state modifiers for building & repair speed for specific building types (example state_production_speed_infrastructure_factor state_repair_speed_infrastructure_factor)
- added is_impassable trigger
- added support for highlight_state_targets for decisions which is a script target that can be used for highlighting states. should give improved performance if used instead of highlight_states
- decision scripted guis now supports dirty var as well.
- event effects now accepts variables as its duration entries
- Enabled 3D mesh lookup based on a country's cosmetic tag before checking its true tag.


##################################
# Database
##################################
- fixed an issue where France would start out with too low war support if Man The Guns was not active
- Vichy France is now informed if any colonial territories are taken over by Free France
- Several new Spanish advisors are now at the service of the different Spanish factions. POUM will also receive a field marshal and two generals upon completion of Masters of Our Own Fate focus.
- Brazilian Fascist party will become an Anti-Monarchist Coalition when Portugal completes the focus Monarchist Uprising in Brazil.
- Added general Jose Asensio Torrado to the Spanish roster, so he can finally show up his cool portrait.
- Fixed missing portrait for Spanish general in vanilla.
- Fixed unlocalized option in one of the Spanish civil war news events.
- Spanish Election of 1936 events will now get the current Spanish leader, Niceto Alcala-Zamora.
- Updated BLR division names to use Belarusian instead of Russian.
- Added in decision category art for generic formable nations.
- The UK will now prioritize giving Gibraltar, if possible, to SPD, then SPA, then SPB and, only if no other Spanish tag exists, to SPC when they complete "Withdraw from Contested Territories" focus.


##################################
# Audio
##################################
- Fix sound effect for light armour fire. Now it has more DAKKA



If you want to see past changes and full changelog, check out the Beta Patch thread here as well as info on how to start playing on it.

To highlight some changes: We have restricted collaboration regimes further for AI, but opened it up more for players and fixed various issues with guarantee and event chains. We have also added support for accessibility features in multiplayer, like increased font sizes, notifications and text to speech support:



See you next week where I plan to do a bit of a roadmap update!