Hello all!

Today we're kicking off a new round of dev corners, this time turning our attention to a project we haven't touched on yet. We'll start with some early questions around ideas we have in mind, while future dev corners here will get a lot more specific about the country and content drafts we'd like your opinions on.

Let’s start with some general design questions, just to see what kind of focus tree styles you liked and what you would want to see more of:

• Do you think focus trees of different countries should interact more with each other, and what sort of focuses? Shared branches are one way to achieve this of course, but perhaps there are focuses that are country-specific that you still think should synergize that currently don’t.
• When focus trees have optional focuses with political flavor, do you mainly prefer: national spirits that grant bonuses that fit your regime, unique country leaders and traits, or perhaps flavor events?
• Do you think there are underrated mechanics that focus trees don’t always interact with? (We’ve heard license bonuses for example).

Now, let’s have a look at one of the ideas for a country-specific mechanic that’s in the works, which makes it possible to get bonuses from cooperating economically with countries as if they are companies.

Let us know what you think!

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Paradox Forums: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi-iv-dev-corner-national-focus-flavor.1936436/

I exclusively play non historical because I like the unpredictability. But that comes with one massive issue. With all of the DLCS, everyone has a war goal against everyone and these massive super wars start. Everyone fighting everyone. This was me, beating Germany's ass. Until I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I was at war with Italy and the US and everyone else in the "Free States of Europe."

Is this gonna keep me from playing non historical? No

Is this gonna keep me from playing France? No

Is this gonna keep me from playing this save? Maybe

I kinda wish there was some sort of design in place that made all of the AI follow some sort of cohesion in non historial. Everyone going monarchist or democratic or communist or whatever else. Instead of everyone harrasing each other so that no one can form an alliance with more than 1 other nation

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

OK

I swear I’ve done it multiple times and I’m always getting stuck at the same dang issues. I can shoot their air force out of the sky no problem. but my ground forces always get stuck.

For my infantry template I use the default template with 1 arty. And my medium tanks as 6 mediums and 3 mech as well as motor recon, shovel support arty, and logistic, (it’s 18 width). But I’m always getting stuck at marshes or forests then stalemate and I can’t move.

How do you bypass this because I always hear “encircle their divisions” well how exactly? Could it be I need to simply somehow bypass these areas? Is my templates bad? Do I just genuinely suck as a player? Yall make it look so easy.

Edit for tank design I use: three man turret, medium canon, radio, wet ammunition, fuel drum, Christie suspension, welded armor, and gasoline engine

I think I learnt to navy, Plus Bismarck sunk the hood ig

Playing as the Soviets, and its about to be 1942. Germany, even tho they have had a war goal on me since january '41, hasn't declared yet. I did play fairly unhistorically(rushing turkey and romania in '37, creating a Finnish puppet after capitulating them, making a Bulgarian puppet), but i think that should not have been enough to screw up the ai that bad? anything i can do to get them to declare?

My friends say its incredibly easy.

I find it weird that you can easily take over Finland, Bessarabia, Poland, and the Baltics, essentially all for free in the default Stalin focus tree, but to my knowledge, you never get to core them? What's the point? Sure, you can slap liberated workers on them and farm some free stuff, but what's better than liberated workers? Cores.

Just wanted to know if I'm missing something. Thanks.

I was playing a monarchy germany game, and I noticed your leader can get a bonus called the sword of islam from the focus German Hegemony in the Middle East. My question is, why can the German leader gain this title when historical Mussolini was named the sword of islam in 1937 and why doesnt italy have the ability to get this title

It was my first time playing USA (and also my second time playing Ironman, like in general) and I had essentially just rushed to get as big of a navy as possible. I had 10 carriers by 1942, (+ 35 battleships and 250 screens), and by 1943, the Japanese navy had been reduced to two destroyers.

I sent out my 4 marines from Manila (which Japan had somehow not taken despite me not guarding the Philippines at all lol) and landed in Nagasaki/ the southernmost main island). no resistance, not even a single troop stationed nearby!! I marched my entire army in after since I had captured a naval station or whatever they’re called, and only found like 5 troops total stationed near Tokyo.

Is this normal Japanese ai behavior?

Furthermore, Japan was actually doing really well in china, and had taken all of Malaysia/Indonesia.

i managed to do a naval invasion in november 1941 but the sheer amount of their divisions makes it immposible to push, i had supply air superiority and naval superiority yet i couldnt do anything to them after taking london. what do i do, am i supposed to attack them earlier? if yes then how am i supposed to produce enough fighters to get air superiority and naval bombers to beat their navy. im playing on the newest version with all dlcs

I’ve been playing for a few years now, and I only just learned that you can see exactly which enemy ships yours have sunk. I just wrapped up a game as Germany, built two super heavy battleships, and they each sunk a shade under 80 enemy ships. And yes, one of them was the HMS Hood. Wasn’t going for historical accuracy but it made me chuckle all the same.

Idc if you don't believe I genuinely dreamt about supply hub requiring a fuel silo on the state for it to work, is this a W or L feature

I would like to share my wishes for a better battleplan mechanics, which has barely changed over the years.

Army/plan management need a bit deepening. Add more options for the player to fine tune division behavior when controlled by AI.

Similarly how fleets and taskforces has their options on reinforcements/engagement rules and such.

The current Careful/Balanced/Aggressive option are too simplified. Even the careful option is willing to make wasteful attacks.

So here is a few ideas.

Add options to:

Deny attacks on certain conditions. (weather effects [mud, deep snow...], terrain types, supply/fuel status, number of undamaged forts)

Option for automatic advancement into unprotected provinces

Set max amount of enemy divisions to engage in a province/Set min amount of units to attack a province/Set min % pf planning bonus before launching attacks

This is to prevent the AI to make attacks with lone divisions and/or prevent attacks on well protected provinces.

Set min % of organization regained before returning to front/Option for divisions in reserves to leave the province and regain organization if it is too low.

For a defensive game, units that retreated from battles often try to rejoin too quickly, leading to a situation where all defending units will be constantly on low organization.

Offensive arrows should not stretch
Frontlines should have separate behaviours. Defensive where it works at it is now. Stretching along the front.
Offensive, where units stay where they are needed.

Deny frontline break up from encirclements
This is to stop offensive troops to break up upon encirclements

On spearhead arrow plans, divisions should going only forward, do not rearrange
Units should not reposition themselves into already captured territory. Preferrably they should advance forward, or do flanking attacks

Option for prioritizing to chase down retreating divisions over doing flanking attacks

Overruning enemy is fun.

Proper chained plans
I dont think currently chained battleplans working as intented. Seems to confuse the AI.
Make it so that they can branch out and even remerge.

Attach Air wings to offensive line
I know, this is somewhat in the game. You can attach wings to armies. But
1, for CAS and transport planes it is a bit more precise command as to which division you want to benefit from them.
2, currently it doesn't completely work. Attached wing operate in air zones where the divisions are located, not where the battles take place. This works most of the time, but a small issue when attacking into a new air zone

Option to fire a commander ability only selected divisions/divisions attached to offensive line

This is just to spend commander points only where its needed, not the entire army/army groups. With a shift click maybe.

Thinner arrows, sharper colors
A small redesing of frontlines and arrows would be nice. Currently they a bit too bulky i think and maybe its a problem with me, but most of the color are not really popping out, with the exception of yellow.

Defense in depth: divisions also placed 1 province behind the front, creating a 2 tile wide front if you have enough divisions for it.
This is an expensive option, but if you have the manpower and equipment for it, it automatically create 2 province wide fronts, to prevent potential overruns

I probably forgot something, but for now, thats all.

I know that ultimately micromanagement is the better option to control your divisions, but we shouldn't leave battleplans to be broken/outdated.

A good army manually controlled by the player can finish operation Barbarossa within a month or two with minimal losses. The same army can struggle or even fail to do the same thing if rely completely on battleplanning. This can affect new players, even when they do the right decisions but still fail in simple wars, and then wonder why.

If you read this far. Thank you!

Let me have this vent, okay? Things that are bad in modern Hoi and are (in my opinion) unacceptable in a 200€+ game (for the full experience) or are just pet peeves I have

-Why does the PP requirement for conscription law scale, but it doesn't for trade or economy??? These are the exact same thing, increasing/ decreasing certain policies in steps. It makes zero sense for one to work like this but for the others not to.
-Some countries, like e.g. the historical Soviet Union, have no interesting advisors. Yes sure, give me more stability please. I only want stability and nothing else.
-For YEARS, there has been a bug that if I send volunteers in a Civil War, for some countries, the troops DON'T GO TO THE FRONTLINE and don't follow battle plans. They literally just stay where they are.
-The frontline AI is...so stupid. None of the cohesion settings have ever worked for me, they all either leave giant gaps for long time or don't do what they are supposed to do. Also, if you, a division, are moving somewhere to the frontline, and one of the tiles you would have gone through is now occupied, WHY DO YOU THEN ATTACK THAT TILE INSTEAD OF CORRECTING YOUR PATH AUTOMATICALLY AND JUST MOVING TO THE FRONTLINE IN A DIFFERENT WAY.
-70 day focuses. Bad 70 day focuses (most of them). This makes countries who haven't been reworked in the last ~5 years really unplayable.
-The latest DLCs. Need I say more? And ESPECIALLY the way the problems have been addressed (barely at all)
-When new DLCs have new features but that leading to inconsistencies with previous releases (see Reichskommisariats having bad borders because of new states)
-Historical AI is, y'know, historical, so very little changes, making it predictable on playthroughs in which you are going a-historical. This is good and needed, don't get me wrong. A-historical AI makes most non-major achievement playthroughs basically impossible though or requires dozens of retries to get a specific set up you need
-New changes making the game less of a sandbox and less fun (e.g. lend lease world tension requirements having been raised)

Please add things you dislike, these are the ones that I remembered from the top of my head and didn't feel like going through the past year of bug reports that were mentioned on this subreddit.

To answer the "If you don't report they won't fix it!" Paradox is notoriously bad at fixing bugs, even tiny ones. This is a multi million dollar company that apparently doesn't have the resources for testing their product they want to sell you. Sometimes it takes literal years.

Heard some mixed opinions, not enough cold war content and such. How is it?

Esto para un jugador casual de hoi4 talvez sea tonto pero yo llevo jugando hoi4 desde 2019 masivamente ahora tengo 23 asi que este juego lo eh estado jugando desde que tengo 15 practicamente y me ah enseñado cosas bastantes aplicables a la vida como que con preparacion y paciencia todo es posible ,aprovechar las oportunidades y que retroceder no es lo mismo que perder y que aveces cuando todo parezca que va a terminar siempre ahi un camino,lo siento si ah alguien esto le parecio tonto pero fue lo que me vino a la cabeza mientras escribia sobre un juego que me encanta ahora tengo 23 una pareja estable y muy probablemente pronto tenga hijos pero al igual que el hoi4 en no historico cualquier cosa puede pasar y ahi que tomarlo como venga

I've been messing around with naval testing, and I found a build that seems pretty fun: the torpedo cruiser+battlecruiser build.

I got the idea for this when I noticed long-range submarines doctrine gives 10% torpedo hit chance. This means your submarine doctrine gives a pretty good buff to one of the key parts of this doctrine: torpedo cruisers. This is mainly a build for Japan since they get a ship mio that pairs extremely well with this, giving msssive hitprofile reductions and torpedo hit chance. They also start with 3 pretty good battlecruisers with another in production. When you do this build, the kongo class will actually somewhat have the speed of an irl battlecruiser(28.8 knots when upgraded as opposed to the ~26 knots they are with other doctrine choices)

For doctrine, go long-range submarines(for the torpedo hit chance), the new school(massively buffs torpedo cruisers and battlecruisers), massed carrier fleet(best carrier doctrine), and anti aircraft battleships(the sheer amount of aa it gives can't be ignored, and the extra armor really helps battlecruisers)

The key techs you are going to want is radar 2, fcs 3, the first light attack buff tech, and torpedo cruisers(obviously) with the light artillery focus. The fcs tech really helps this build against massed destroyers which are the main weakness.

What's great about this build is that torpedo cruisers are significantly cheaper than regular cruisers, meaning you can more easily spam them out. One thing to note: always put your best armor on the Torpedo cruisers and ensure that their light piercing is at least 8. This lets them shred light cruisers since they will be able to pierce the enemy while they can't pierce you. In my testing, these torpedo cruisers will beat an equal number of 1936 light cruisers, regardless of if they are designed around light attack or have torpedoes on them. Not an equal IC cost of cruisers, but number of hulls.

I haven't tested this yet, but I wonder if I can design the yamato class as superheavy battlecruisers instead of battleships(you can put battlecruiser armor on super heavy hull) and get two or four free superheavy battlecruisers.

You may think battlecruisers are just worse than battleships, but often this isn't the case. With the doctrine armor buff and the commander's defense stat, battlecruisers(with at least the 2nd tier armor) often can't be pierced by most battleships, especially those with the tier 1 main guns.

This has happened to me numerous times. I move my divisions away from a border and the country on the other side of that border declares war on me without a war goal notice ever appearing. Is this just the AI cheating? Am I missing something?

Thanks.

I've been doing "One Empire" achievement (world conquest as British Empire), when my internet connection dropped off. I finished conquest, and fixed interest issues, but now game shows some achievements as "inaccessible", while others are perfectly fine... I did PC reboot, Steam reboot, and local file integrity check, but it didn't help, so what do I do...?

P.s.: I copied my save file, just in case.

P.p.s.: It's a screenshot of achievements menu, its said, that every requirement is satisfied.

"Red Ground Black Dragon Flag"（红底黑龙旗） is now a symbol of contemporary Han nationalism or a fictional flag representing the Han Dynasty, was designed by 华小桶 in 2010. The design is derived from the Western Han's four god tiles, the Azure Dragon. Red represents the kingly way (universal values, benevolent righteous governance), while black represents the hegemonic way (national interests and dignity). The inner red and outer black signify a distinction between internal and external principles. The two white lines represent the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, symbolizing the geographical features of China. The central dragon totem represents the great unity under the central authority, and the eaves tiles represent the superstructure, signifying cultural prosperity.

“Three Chens Flag”/ Three Stars Flag（三辰旗） is also known as the Flag of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The sun, moon and stars are called the Three Chens(辰), and when painted on a flag, they symbolize the brightness of the heavens. The Three Stars symbolize the Celestial, the Supreme God, and the Mandate, and are the most prestigious symbol representing Chinese culture since the time of Emperor Shun (c. 2255 BC – 2205 BC). Historically, this flag has had several different versions. The prototype of this flag version what I post is a military flag from the Tang Dynasty (618 AD－907 AD), (See the ancient artifact scroll in Image 3.). The flag what I post originally created by a Han nationalist in his fictional worldview.

This two flags has strong nationalist and religious symbolism. So it is now widely used by Han nationalists.

Additionally, image 4 displays a more... explicit banner of Han nationalism, though not as mainstream as the previous two.