Hearts of Iron IV – 41st Development Diary – 22nd of January 2016

Hello, and welcome to the 41st development diary for Hearts of Iron IV.
In HoI4, we call our basic military unit for a division, even if it may be as small as a single battalion, or as large 30 battalions. These can be grouped into what we call Armies. They have been referred to as command groups in the past, but that concept was a bit confusing. An Army is the entity which interacts with battleplans, and be given a commander. You can have as many armies as you want, but you need at least 1 division in each. Each Army can be named to whatever you want it to be.
Armies are organised in Theatres, which is a convenient aspect to group divisions according to your needs. Theatres do not have a specific area they cover, but besides giving a proper UI for quick access and a reference name, you can also define the reinforcement priority for that theatre compared to others.

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There are two levels of commanders that can be assigned to armies, generals and field marshals. They both have skill levels that grow as they gain experience, which impacts the abilties of the divisions to fight.
The commanders also have traits, which can be gained if they fullfill some relevant criteria while fighting. Progress in trait gaining is tracked, and when they reach 100%, the trait is activated.
However, a commander can only have 5 traits, so they won’t catch them all.

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A general can command up to 12 divisions while giving them the full benefit of their skill and traits. They can always be promoted to a field marshal, but will then lose all their specific traits and 1 level of skill.
Generals can have the following traits.

  • Trickster: Divisions get +25% better recon.
  • Winter Specialist: Divisions takes 50% less attrition during Winter.
  • Engineer: Divisions have +10% Attack when crossing a river.
  • Fortress Buster: Divisions have +20% Attack when attacking a fort.
  • Panzer Leader: Armored Divisons move 5% faster, and have +10% in attack.
  • Commando: Divisions Out of Supply is impact at 50%
  • Desert Fox: Divisions move 5% faster in desert terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Swamp Fox: Divisions move 5% faster in marsh terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Mountaineer: Divisions move 5% faster in mountain terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Hill Fighter: Divisions move 5% faster in hill terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Jungle Rat: Divisions move 5% faster in jungle terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Ranger: Divisions move 5% faster in forest terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Urban Assault: Divisions move 5% faster in urban terrain, and fight 10% better.
  • Naval Invader: Divisions prepare 30% faster for naval invasions, and perform them 30% faster

Field Marshals have no command limit, and command armies of any size, and they have the following possible traits.

  • Logistics Wizard: Divisions have 20% less supply consumption
  • Offensive Doctrine: Divisions have 10% less Combat Width.
  • Defensive Doctrine: Divisions can get 30% higher entrenchment.
  • Fast Planner: Divisions Plan 10% faster.
  • Throrough Planner: Divisions can get 50% higher maximum planning bonus.
  • Organisational commander: Divisions have +2% Hourly Reinforce Chance
  • Inspirational commander: Divisons have 10% Higher Morale

And of course, both of them have the Old Guard trait, which reduces experience gain by 25%, which is a rather bad trait.
Next week, we’ll take a deep look at Japan.

Hearts of Iron IV – 40th Development Diary – 15th of January 2016

Seb: Today is the 166th anniversary of the birth of the national poet of Romania: Mihai Eminescu.
Welcome to another development diary for Hearts of Iron IV. This week we look at some of the changes that has been done to the game lately.
In December, we completely revised how you get factory slots in the game, as the previous system of three different caps, depending on hidden formulas for manpower & infrastructure was too obtuse for players, and impossible to balance.

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Now the system is much more clear. Each state is set to a regiontype, which defines the basic amount of factory slots it has. Then we have various national focuses which will add to the cap of factory slots in a state, and finally there are various techs that give percentage bonus to how many factories a state can have.

Megalopolis Region        12
Metropolis Region         10
Dense Urban Region         8
Urban Region               6
Sparse Urban Region        5
Developed Rural Region     4
Rural Region               2
Pastoral Region            1
Enclave                    0
Tiny Island                0
Wasteland                  0

Some examples: Svealand is an urban region, Amazonas a wasteland, and Greater London Area is a Megalopolis Region. Gibraltar is an enclave, and Gotland is a small island.
We also changed the State mapmode to colorise the states depending on which regions they belong to.

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World Tension was introduced back in the 16th development diary. It was then just a number in the topbar, with a clunky tooltip explaining it. Now it has a graphical indication as well, and opens up a detailed window, where you can view all active impacts on World Tension, and sort them.

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Next week, we’ll talk about command groups and also about leader traits.