铁之心IV

Generals!

High Command is aware that certain war correspondents have, in recent days, taken it upon themselves to question senior staff. Studio Manager Gorion and Game Director Batya were located, escorted without incident down to the Bunker, and placed before the cameras for a thorough round of questioning regarding the future conduct of this campaign.

Four dispatches have been filed. Review them ASAP.

Dismissed!

Hi all, it's time for the next Dev Corner.

I'm Jamor. I started as a producer on Stellaris, Imperator, and other games back in 2017, and now I'm happy to be back as a designer on HOI. Hearts of Iron 2 was my first PDS game, and I've had a lifelong obsession with the story of this most fascinating time period in history. It's an honour to be able to contribute to something so close to my heart.

One of my goals for a future release is to improve airborne troops in HOI. Although they’ve been in the game since launch, they have a number of practical issues that limit their use:

• Airborne jumps are queued up by a number of tedious manual steps, from separately planned operations, the finicky process of getting jump capable troops to the same place as their transports, then the rather nebulous process of waiting for the right amount of air superiority to accrue so they will finally jump. Then, you leap completely blind into the unknown.

• Airborne units teleport on to their objectives, in such a subtle way that it's quite easy for both attacker and defender to not notice it has even happened.

• Airborne troops take such ruinous damage and disorganization that they are incredibly feeble once landed, being generally only suited for the sort of highly gamified VP sniping attacks that gets them widely restricted in many multiplayer groups.

• And the final straw for me, that a unit like the 101st Airborne, an ultra-elite division of 10,000+ men containing the cream of the army and famous for numerous high profile battles IRL, can be deleted outright by a single bad drop. Kinda anticlimactic and disheartening to see Capt. Winters, his men, 26 other rifle companies plus all the divarty, engineers, and everything else in that awesome division just disappear in one tick because of a mechanically limited system.

Let’s tackle this in two parts:

• What issues with airborne troops would you add to this list?

• What would you like to see changed or added to improve the HOI airborne experience?

Please let me know in the comments!

Good to know: The difference between a Dev Diary and a Dev Corner
By now (most of you) you will know that we have two main types of Developer post:

Developer Diaries

• Start appearing closer to release

• Give you more detailed insight into content that’s more or less finished and is being polished

• Will generally include a plethora of images and screenshots

• Give you a chance to ask our developers questions, and perhaps even let us know if there’s anything glaringly obvious we missed

• (and may still have time to either fix quickly, or already start planning to include in a future Patch; being a Day-x, Hotfix or a War Effort.)

Developer Corners, like this one, serve a different purpose.
They:

• Need your feedback, specific to the Dev Corner

• Should be short and to the point

• May or may not include any images

• May generally give you some idea of something that might come in future content, but it’s not guaranteed

• Are not usually planned far ahead. Instead, if at any point any developer has something they want to get feedback on, we’ll pick an upcoming weekly slot, usually a Tuesday or a Thursday

Generals!

Hello, I’m Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and I want to welcome you to the first update of the Open Beta SE™ (Not really trademarked). To avoid writing too much, and boring everyone to the death, as I am fairly sure - you will likely skip to the patch notes section anyways.

For those that are not skipping immediately to the patch notes, I want to say thanks everyone for sharing your feedback and opinions, and engaging in discussions with me, that was incredibly helpful!

Now this update may contain even more of the highly experimental changes, so stay tuned, and look through the patch notes to look for them. They will likely (if I will not forget) be either mentioned in the developer commentary in regards to them, that they are experimental changes, or directly next to it. Anyways, that’s it for this update.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, Farewell!

/Zwirbaum

How to join this Open Beta:

This beta client is Operation Postern v1.19.2.0.4cba (a448)

To install Open Beta client, follow the instruction below:

• Right-click the game in your library

• Select Properties from the drop-down menu

• Select Game Versions & Betas

• Select the beta branch called open_beta

If you are already on the Open Beta client, you should get an update automatically.

Finally, to report any issues you find, in relation to this beta, please use the bug report forum and make sure to include the version you’re using. That way our Jira won’t go nuts trying to figure out what bug report belongs to what.

Open Beta SE™ Update 1 Notes

Developer Commentary: In this section I will write what has specifically changed since the last update:

Gameplay

• (EXPERIMENTAL) When switching Subdoctrines you retain now 25% of the invested mastery in that Subdoctrine, into the new Subdoctrine.

Developer Commentary: This is one of the new experimental features. As we have heard that the new doctrine system as opposed to our intention turned out to be a bit more rigid in how switching of the Subdoctrines turned out to be, we are now experimenting with new base value of 25% of retainment (on top of the reserved bank if you had any). There is also a new modifier related to it, that can increase or decrease the amount of retainment. Base Value is set in the 00_defines.lua. The new strings and modifiers are only localized in English for now - as this is an experimental feature that is not guaranteed to stay.

• Fixed Superstructures now also prevent from putting one category bigger guns on the Amphibious Tanks. E.g. Light Amphibious Tanks can no longer mount Medium Cannons.

Developer Commentary: This means that Amphibious Tanks should follow the same restrictions their land family members have to adhere to. This may have some negative effects on your game, if you already were using such a combination, HOWEVER unless you re-open it, they should work and once again SHOULD NOT cause any crash.

Balance

• Experimental Facilities now benefit from the Infrastructure bonus for the construction speed

• Experience bonus to combat for Land Units has been reduced by 5%. Green Divisions now have -15% Combat Penalty, Trained have 0%, Regulars have +15%, Seasoned +30% and Veterans have +45%.

Developer Commentary: This should be the final step in adjusting the stacking modifiers from the experience for now. However this doesn't mean we won't be looking in the future when it comes to how the experience is gained by land units, how much they lose, and how easy or hard it is to retain any meaningful amount of experience in the units.

• Secondary Turret HMG now provides also -4% Soft Attack Penalty

• Secondary Turret Small Cannon now provides also -5% Soft Attack Penalty AND -5% Hard Attack Penalty.

Developer Commentary: This effectively means that the more secondary turrets you will install on your tanks, the less benefits you will be drawing from your multi-turreted monsters. Also because it is a multiplicative penalty it means that the more the game progresses, the less effective those turrets will become.

• Breakthrough Penalty on the Heavy Howitzer, Rocket Launcher and Improved Rocket Launcher reduced to -2 from -4.

Developer Commentary: This change is to make sure that no equipment has a negative (by easy combination of modules and chassis) breakthrough, which then counterintuitively anything that was increasing breakthrough would also increase that penalty, and anything penalizing breakthrough would lower penalty.

• Reverted Self-Propelled Artillery Combat Width Change (It is back to 2)

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Soft Attack bonus from +15% to +5%

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Hard Attack by 10%

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Soft-Attack Progression from Artillery Technologies (Anything more than 5% was reduced to 5%, 5% boosts became 2.5%)

• Tank Destroyers Piercing bonus got reduced from 15% to 5%

• Tank Destroyers Soft Attack reduced by 10%

• Tank Destroyers and Tank Destroyer Regimental Support Progression from Technologies got reduced, including Bofors Technology.

Developer Commentary: This together with reverting combat width change to the Self-Propelled Artillery is a slightly different approach when it comes to trying to balance out the armor variants and their regular counterparts. While this will reintroduce some power back, it should not have overbearing impact

• Massed Strike Air Spirit - Air Superiority Effect has been increased from +10% to +15%

• Helicopter Logistics Company base Supply Reduction has been increased to -15%

• Helicopter Logistics Company Supply Reductions from Technology have been increased to -15% per technology. Using Helicopter Logistics at maximum level will now provide -60%

• Engineer III - Flame Tank bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +10% to +5%

• Engineer IV - Flame Tank bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +10% to +5%

• Engineer IV - Assault Engineers bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +15% to +10%

• Armored Car Equipment Cost reduced from 3.5 / 5.5 / 7.5 / 8.5 IC, to 3 / 4.5 / 6 / 7.5

Doctrine Balance - Land Doctrines

• Infiltration Tactics Adoption Bonus increased from +5% Planning Bonus to +10% Planning Bonus

• Infiltration Tactics 3 Reward, Daily Command Power Bonus increased from +0.01 to +0.1.

• Desperate Defense can ALSO be adopted if a country has at least 10% Surrender Progress AND at least 50% War Support. In other words additional options to adopt this Subdoctrine have been added. Further tweaks to this adoption requirements will likely happen in the future

• Flying Batteries 1 Reward: It now also gives +5% Soft Attack and +10% Breakthrough to the Units previously affected by this milestone

• Flying Batteries 5 Reward: It now also gives +5% Soft Attack and +10% Defense to the Units previously affected by this milestone

Doctrine Balance - Naval Doctrines

• Anti-Aircraft Cruiser Adoption Bonus: Reduced Naval AA bonus from +20% to +10%. Added +10% Armor Bonus to Heavy Cruisers

• Anti-Aircraft Cruiser 4 Reward: Bonus to Destroyer Anti-Air reduced to 10% and Light Attack to +5%

• Patrol Boats 2 Reward: Bonus to Torpedo Attack reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 1 Reward: Bonus to Torpedo Attack reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 3 Reward: Bonus to Depth Charges for Destroyers reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 4 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection to Destroyers reduced to 15%

• Torpedo Primacy 5 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection to Heavy Cruisers reduced to 10%

• Hunter Killer Groups 1 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection increased to 20%

• Hunter Killer Groups 3 Reward: Bonus to Depth Charges increased to 20%

• Light Task Forces 3 Reward: Bonus to Destroyers for Light Attack and Light Piercing reduced to +5%

AI

• Increased the strength ratio when the AI decides it should send it to be set at 75% instead of previously 65%. This means AI should hopefully be able to maintain a healthier balance between when their fleets and taskforces are operating and when they should be sent for repair. We will continue to monitor the situation on the naval fronts.

Open Beta SE™ Aggregated Notes

Developer Commentary: In this section, you will be able to find a total set of all changes.

Gameplay

• Battalion Adjusters now scale with the Equipment and Manpower status of the Sub-Unit. E.g. Super Heavy Artillery with Siege Artillery Sub-Doctrine no longer gives Army wide Soft-Attack Bonus due to the sheer force of will and imagination.

• Added Essential (Equipment) Blocks for the following units: Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company, Light Flame Tank, Medium Flame Tank, Heavy Flame Tank, Headquarters Staff, Engineer Staff, Reconnaissance Staff, Military Police Staff, Maintenance Planning Staff, Hospital Group Staff, Logistics & Service Staff, Signal & Intelligence Staff, Naval Liaison Staff, Forward Air Controller, Special Operations Coordination

• Adjusted Essential (Equipment) Blocks for the following units: Helicopter Med-Evac, Helicopter Transports

Developer Commentary: First change should fix the unintended player behavior when adding certain units for their Battalion Adjusters, like Super Heavy Artillery and then turning off the usage of such equipment and still getting the benefit of the modifiers from Siege Artillery. And even if players did not intend to abuse the system, any losses suffered from combat/attrition would not apply any effect to that Battalion Adjusters. Second change is that there were quite a number of units that because they lacked essential equipment defined that would result in them not scaling their modifiers and effects due to the potential lack of equipment. Tank Crews riding in pretend Flame Tanks will no longer confer the sense of bravery and invincibility that would let them attack enemy fortifications or cities at ease.

NEW NOTE(S)

• (EXPERIMENTAL) When switching Subdoctrines you retain now 25% of the invested mastery in that Subdoctrine, into the new Subdoctrine.

Developer Commentary: This is one of the new experimental features. As we have heard that the new doctrine system as opposed to our intention turned out to be a bit more rigid in how switching of the Subdoctrines turned out to be, we are now experimenting with new base value of 25% of retainment (on top of the reserved bank if you had any). There is also a new modifier related to it, that can increase or decrease the amount of retainment. Base Value is set in the 00_defines.lua. The new strings and modifiers are only localized in English for now - as this is an experimental feature that is not guaranteed to stay.

Balance

• Superior Tactician Admiral Trait now provides +15% Positioning Bonus instead of +25%

• Surface Detection Impact on the positioning has been reduced from maximum +25% to +15%

• Admiral Maneuver Skill impact on the positioning has been reduced from +2.5% per level to +1.5% per level.

• Admiral Maneuver Skill impact on naval retreat speed has been increased from +1% per level to +2% per level.

Developer Commentary: Positioning while exists as an interesting concept, in practice it was way too easy to counter-act massive doom stacks by just various plethora of the modifiers providing a lot of positioning benefits. This should give a bit more of a breathing space for the natural positioning penalties to occur and happen in-game. As the Naval Combat is already quite deadly, and retreating ships have hard time to disengage from the combat, increasing the speed with which ships can retreat could help save a couple ships here and there. This change is of a more experimental nature.

• Combat Bonus from division experience decreased from 25% to 20%. Green Divisions now have -20% Combat Penalty, Trained have 0%, Regulars have +20%, Seasoned +40% and Veterans have +60%.

• Combat Bonus from division experience decreased from 25% to 15%. Green Divisions now have -15% Combat Penalty, Trained have 0%, Regulars have +15%, Seasoned +30% and Veterans have +45%.

Developer Commentary: Experience bonus to the Land Units resulted in a massive boost to their combat capabilities as all modifiers during combat are multiplicative with each other depending if they belong from 'different source' that 75% bonus could result in a massive sway of the effective stats. This is a relatively modest reduction, but we may explore squishing that effect a bit or reworking it to have non-linear progression in the future.

• Air Crew Surveys Air Spirit Mastery gain for individual tracks got combined into Air Doctrine Mastery gain Factor.

• Dive Bombing Air Spirit CAS Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Strike Aircraft Mastery Track gain Factor.

• Material Destruction Air Spirit Medium Airframe Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Medium Aircraft Mastery gain Factor.

• Industrial Destruction Air Spirit Heavy Airframe Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Heavy Aircraft Mastery gain Factor.

Developer Commentary: The goal of changing the Design Cost reductions on them is to replace: pay the air XP in order to potentially save some air XP down the line when designing more planes. However with the current amount of air XP incoming from the combat and missions, there is rarely a situation where as a player you feel starved out on the Air XP - in order to make a design, and if you really can't make a design, then paying those 50 Air XP upfront isn't helping with that goal either. Hopefully giving them a more dedicated and focused effect on the specific mastery track will make them somewhat more competitive. I will monitor feedback on this one as well - so depending on the feedback we may see doing further adjustments or going back to the original one.

• Increased naval targeting values for naval bombers for fully screened capitals from 10 to 15

• Increased naval targeting values for naval bombers for fully screened carriers from 10 to 25

Developer Commentary: One of the changes we did with the No Compromise, No Surrender release was to equalize the base weights for all ships when it comes to being picked as targets by the Naval Bombers, when screening value is 100%, and the old prioritization would be kicking in when the screening efficiency depending on how much screening was missing. While targeting would also take into the account strength of the ships (their HP, making Battleships even with equal base weights technically being a bit more of a viable target than 'Early Destroyer') - the result, especially with the meta depending on spam of the masses of the destroyers, would make them rarely targeted. The old behaviour where Carriers and Capitals ships being almost always prioritized with full precision, was not ideal either. Hopefully with this change, or a couple more tweaks, we will still have a possibility where all damage is NOT focused on big ships, but also isn't fully soaked by the screens either, resulting in a more spread out damage across the fleets and the taskforces. Carriers performance and their planes during naval battles should also hopefully get better results.

• Continuous Strike Air Spirit - Air Support Efficiency bonus has been reduced from 25% to 15%.

• Massed Strike Air Spirit - Air Superiority Effect has been increased from +5% to +10%

• Massed Strike Air Spirit - Air Superiority Effect has been increased from +5% to +15%

• Support Artillery now has -50% to Soft Attack, Hard Attack, Defense and Breakthrough from previous -40%

• Support Rocket Artillery now has -50% to Soft Attack, Hard Attack, Defense and Breakthrough from previous -40%

• Support Anti-Air now requires 24 equipment pieces from the previous 20

• Motorized Anti-Air now belongs to the Anti-Air Unit Category

• Anti-Air Unit Category has been renamed to Anti-Air Artillery Support & Line

Developer Commentary: This renaming will be only localized in English for now, if we will go further with these changes, we will localize it properly for all the languages.

• Anti-Tank 1940 Technology no longer provides randomly Motorized Anti-Tank with +10% Piercing and +10% Hard Attack

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Artillery Combat Width increased from 2 to 3

• Naval, Land and Air Facilities cost has been lowered from 12000 to 10000. Scaling cost per facility has been increased from 5000 to 6000. This means that the first and second will be cheaper (10000 and 16000 vs 12000 and 17000). The third one will have the same cost, while starting with the fourth of the same type, they will become more and more expensive. This should make entering the world of Special Projects easier for smaller & less well developed nations. Nuclear Facility will remain at the current premium cost for now.

• Improved Amphibious Designs now reduce Amtrac production cost by 10% instead of 15%

• Helicopter Brigade and Helicopter Logistics now will have a proper Fuel Consumption instead of having -100%

NEW NOTE(S)

• Experimental Facilities now benefit from the Infrastructure bonus for the construction speed

• Secondary Turret HMG now provides also -4% Soft Attack Penalty

• Secondary Turret Small Cannon now provides also -5% Soft Attack Penalty AND -5% Hard Attack Penalty.

Developer Commentary: This effectively means that the more secondary turrets you will install on your tanks, the less benefits you will be drawing from your multi-turreted monsters. Also because it is a multiplicative penalty it means that the more the game progresses, the less effective those turrets will become.

• Breakthrough Penalty on the Heavy Howitzer, Rocket Launcher and Improved Rocket Launcher reduced to -2 from -4.

Developer Commentary: This change is to make sure that no equipment has no negative (by easy combination of modules and chassis) breakthrough, which then counterintuitively anything that was increasing breakthrough would also increase that penalty, and anything penalizing breakthrough would lower penalty.

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Soft Attack bonus from +15% to +5%

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Hard Attack by 10%

• Reduced Self-Propelled Artillery Soft-Attack Progression from Artillery Technologies (Anything more than 5% was reduced to 5%, 5% boosts became 2.5%)

• Tank Destroyers Piercing bonus got reduced from 15% to 5%

• Tank Destroyers Soft Attack reduced by 10%

• Tank Destroyers and Tank Destroyer Regimental Support Progression from Technologies got reduced, including Bofors Technology.

Developer Commentary: This together with reverting combat width change to the Self-Propelled Artillery is a slightly different approach when it comes to trying to balance out the armor variants and their regular counterparts. While this will reintroduce some power back, it should not have overbearing impact

• Massed Strike Air Spirit - Air Superiority Effect has been increased from +10% to +15%

• Helicopter Logistics Company base Supply Reduction has been increased to -15%

• Helicopter Logistics Company Supply Reductions from Technology have been increased to -15% per technology. Using Helicopter Logistics at maximum level will now provide -60%

• Engineer III - Flame Tank bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +10% to +5%

• Engineer IV - Flame Tank bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +10% to +5%

• Engineer IV - Assault Engineers bonus to attack in the Urban Terrain reduced from +15% to +10%

• Armored Car Equipment Cost reduced from 3.5 / 5.5 / 7.5 / 8.5 IC, to 3 / 4.5 / 6 / 7.5

Regimental Support Companies Balance

• Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company Organization has been increased from 20 to 30.

• Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company Max Strength has been increased from 0.4 to 0.6

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery Equipment needed was increased from 4 to 6

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery stat adjustments have been normalized and are now -75% to Defense, Breakthrough, Soft and Hard Attack. (Previously it was (-80%, -60%, -70%, -60%)

• Anti–Air Battery Equipment needed was increased from 12 to 16 and Manpower needed from 120 to 180

• Anti-Air Battery Breakthrough, Soft Attack and Hard Attack penalties were lowered to -60% from -80%

• Anti-Tank Battery Manpower needed was increased from 120 to 180

• Soft Attack penalty from Anti-Tank battery has been lowered from -80% to -60%

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Tank Destroyer Regimental Support units are for now excluded from the 'Tank Destroyer' category. They still benefit from the Tank Destroyer Regimental Support category.

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Tank Destroyer Regimental Support units now require 15 Tank Destroyers instead of the previous 10. For now I will refer to them as TD-RS (Tank Destroyer Regimental Support)

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support units are for now excluded from the 'Self-Propelled Anti-Air Artillery' category. They still benefit from Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support category

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support units now require 15 Self-Propelled Anti-Air instead of the previous 10. For now I will refer to them as SPAA-RS (Self-Propelled Anti Air Regimental Support)

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Fuel Consumption for them has been increased from 33% of the equipment to 40% of the equipment

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Armor Value reduced from -33% to -66%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Defense lowered from -25% to -50%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Soft-Attack lowered from -33% to -66%

• SPAA-RS: Air Attack reduced from -15% to -25% and Hard Attack from -33% to -66%

• TD-RS: Hard Attack reduced from -33% to -50%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Artillery Technologies impact on them for Hard Attack and Air Attack has been lowered by half after the full tech tree progression (From +30% Hard / Air Attack on them lowered to +15%)

Developer Commentary: Regimental Support Companies have been vastly overperforming when it comes to both their contribution in the pure stats, and especially compared to their low economical requirements. After this balance they should feel less overpowered and be closer in-line with what should be expected out of them. This doesn't rule out any further tweaks to them. Also for the time being the armored regimental support companies will be excluded from the main Tank Destroyer and Self-Propelled Anti-Air unit categories to make sure that the buffs aimed at those regimental support companies will be adjusted and tweaked separately, giving more control over what and in what magnitude each buff is applied to. Main Categories will likely be renamed to indicate that they refer to: Battalions, or 'Line Units'.

• Infantry Guns no longer get benefits from Infantry Support Weapons research, and instead get their benefits from Artillery tech tree improvements.

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery scaling effect with technologies has been reduced. (+5% Soft Attack for the Infantry Guns per Artillery Technology, +10% Soft Attack for Rocket Batteries from Rocket Artillery technologies, and +5% Soft Attack from the Improved Guidance). Infantry Guns no longer have Defense boost from the Technologies.

Line Artillery Balance

• Artillery, Motorized Artillery, Rocket Artillery, Motorized Rocket Artillery, Truck Drawn Rocket Artillery, Anti-Tank, Motorized Anti-Tank, Anti-Air, Motorized Anti-Air Max Strength increased from 0.6 to 0.8

• Artillery Equipment I stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Soft Attack +1 (from 25 to 26), Defense +1 (from 10 to 11), Breakthrough +4 (6 to 10)

• Artillery Equipment II stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Breakthrough +6 (from 7 to 13), Hard Attack +1 (from 2 to 3), Piercing +2 (from 5 to 7)

• Artillery Equipment III stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Breakthrough +8 (from 8 to 16), Defense +1 (from 18 to 19), Hard Attack +2 (from 2 to 4), Piercing +4 (from 5 to 9)

• Rocket Artillery Equipment I stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 12 to 13), Breakthrough +8 (from 9 to 17), Soft Attack +2 (from 30 to 32)

• Rocket Artillery Equipment II stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 15 to 16), Breakthrough +8 (from 12 to 20), Soft Attack +2 (from 38 to 40)

• Motorized Rocket Artillery Equipment stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 15 to 16), Breakthrough +8 (from 12 to 20)

Developer Commentary: This is our starting point to increase the viability of the Line Artillery. We have heard and thought about various different approaches for making them more viable, including lowering their Combat Width from 3 to 2. However in the current environment where Regimental Support Companies, and all the various imbalances did exist, and the excessive 'stat' bloat as it was called was present - we have decided for now against taking that step. To make the presence of the Artillery - be a more viable tool in providing the combat stats other than Attack values (mainly Breakthrough), which should make Infantry supported by the Artillery a little bit more viable on the attack. We will continue working and tweaking on the Line Artillery to find the right spot for it.

Doctrine Balance - Land Doctrines

• Mobile Infantry 1 Reward: Cavalry Recon now receives bonus 10% to Defence and Breakthrough

• Mobile Infantry 3 Reward: Lowered Soft Attack Bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries from +15% to +10%, now also increases Defense and Breakthrough by 5%

• Mobile Infantry 5 Reward: Motorized Heavy Weapons Company gets +10 Organization from +5

• Defensive Postures 1 Reward: Heavy Weapons Company now also receives +0.2 Entrenchment

• Defensive Postures 4 Reward: Soft Attack bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries reduced to 10%

• Assault Infantry Adoption Bonus: Bonus to Support Artillery attack has been increased from +10% to +20%

• Assault Infantry 1 Reward: Bonus to Infantry Guns removed

• Assault Infantry 2 Reward: Bonus to Anti-Tank Battery and Anti-Air Battery reduced from +10% to +5% (Hard Attack, Piercing, Air Attack)

• Mounted Infantry 4 Reward: +0.05 HP to Mounted Infantry unit category was replaced with the battalion adjusters to the Cavalry Recon to give +5 flat HP to the Mounted Infantry

• Mounted Infantry 4 Reward: Reduced the Speed Bonus to Cavalry Recon and Cavalry to +40% (for a total of 8 kph instead of the previous 8.4 kph)

• Mounted Infantry 5 Reward: Increased Speed Bonus to Artillery, Anti-Air, Anti-Tank and Rocket Artillery to +100% (for a total of 8 kph)

• People's Militia 2 Reward: Infantry Guns Soft Attack bonus reduced from 15% to 10%. Infantry Guns now get +10% Breakthrough

• People's Militia 3 Reward: Now requires 50 Mastery like the other rewards in this doctrine.

• Great War Infantry 3 Reward: Support Artillery now provides +10% Bonus to Breakthrough to Leg Infantry from previous +5%

• Great War Infantry 3 Reward: Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery now provides +10% Soft Attack bonus instead of +20%

• Great War Infantry 5 Reward: Now also provides +5 Max Entrenchment

• Fire Concentration Adoption Bonus: +5% Defense bonus to Line Artillery changed to +10% Breakthrough bonus

• Fire Concentration 1 Reward: +5% Defense bonus to Line Artillery changed to +10% Breakthrough bonus

• Fire Concentration 3 Reward: +10% Breakthrough Bonus to Line Artillery and Support Artillery changed to +10% Defense Bonus and +5% Soft Attack Bonus increased to +10%. Bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries removed.

• Fire Concentration 5 Reward: Bonus to Artillery and Rocket Artillery removed. Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries now get +10% Defense and +10% Breakthrough

• Anti-Tank Frontline 1 Reward: Bonus to Anti-Tank Battery brought in-line with Line Anti-Tank. Anti-Tank Support now also receives the same bonus.

• Flying Batteries 1 Reward: Motorized Heavy Weapons Company removed from the reward

• Flying Batteries 3 Reward: Armored Signal Company now provides +0.2 Strength (from 0.8 to 1) to Line Artillery.

• Air Cavalry 2 Reward: 0.03 HP bonus is now being replaced with Maintenance Company Battalion Adjuster to the Helicopter Support Companies, giving +0.5 HP to each

• Mobile Recon and Support 5 Reward: Breakthrough bonus to TD-RS and SPAA-RS changed to +5% Hard Attack and +5% Air Attack respectively

• Self-Propelled Support Adoption Bonus: Soft Attack bonus reduced to +5%, Air-Attack bonus reduced to +5%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 2: Soft Attack bonus provided by Recon units reduced to +5%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 3: Speed Bonus reduced to +10% from +30%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 4: TD-RS and SPAA-RS now get +5% Hard Attack and +5% Air Attack respectively, and +5 Organization

• Siege Artillery 2 Reward: Plains Movement bonus to Super Heavy Artillery and Self-Propelled Super Heavy Artillery replaced with 0.1 Recovery Rate

• Siege Artillery 4 Reward: Urban Bonus Attack reduced from +20% to +10%, and added Urban Defence Bonus of +10%. Soft Attack bonus to Infantry Guns & Rocket Battery reduced from +10% to +5%

• Armored Spearhead 3 Reward: SPAA-RS Organization bonus reduced from +10 to +5

• Armored Infantry Support 2 Reward: Piercing Bonus removed for TD-RS

• Armored Infantry Support 5 Reward: Air Attack reduced to +5% and removed Organization Bonus

• Mobile Defense 3 Reward: Air Attack for SPAA-RS removed

• Mobile Defense 4 Reward: TD-RS Organization bonus increased to +10, other benefits to TD-RS removed

• Tank Destroyer Force 5 Reward: TD-RS other benefits than the Organization were removed for them.

• Mission Type Tactics Adoption Bonus: Daily Command Power gain has been increased from +0.02 to +0.2

Developer Commentary: This is likely just a start of tweaking the doctrines. We may see doing a bigger balance pass or some redesigns moving forward, depending on the feedback received for them.

NEW NOTE(S)

• Infiltration Tactics Adoption Bonus increased from +5% Planning Bonus to +10% Planning Bonus

• Infiltration Tactics 3 Reward, Daily Command Power Bonus increased from +0.01 to +0.1.

• Desperate Defense can ALSO be adopted if a country has at least 10% Surrender Progress AND at least 50% War Support. In other words additional options to adopt this Subdoctrine have been added. Further tweaks to this adoption requirements will likely happen in the future

• Flying Batteries 1 Reward: It now also gives +5% Soft Attack and +10% Breakthrough to the Units previously affected by this milestone

• Flying Batteries 5 Reward: It now also gives +5% Soft Attack and +10% Defense to the Units previously affected by this milestone

Doctrine Balance - Naval Doctrines

NEW NOTE(S)

• Anti-Aircraft Cruiser Adoption Bonus: Reduced Naval AA bonus from +20% to +10%. Added +10% Armor Bonus to Heavy Cruisers

• Anti-Aircraft Cruiser 4 Reward: Bonus to Destroyer Anti-Air reduced to 10% and Light Attack to +5%

• Patrol Boats 2 Reward: Bonus to Torpedo Attack reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 1 Reward: Bonus to Torpedo Attack reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 3 Reward: Bonus to Depth Charges for Destroyers reduced to +10%

• Torpedo Primacy 4 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection to Destroyers reduced to 15%

• Torpedo Primacy 5 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection to Heavy Cruisers reduced to 10%

• Hunter Killer Groups 1 Reward: Bonus to Sub Detection increased to 20%

• Hunter Killer Groups 3 Reward: Bonus to Depth Charges increased to 20%

• Light Task Forces 3 Reward: Bonus to Destroyers for Light Attack and Light Piercing reduced to +5%

Doctrine Balance - Air Doctrines

Developer Commentary: Tweaks to Air Doctrines will happen next time

Bugfixes

• The Light Tank Destroyer Regimental Support unit now has the Soft Attack penalty as the rest of TD Regimental Support Units.

NEW NOTE(S)

• Zwirbaum forgot to mention last time that the Armored Engineers now provide a proper amount of the breakthrough (5+% to the armored units, instead of a paltry 0.05).

AI

NEW NOTE(S)

• Increased the strength ratio when the AI decides it should send it to be set at 75% instead of previously 65%. This means AI should hopefully be able to maintain a healthier balance between when their fleets and taskforces are operating and when they should be sent for repair. We will continue to monitor the situation on the naval fronts.

As you were!

Hello all!

First of all I want to be extra clear - we are not talking about a rework for civil wars. What I am after is understanding how you’ve enjoyed content with civil wars, what feels good, what doesn’t feel good.

So!

When you start a game with a country that has a civil war, and you intend to play as that new nation, whether that be fascist UK, Communist Japan - what do you as a player do before the civil war starts?

Some questions that may help you along the way:

• How do you feel when you start progressing down the focus tree?

• Do you try to rush down the civil war path, do you do common branches?

• What do you do with your military? (the starting nation)

• What do you do with industry? (the starting nation)

• What annoys you with this type of playthrough?

• What is it that makes the civil war feel rewarding/worth doing?

• Do you ever feel like it's emotionally/narratively rewarding even though you're objectively weaker afterwards than if you just did 'normal' playthrough? And if so, why?

I will read your answers with great interest, it will be helpful with upcoming content....

/pdx_berthier

Good to know: The difference between a Dev Diary and a Dev Corner
By now (most of you) you will know that we have two main types of Developer post:

Developer Diaries

• Start appearing closer to release

• Give you more detailed insight into content that’s more or less finished and is being polished

• Will generally include a plethora of images and screenshots

• Give you a chance to ask our developers questions, and perhaps even let us know if there’s anything glaringly obvious we missed

• (and may still have time to either fix quickly, or already start planning to include in a future Patch; being a Day-x, Hotfix or a War Effort.)

Developer Corners, like this one, serve a different purpose.
They:

• Need your feedback, specific to the Dev Corner

• Should be short and to the point

• May or may not include any images

• May generally give you some idea of something that might come in future content, but it’s not guaranteed

• Are not usually planned far ahead. Instead, if at any point any developer has something they want to get feedback on, we’ll pick an upcoming weekly slot, usually a Tuesday or a Thursday

Generals!

Greetings from sunny Stockholm to everyone, I’m Batya, Game Director for Hearts of Iron. The summer period is upon us and I wanted to share some information with you all. Unlike the norm of armies planning summer offensives, game developers actually do the opposite and take time off.
Of course I am not here to just tell you we will be out for the summer, instead I want to talk about the Open Betas we’ve been running in the last few months.

Some of you might have seen, or even opted into, the betas that we ran for Naval changes and also the Anniversary patch. First of all a big thank you to everyone who involved themselves and provided feedback. It is important for us to co-operate with our community to make a better game and that is exactly what we want to do more of.

I’d like to introduce another beta initiative codenamed ‘Sommarfältprov’, which mainly aims at re-balancing different parts of the game. One of the bigger ones has been, for example, Regimental Support that did not entirely hit the mark balance wise. Some other ones are (Sub)Doctrines as well as the long and arduously discussed Line Artillery.

These are all things that we want to take a stab at for the betterment of the game. The person spearheading this over the summer-y period will be Zwirbaum and he will be the main person to inform about changes happening on that branch. He will also fill in a bit more on what to expect so I will happily hand over the proverbial mic to them.

Have a wonderful summer y’all!

/Batya

Hello, I’m Zwirbaum, Game Designer for Hearts of Iron, and I want to welcome you all to this new Open Beta, Summer Edition™. Similarly to how we had Open Naval Balance Beta run during the Spring, where efforts were mostly focused on adjusting the balance and fixing some of the issues for the naval aspect of the gameplay, this time I will be taking a bit broader look across the game balance and some of the pain points of Hearts of Iron IV.

What is changing for this Open Beta Summer Edition™ - as opposed to the Naval Balance Beta? During the spring I found out that trying to keep up with the weekly update cadence on top of my regular responsibilities, was imposing too much of pressure on me, which meant that I had a bit less time to think about certain things, respond and participate in the discussions with the community and to proceed with the actual implementation and changes. This time there will be no guaranteed or any REGULARLY planned update cadence. Also as we are entering Summer period, there is a small chance that my posts may be a bit more irregular in what they would contain, in order to keep it vacation themed somewhat. So less lengthy posts, with a lot of dry information, but either more concise posts, or a bit more unusual content? This time we may also have more experimental changes that will take more time to reach full maturity.

What is not changing from the previous Naval Balance Beta? Once again there is no guarantee that this Beta will be integrated into a main version, when or in what form it would happen, not to mention that it would of course depend on the feedback we would be getting from you, our dear community.

For more comments on what is changed, and why, check out for the developer commentary in the specific sections in the Patch Notes.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, Farewell!

/Zwirbaum

How to join this Open Beta:

This beta client is Operation Postern v1.19.2.0.40eb (f387)
To install Open Beta client, follow the instruction below:

• Right-click the game in your library

• Select Properties from the drop-down menu

• Select Game Versions & Betas

• Select the beta branch called open_beta

If you are already on the Open Beta client, you should get an update automatically.

Finally, to report any issues you find, in relation to this beta, please use the bug report forum and make sure to include the version you’re using. That way our Jira won’t go nuts trying to figure out what bug report belongs to what.

Open Beta Summer Edition™ Notes

Gameplay

• Battalion Adjusters now scale with the Equipment and Manpower status of the Sub-Unit. E.g. Super Heavy Artillery with Siege Artillery Sub-Doctrine no longer gives Army wide Soft-Attack Bonus due to the sheer force of will and imagination.

• Added Essential (Equipment) Blocks for the following units: Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company, Light Flame Tank, Medium Flame Tank, Heavy Flame Tank, Headquarters Staff, Engineer Staff, Reconnaissance Staff, Military Police Staff, Maintenance Planning Staff, Hospital Group Staff, Logistics & Service Staff, Signal & Intelligence Staff, Naval Liaison Staff, Forward Air Controller, Special Operations Coordination

• Adjusted Essential (Equipment) Blocks for the following units: Helicopter Med-Evac, Helicopter Transports

Developer Commentary: First change should fix the unintended player behavior when adding certain units for their Battalion Adjusters, like Super Heavy Artillery and then turning off the usage of such equipment and still getting the benefit of the modifiers from Siege Artillery. And even if players did not intend to abuse the system, any losses suffered from combat/attrition would not apply any effect to that Battalion Adjusters. Second change is that there were quite a number of units that because they lacked essential equipment defined that would result in them not scaling their modifiers and effects due to the potential lack of equipment. Tank Crews riding in pretend Flame Tanks will no longer confer the sense of bravery and invincibility that would let them attack enemy fortifications or cities at ease.

Balance
Superior Tactician Admiral Trait now provides +15% Positioning Bonus instead of +25%
Surface Detection Impact on the positioning has been reduced from maximum +25% to +15%
Admiral Maneuver Skill impact on the positioning has been reduced from +2.5% per level to +1.5% per level.
Admiral Maneuver Skill impact on naval retreat speed has been increased from +1% per level to +2% per level.
Developer Commentary: Positioning while exists as an interesting concept, in practice it was way too easy to counter-act massive doom stacks by just various plethora of the modifiers providing a lot of positioning benefits. This should give a bit more of a breathing space for the natural positioning penalties to occur and happen in-game. As the Naval Combat is already quite deadly, and retreating ships have hard time to disengage from the combat, increasing the speed with which ships can retreat could help save a couple ships here and there. This change is of a more experimental nature.

• Combat Bonus from division experience decreased from 25% to 20%. Green Divisions now have -20% Combat Penalty, Trained have 0%, Regulars have +20%, Seasoned +40% and Veterans have +60%.

Developer Commentary: Experience bonus to the Land Units resulted in a massive boost to their combat capabilities as all modifiers during combat are multiplicative with each other depending if they belong from ‘different source’ that 75% bonus could result in a massive sway of the effective stats. This is a relatively modest reduction, but we may explore squishing that effect a bit or reworking it to have non-linear progression in the future.

• Air Crew Surveys Air Spirit Mastery gain for individual tracks got combined into Air Doctrine Mastery gain Factor.

• Dive Bombing Air Spirit CAS Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Strike Aircraft Mastery Track gain Factor.

• Material Destruction Air Spirit Medium Airframe Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Medium Aircraft Mastery gain Factor.

• Industrial Destruction Air Spirit Heavy Airframe Design cost reduction got replaced with +15% Heavy Aircraft Mastery gain Factor.

Developer Commentary: The goal of changing the Design Cost reductions on them is to replace: pay the air XP in order to potentially save some air XP down the line when designing more planes. However with the current amount of air XP incoming from the combat and missions, there is rarely a situation where as a player you feel starved out on the Air XP - in order to make a design, and if you really can’t make a design, then paying those 50 Air XP upfront isn’t helping with that goal either. Hopefully giving them a more dedicated and focused effect on the specific mastery track will make them somewhat more competitive. I will monitor feedback on this one as well - so depending on the feedback we may see doing further adjustments or going back to the original one.

• Increased naval targeting values for naval bombers for fully screened capitals from 10 to 15

• Increased naval targeting values for naval bombers for fully screened carriers from 10 to 25

Developer Commentary: One of the changes we did with the No Compromise, No Surrender release was to equalize the base weights for all ships when it comes to being picked as targets by the Naval Bombers, when screening value is 100%, and the old prioritization would be kicking in when the screening efficiency depending on how much screening was missing. While targeting would also take into the account strength of the ships (their HP, making Battleships even with equal base weights technically being a bit more of a viable target than ‘Early Destroyer’) - the result, especially with the meta depending on spam of the masses of the destroyers, would make them rarely targeted. The old behaviour where Carriers and Capitals ships being almost always prioritized with full precision, was not ideal either. Hopefully with this change, or a couple more tweaks, we will still have a possibility where all damage is NOT focused on big ships, but also isn’t fully soaked by the screens either, resulting in a more spread out damage across the fleets and the taskforces. Carriers performance and their planes during naval battles should also hopefully get better results.

• Continuous Strike Air Spirit - Air Support Efficiency bonus has been reduced from 25% to 15%.

• Massed Strike Air Spirit - Air Superiority Effect has been increased from +5% to +10%

• Support Artillery now has -50% to Soft Attack, Hard Attack, Defense and Breakthrough from previous -40%

• Support Rocket Artillery now has -50% to Soft Attack, Hard Attack, Defense and Breakthrough from previous -40%

• Support Anti-Air now requires 24 equipment pieces from the previous 20

• Motorized Anti-Air now belongs to the Anti-Air Unit Category

• Anti-Air Unit Category has been renamed to Anti-Air Artillery Support & Line

Developer Commentary: This renaming will be only localized in English for now, if we will go further with these changes, we will localize it properly for all the languages.

• Anti-Tank 1940 Technology no longer provides randomly Motorized Anti-Tank with +10% Piercing and +10% Hard Attack

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Artillery Combat Width increased from 2 to 3

Developer Commentary: With the release of No Compromise, No Surrender we made balance adjustment to Self-Propelled Artillery so that their Combat Width was reduced from 3 to 2. This however had quite a big impact on the ‘stat bloat’ and increased offensive powers, resulting in certain combinations of units having much . With keeping (at least for now) Regular Artillery still at 3 Combat Width, we will try out bringing back SP-ART to the previous combat widths.

• Naval, Land and Air Facilities cost has been lowered from 12000 to 10000. Scaling cost per facility has been increased from 5000 to 6000. This means that the first and second will be cheaper (10000 and 16000 vs 12000 and 17000) . The third one will have the same cost, while starting with the fourth of the same type, they will become more and more expensive. This should make entering the world of Special Projects easier for smaller & less well developed nations. Nuclear Facility will remain at the current premium cost for now.

• Improved Amphibious Designs now reduce Amtrac production cost by 10% instead of 15%

• Helicopter Brigade and Helicopter Logistics now will have a proper Fuel Consumption instead of having -100%

Regimental Support Companies Balance

• Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company Organization has been increased from 20 to 30.

• Heavy Weapons Company and Motorized Heavy Weapons Company Max Strength has been increased from 0.4 to 0.6

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery Equipment needed was increased from 4 to 6

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery stat adjustments have been normalized and are now -75% to Defense, Breakthrough, Soft and Hard Attack. (Previously it was (-80%, -60%, -70%, -60%)

• Anti–Air Battery Equipment needed was increased from 12 to 16 and Manpower needed from 120 to 180

• Anti-Air Battery Breakthrough, Soft Attack and Hard Attack penalties were lowered to -60% from -80%

• Anti-Tank Battery Manpower needed was increased from 120 to 180

• Soft Attack penalty from Anti-Tank battery has been lowered from -80% to -60%

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Tank Destroyer Regimental Support units are for now excluded from the ‘Tank Destroyer’ category. They still benefit from the Tank Destroyer Regimental Support category.

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Tank Destroyer Regimental Support units now require 15 Tank Destroyers instead of the previous 10. For now I will refer to them as TD-RS (Tank Destroyer Regimental Support)

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support units are for now excluded from the ‘Self-Propelled Anti-Air Artillery’ category. They still benefit from Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support category

• Light, Medium, Heavy and Modern Self-Propelled Anti-Air Regimental Support units now require 15 Self-Propelled Anti-Air instead of the previous 10. For now I will refer to them as SPAA-RS (Self-Propelled Anti Air Regimental Support)

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Fuel Consumption for them has been increased from 33% of the equipment to 40% of the equipment

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Armor Value reduced from -33% to -66%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Defense lowered from -25% to -50%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Soft-Attack lowered from -33% to -66%

• SPAA-RS: Air Attack reduced from -15% to -25% and Hard Attack from -33% to -66%

• TD-RS: Hard Attack reduced from -33% to -50%

• TD-RS and SPAA-RS: Artillery Technologies impact on them for Hard Attack and Air Attack has been lowered by half after the full tech tree progression (From +30% Hard / Air Attack on them lowered to +15%)

Developer Commentary: Regimental Support Companies have been vastly overperforming when it comes to both their contribution in the pure stats, and especially compared to their low economical requirements. After this balance they should feel less overpowered and be closer in-line with what should be expected out of them. This doesn’t rule out any further tweaks to them. Also for the time being the armored regimental support companies will be excluded from the main Tank Destroyer and Self-Propelled Anti-Air unit categories to make sure that the buffs aimed at those regimental support companies will be adjusted and tweaked separately, giving more control over what and in what magnitude each buff is applied to. Main Categories will likely be renamed to indicate that they refer to: Battalions, or ‘Line Units’.

• Infantry Guns no longer get benefits from Infantry Support Weapons research, and instead get their benefits from Artillery tech tree improvements.

• Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery scaling effect with technologies has been reduced. (+5% Soft Attack for the Infantry Guns per Artillery Technology, +10% Soft Attack for Rocket Batteries from Rocket Artillery technologies, and +5% Soft Attack from the Improved Guidance). Infantry Guns no longer have Defense boost from the Technologies.

Line Artillery Balance

• Artillery, Motorized Artillery, Rocket Artillery, Motorized Rocket Artillery, Truck Drawn Rocket Artillery, Anti-Tank, Motorized Anti-Tank, Anti-Air, Motorized Anti-Air Max Strength increased from 0.6 to 0.8

• Artillery Equipment I stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Soft Attack +1 (from 25 to 26), Defense +1 (from 10 to 11), Breakthrough +4 (6 to 10)

• Artillery Equipment II stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Breakthrough +6 (from 7 to 13), Hard Attack +1 (from 2 to 3), Piercing +2 (from 5 to 7)

• Artillery Equipment III stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Breakthrough +8 (from 8 to 16), Defense +1 (from 18 to 19), Hard Attack +2 (from 2 to 4), Piercing +4 (from 5 to 9)

• Rocket Artillery Equipment I stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 12 to 13), Breakthrough +8 (from 9 to 17), Soft Attack +2 (from 30 to 32)

• Rocket Artillery Equipment II stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 15 to 16), Breakthrough +8 (from 12 to 20), Soft Attack +2 (from 38 to 40)

• Motorized Rocket Artillery Equipment stats have been adjusted to provide following stats: Defense +1 (from 15 to 16), Breakthrough +8 (from 12 to 20)

Developer Commentary: This is our starting point to increase the viability of the Line Artillery. We have heard and thought about various different approaches for making them more viable, including lowering their Combat Width from 3 to 2. However in the current environment where Regimental Support Companies, and all the various imbalances did exist, and the excessive ‘stat’ bloat as it was called was present - we have decided for now against taking that step. To make the presence of the Artillery - be a more viable tool in providing the combat stats other than Attack values (mainly Breakthrough), which should make Infantry supported by the Artillery a little bit more viable on the attack. We will continue working and tweaking on the Line Artillery to find the right spot for it.

Doctrine Balance - Land Doctrines

• Mobile Infantry 1 Reward: Cavalry Recon now receives bonus 10% to Defence and Breakthrough

• Mobile Infantry 3 Reward: Lowered Soft Attack Bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries from +15% to +10%, now also increases Defense and Breakthrough by 5%

• Mobile Infantry 5 Reward: Motorized Heavy Weapons Company gets +10 Organization from +5

• Defensive Postures 1 Reward: Heavy Weapons Company now also receives +0.2 Entrenchment

• Defensive Postures 4 Reward: Soft Attack bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries reduced to 10%

• Assault Infantry Adoption Bonus: Bonus to Support Artillery attack has been increased from +10% to +20%

• Assault Infantry 1 Reward: Bonus to Infantry Guns removed

• Assault Infantry 2 Reward: Bonus to Anti-Tank Battery and Anti-Air Battery reduced from +10% to +5% (Hard Attack, Piercing, Air Attack)

• Mounted Infantry 4 Reward: +0.05 HP to Mounted Infantry unit category was replaced with the battalion adjusters to the Cavalry Recon to give +5 flat HP to the Mounted Infantry

• Mounted Infantry 4 Reward: Reduced the Speed Bonus to Cavalry Recon and Cavalry to +40% (for a total of 8 kph instead of the previous 8.4 kph)

• Mounted Infantry 5 Reward: Increased Speed Bonus to Artillery, Anti-Air, Anti-Tank and Rocket Artillery to +100% (for a total of 8 kph)

• People’s Militia 2 Reward: Infantry Guns Soft Attack bonus reduced from 15% to 10%. Infantry Guns now get +10% Breakthrough

• People’s Militia 3 Reward: Now requires 50 Mastery like the other rewards in this doctrine.

• Great War Infantry 3 Reward: Support Artillery now provides +10% Bonus to Breakthrough to Leg Infantry from previous +5%

• Great War Infantry 3 Reward: Infantry Guns and Rocket Battery now provides +10% Soft Attack bonus instead of +20%

• Great War Infantry 5 Reward: Now also provides +5 Max Entrenchment

• Fire Concentration Adoption Bonus: +5% Defense bonus to Line Artillery changed to +10% Breakthrough bonus

• Fire Concentration 1 Reward: +5% Defense bonus to Line Artillery changed to +10% Breakthrough bonus

• Fire Concentration 3 Reward: +10% Breakthrough Bonus to Line Artillery and Support Artillery changed to +10% Defense Bonus and +5% Soft Attack Bonus increased to +10%. Bonus to Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries removed.

• Fire Concentration 5 Reward: Bonus to Artillery and Rocket Artillery removed. Infantry Guns and Rocket Batteries now get +10% Defense and +10% Breakthrough

• Anti-Tank Frontline 1 Reward: Bonus to Anti-Tank Battery brought in-line with Line Anti-Tank. Anti-Tank Support now also receives the same bonus.

• Flying Batteries 1 Reward: Motorized Heavy Weapons Company removed from the reward

• Flying Batteries 3 Reward: Armored Signal Company now provides +0.2 Strength (from 0.8 to 1) to Line Artillery.

• Air Cavalry 2 Reward: 0.03 HP bonus is now being replaced with Maintenance Company Battalion Adjuster to the Helicopter Support Companies, giving +0.5 HP to each

• Mobile Recon and Support 5 Reward: Breakthrough bonus to TD-RS and SPAA-RS changed to +5% Hard Attack and +5% Air Attack respectively

• Self-Propelled Support Adoption Bonus: Soft Attack bonus reduced to +5%, Air-Attack bonus reduced to +5%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 2: Soft Attack bonus provided by Recon units reduced to +5%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 3: Speed Bonus reduced to +10% from +30%

• Self-Propelled Support Reward 4: TD-RS and SPAA-RS now get +5% Hard Attack and +5% Air Attack respectively, and +5 Organization

• Siege Artillery 2 Reward: Plains Movement bonus to Super Heavy Artillery and Self-Propelled Super Heavy Artillery replaced with 0.1 Recovery Rate

• Siege Artillery 4 Reward: Urban Bonus Attack reduced from +20% to +10%, and added Urban Defence Bonus of +10%. Soft Attack bonus to Infantry Guns & Rocket Battery reduced from +10% to +5%

• Armored Spearhead 3 Reward: SPAA-RS Organization bonus reduced from +10 to +5

• Armored Infantry Support 2 Reward: Piercing Bonus removed for TD-RS

• Armored Infantry Support 5 Reward: Air Attack reduced to +5% and removed Organization Bonus

• Mobile Defense 3 Reward: Air Attack for SPAA-RS removed

• Mobile Defense 4 Reward: TD-RS Organization bonus increased to +10, other benefits to TD-RS removed

• Tank Destroyer Force 5 Reward: TD-RS other benefits than the Organization were removed for them.

• Mission Type Tactics Adoption Bonus: Daily Command Power gain has been increased from +0.02 to +0.2

Developer Commentary: This is likely just a start of tweaking the doctrines. We may see doing a bigger balance pass or some redesigns moving forward, depending on the feedback received for them.

Doctrine Balance - Naval Doctrines
Developer Commentary: Tweaks to Naval Doctrines will happen next time

Doctrine Balance - Air Doctrines
Developer Commentary: Tweaks to Air Doctrines will happen next time
Bugfixes
The Light Tank Destroyer Regimental Support unit now has the Soft Attack penalty as the rest of TD Regimental Support Units.

As you were!

Generals!

Today marks the last pre-summer patch with fixes and tweaks to Thunder At Our Gates. After this the team will have limited presence in the office for the summer period.

We know that this patch does not hit all the sought after balance changes but for that we’d like to refer to you a new Open Beta that we will be running over summer that will address some of those issues.

For now, be fully immersed in the rumble in the jungle with the summer heat seeping through your windows. See you all after summer!

ROLLBACK
For this release we’ve added the option to roll back to our recent Patch 1.19.1. This is useful for players that have saved games that they would like to finish, before moving onto 1.19.2.

• Right click the game in Steam

• Go to Properties, then Game Versions & Betas

• Select 1.19.1

• Default Public Version will use the latest public build, in this case 1.19.2

If you are wondering about which patch to use, you can also see version history on the Paradox Wiki

PATCH NOTES

Balance

• Expeditionary Leader trait Non-Core Attack and Defence reduced from +15% to +10%.

• Tuned down the "Spirit of St. Bernard" spirit, which in combination with other things could give 105% casualty trickleback and unending armies of resurrected zombie Swiss. Fixes

• INS: Feint uprisings now cost more manpower (2500 > 5000), but less infantry equipment (2500 > 1500).

• INS: Indonesia will now core all of their starting states in the revolution

• AST: Decreased Non-Core Attack / Defence values by roughly half on the 'Australian Military Forces' National Spirit .

• AST: Decreased Citizen Army penalty to non-core Attack and Defence from -25% to -15%.

• AST: Rebalanced the Australian Air Branch, decreasing especially their mission efficiency.

• SIA: Increased Siam's starting stability from 19% to 29%.

• SIA: Reduced Build cost IC for 'Unconventional Tank Designs' from -15% to -10%.

• SIA: Removed Reliability penalty for 'Unconventional Tank Designs' and added a -5% Soft attack penalty instead.

• SIA: Reduced compliance gain from full Civilian support from 10% to 5%.

• SIA: Reduced compliance gain from the Focus 'Built to Withstand Every Flame' from 10% to 5%.

• SIA: Reduced Research speed, Production efficiency cap, Defense, Organization, Entrenchment and Output by on average ~1% gained from Asian Democratic Compact per faction member.

Gameplay

• Updated tooltip for "Establish the ABDACOM" shared focus to make it more clear that only faction members are eligible to receive invites to join the ABDACOM.

• Fixed the description for the focus "Reestablish the Guominjun" to not make the rather bold claim that Sinkiang was led by Moustache Man in the 1939 start. Fixes

• A subject owning a single state no longer creates a 'new war participant' popup when joining a war.

• Added a new event sound tickbox to disable/enable scripted event sounds. For example speeches.

• The new releasable nations in Indonesia now also have access to the Nusantara/Greater Indonesia formable decision category

• Added joint focus tree icons to ABDACOM focuses.

• INS: Clarified the effect of the Focus 'Privately Owned Military Industry'.

• INS: The Indonesian focus 'The Timor Issue' will now dynamically switch icons & loc if Timor is independent.

• INS: Indonesia can now core East Timor using Unity in Diversity decisions.

• INS: Indonesian decision "Order a Ceasefire" now requires escalation 2+

• INS: Allow an Indonesian-formed Netherlands-Indonesia union to take most Dutch economic focuses from the joint tree.

• INS: Added a decision for the Netherlands-Indonesia Union to move its capital to Amsterdam or Batavia.

• INS: Hollandia will now be renamed to Jayapura if Indonesia is independent.

• INS: Added a small naval branch for the Dutch East Indies joint tree, which is available during peacetime.

• AST: Added the Australasia formable.

• AST: The Focus 'Reclaim the Lost Territory' now transfers all land, naval, and air forces to Australia.

• AST: The Focus 'Singapore Strategy' is now available if either ENG or AST controls Singapore, instead of only ENG.

• AST: The 'Alice Springs' Focus has been reduced to 35 days.

• AST: Australian Infantry Divisions now have the proper division icon.

• AST: A. Ruthven set as leader if monarchist UK starts uprising in Australia.

• SIA: Added a decision to increase the Civil/Military wings approval of you if they are rebellious at the cost of a temporary negative National Spirit.

• SIA: A civil war triggered through the Khana Ratsadon only happens once now. If they become rebellious again a negative spirit is applied instead.

• SIA: the Royal Palace Directive focus now unlocks a decision to increase the Military/Civil wing opinion of you, without pissing the other party off. This has a 365 day timeout.

• SIA: Added a new focus in the Pan-Thaiism branch that allows you to end the factionalism of the Khana Ratsadon if both the Civil and Military wing approve of you for 270 days. This focus shuts off the Khana Ratsadon system and merges the civilian and military wing spirits.

• SIA: Added the king of the white elephant as a Movie poster decision, giving weekly stability.

• SIA: Removed increasing cost for theater decisions.

• AST: Decision 'Scorch the North' gives effect when specific states are naval invaded instead of when at war.

• SIA: Added option to pick a new leader when the Seri Thai Takes over, Phin Choonhavan or Khuang Aphaiwong.

• SIA: Added options to sway individuals via decisions for the Seri Thai. Each general increases the strength of the civil war for your side by 5%.

• SIA: The Seri Thai civil war can now be avoided if the combined civil war strength for the player is over 80% (5%/general swayed + total democratic support).

• SIA: In the Seri Thai branch the Focus 'Prepare to Drop' now gives a special forces National Spirit.

• SIA: Rising up as the Seri Thai against Japan now seizes some valuables, giving a temporary bonus.

• SIA: Made the requirement for forming the Greater Thai empire more clear.

• SIA: Starting a limited war now requires the territory to be adjacent to yours.

• SIA: When agricultural tax reduction is removed you now gain a one time tech bonus for industry.

Stability &Performance

• CTD: Fixed a crash that occurred when calling 'gain_xp' command on a fleet without an Admiral.

• CTD: Fix a crash that occurred when assigning a deployed Field Marshal to an Army Group

• OOS: Fixed a late-game gamestate OOS caused by MIOs.

• OOS: Fixed an OOS that happened if a client had previously played an ahistorical game in the same session before joining a historical MP game.

UI

• The Division Designer click-shortcuts now also apply to HQ templates.

• Fixed an issue where Division Designer dropdown items buttons did not have the right size.

• Added dams to the States & Construction mapmodes.

• Fixed wrong interactions and tooltips for Generals while assigning a leader to an Army Group.

• Now showing all manpower modifiers in tooltips even if they sum up to a neutral number.

• Divisions with multiple active commander abilities now show them all instead of just one.

• Divisions with an active ability that is being nerfed because of late joiners show that reduction.

• Fixed Assign Commander tooltips with TAOG disabled.

AI

• ITA: Introduced historical Italian fighter designs for the AI to build.

• GER: Introduced some intermediate plane variants for the improved_small_airframe.

• ENG: The UK will build more synthetic refineries to safeguard their supply of rubber. (autarky is king)

• USA: Added home guard defense logic to protect the continent once the Axis become a threat.

• JAP: Japan is more likely to naval invade Borneo now.

• ENG: The UK will be more likely to take 'Gateway to Europe' decisions on Historical mode.

• INS: Indonesia’s AI will have a higher risk tolerance for raids if the only alternative is cancelling them.

Modding

• Updated script documentation following the addition of new math functions.

• Added logical AND, OR, XOR and NOT math expression functions.

• Added a lerp function to the math expressions.

• Add 'always_show_on_actions_tooltip' bool field on Advisors to avoid 'on_add and on_remove' effect tooltips being lost when the advisor has a trait with a custom tooltip.

• Added support for scripted 'unit_animations' on raid types.

• Added atan and atan2 math functions

Bugfix

• Fixed a bug where pending hot-joins didn't show up in the UI to be accepted.

• Fixed bug where clients could join the lobby directly, instead of hot-joining once the host loaded into the map.

• AST: Changed incorrect value in the tooltip of the mission 'Final Reforms'.

• Fixed a bug where a leader's description would appear twice.

• Fixed an issue where Volunteers would not come back when Air Base Access is enabled.

• ICE: Fixed 'Reclaiming the Empire' focus for Iceland to be doable again after a war with the owner of Greenland is concluded.

• Fixed a case where Romania could snatch Bulgarian territory from a third party occupying them totally via the 'Puppet Romania' focus. Now Bulgaria is required to be at peace for this focus.

• Fixed a bug where a spearhead or offensive line order was not advancing to destination tiles

• When writing a file, it's now guarded by a try/catch and will error when unable to write.

• AST: The Focus 'World Peace' will now actually allow sending Volunteers to the Spanish Republicans rather than Nationalists.

• AST: Australia now gains the 'Liverpool Dockworker' uprising from 'Out of the Den'.

• AST: The Focus 'Lang is Right' shows the right tooltip (it is -0.05 Political Power Cost instead of -0.05%). Colour is also now green for good.

• AST: Fixed missing localisation in Smuggle Arms decisions, and made the Irish and Northern Irish smuggling use the same timer.

• AST: The Focuses 'Liberate the Colonies' and 'Red Solidarity' now have a tooltip to show what they do.

• AST: The Focus 'Join the Comintern' has a better tooltip explaining what is going on. Australia's faction will only merge into the Comintern, if Australia is the faction leader.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where you could demand to release your own territories.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia could have two resource trades.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia would suddenly become the Republic of Indonesia again after forming the Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed certain characters not appearing for the Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia could start a new volksraad decision before clearing the event, allowing the same decision to be taken twice.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus description 'Women in the Military'.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus 'Women's Sufferage'.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus description 'Continue the Hybrid Politics'.

• INS: Fixed several Focuses occasionally attempting to target Interior Borneo.

• SIA: Fixed missing tech names for tech bonuses.

• HOL: The Focus 'Continue the War in Batavia' now moves the capital to Batavia instead of Bandung.

• Fix Army Leaders cloned for a Civil War still thinking they are deployed with the Army of the original Leader.

• Fixed a bug where infiltration tokens disappear when loading saves.

• Fixed an issue where Army HQs became the default garrison garrison template if all other templates were locked.

• AST: 'The Phosphate Commission' now requires both owning and controlling Nauru.

• INS: Indonesia's leader will no longer reset after peacefully gaining independence.

• AST: The National Spirit 'Nauru Pact' tooltip has been edited so its effects alter depending on GER being in the faction or not.

• AST: Phosphate Commission spirit is now being removed by completing the Focus ‘Nauru's Return to German Hands’, instead of being removed by the event, making the effect clearer.

• AST: Added fallbacks for effects of event Nauru's Return to German Hands to cover if Australia is subject to the UK but not in the same faction or if not subject at all.

• AST: Event Nauru's Return to German Hands either gives a German Guarantee or adds Australia to the German faction, not both.

• JAP: After being defeated in the war, Japan is now discouraged from joining the Axis.

• Fixed a bug where lobbies with more than 20 players would struggle with more people connecting to the game

• SIA: Fixed a bug where the Allies could decline Siam's offer to join from the Seri Thai.

• SIA: Fixed a bug that caused the Seri Thai to not add intel bonus properly

• SIA: Fixed a bug that caused players without La Resistance DLC to not get a proper bonus from the Seri Thai OSS Focus

• AST: The Focus 'Defying American Interference': Added fallbacks if the Philippines are no longer a subject of the USA.

• AST: The Focus 'Defying American Interference': Added event chain asking JAP to guarantee AST if they're not in the same faction, and updated tooltips for the focus and its event chains.

• AST: Changed event images for AST_diplomatic_events.73, AST_diplomatic_events.76

• INS: The Indonesian communist branch will no longer create a generic faction with the 'Strength in Unity' manifest.

• INS: The Indonesian AI will no longer wait before establishing a revolutionary HQ, and will be far less likely to build the HQ in Papua.

• Fix the commander skill bonus modifier not being properly applied

• JAP: Fixed Japan's 'Strike the Southern Road' Focus being unreachable if Siam no longer existed.

• HOL: The Netherlands will no longer sometimes cave to the British when going communist or fascist.

• AST: Added TAOG check to event The 1938 Sesquicentenary (AST_political_events.6)

• SIA: Fixed an incorrect tooltip in the Seri Thai Branch.

• HOL: The Netherlands will now be invited to the Allies despite being at war with Indonesia after getting invaded by Germany.

• Fix issue where militia raid unit models were in an idle pose while displayed above the raid arrow.

• HOL: Fixed bug where the Netherlands would not get the 'Obtain Foreign Colonial Investments' decisions after completing the required focus.

• AST: Focus Done Meddling will no longer flood error log on hovering over it.

• Remove incorrect tooltip which falsely claimed an advisor would be unlocked.

• Fix AI constantly deploying and withdrawing Army HQs under Field Marshals.

• INS: Indonesia can no longer take the 'Purge the Opportunists' Focus, which creates a faction, if Indonesia is puppeted.

• INS: Fixed an issue where the Indonesian National Revolution ending would sometimes not whitepeace the rest of the Allies.

• Fixed some missing idea icons - for Design Companies and others, amongst them AST_kirov, BEL_kirov, smb_organization_of_american_states_member

• AST: Set to correct Fascist cosmetic tag when becoming independent manually.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where changing laws would not properly adjust the Khana Ratsadon.

• AST: Renamed the Bristol Blenheim to the Bristol Blenheim Mk IF (this variant replaced the bomb bay for extra under-carriage guns).

• SIA: Advisors when playing without Thunder at Our Gates enabled should no longer be displayed as question mark placeholder.

• AST: Added tooltip for Planned Extraction to show this focus will give access to the endless Pilbara steel decision.

• AST: Mount Isa Industrial Concern will now display correctly when upgraded through Planned Extraction.

• Division Designer should now save correctly restricted equipment types

• Fixed the crash that could happen due to the spy operative mastering ability to be in two countries at the same time

• Fixed the tooltip for the Maphilindia achievement

• Fixed the Treaty of Saadabad focus branch overlapping the Kurdish focus tree as Iraq when obsolete focus branches are shown

• AST: Event The Prime Minister Succumbs localization has been fixed to reference correct character

• Fixes Czechoslovakia not puppeting Hungary after taking the Neutralize Hungarian Threat Focus and capitulating Hungary.

• Sync HQ deploy template and CP reservation when retemplating a deployed HQ

• Anzac Achievement is now correctly only triggered by generals and field marshals

• Event Loyalties to Britain: Added triggers to hide old options if the Dominion is on the same ideological path as ENG, making it unavailable to leave the Commonwealth through event; Added new option with triggers to show if the Dominion is on the same ideological path as ENG.

• ENG: Fixed an issue where the United Kingdom wouldn't Bypass the focuses Secure Iraq and Secure Iran when they already had them as their puppets or were at war with them

• Give Control of State action should now display why you can't give control of a state in a specific condition, instead of allowing it to be done, but failing to properly act.

• AST: Fixed an issue so the Focuses 'Done Meddling’ & 'The Ultimate Overseas Duty' don't reset war participation.

• INS: Fixed an issue where the Indonesian Volksraad would be inaccessible after a veto.

• INS: Conrad Helfrich is no longer unavailable as a Chief of Navy for Indonesia

• HOL: the National Spirit 'Profitable Colony' is no longer removed immediately upon being added

• HOL: The achievement 'Bevrijding' is no longer impossible with TAOG enabled.

• SIA: Fixed 2 planes not showing up in the tech tree without BBA.

• AST: Updated Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient name to CEFEO.

• Heavy Armor HQ Security is now capable of exercising instead of relaxing all day in their Tanks.

• The Regimental Support Rocket Battery no longer affects division speed.

• GER: German focus 'Around Maginot' now targets an Indonesian-formed Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed a missing loc string in an Indonesian event

• INS: Indonesia no longer needs to control impassable states such as Interior Borneo in order to win the revolution

• AST: Now has access to their second Special Forces branch via the Marines focus.

• SIA: Fixed an issue which caused a limited war to white peace without transfer instead of correctly transferring states if France capitulated while the limited war was ongoing.

• SIA: Removed a redundant requirement in the Focus 'Spread Democratic Sentiment In Universities'.

• AST: Failsafes for mission 'Organize a Strike' and spirit 'Strike Ongoing' to cancel both when completing the Focus 'All for One, One for All'.

• AST: Removed misplaced trigger on 'Strike Ongoing' which made it cancel if not owning Nauru.

• AST: Fixed so advisors Milford, Northcott, Jeffrey, Goble & Burnett get discount from Relief of Command/Independent Air Force,

• ETH: The Focus 'Freedom at Gunpoint' now will only take African states and leaves the rest alone.

• AST: The Focus 'The Irish Anti-Britain Pact' now correctly grants Australia military access and docking rights through Ireland.

• AST: Decisions Vichy Out of Africa is now removed by the Focus 'Undeniably Ours', not 'Done Meddling'.

• ABDACOM: Vichy France no longer has access to the ABDACOM joint focus tree.

• INS: Indonesia will no longer lose Dutch generals when having completed ‘Volksraad Compromises’.

• INS: Made it so that Indonesia cannot side with Japanese invaders if the Focus 'The Industrialized Colony' has been completed, making it no longer possible to gain 7 research slots as Indonesia.

• Block disbanding armies with a deployed HQ, preventing an exploit

• GER: Decision Reichskommissariat Australasian required states has been adjusted to match map changes.

• SIA: The 'Artillery Enthusiast' trait now no longer applies to the Self-Propelled Artillery.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where limited wars would cause France to not be able to join a faction.

• SIA: King of the White Elephant propaganda poster tooltip and its effect on Weekly Stability have been fixed.

• Fixes the conflicting available tooltip for 'The Between the Seas Concept' to be clearer

• GER: Bougainville added to focus Break the Anglo-French Colonial Hegemony

• Bougainville has now been included in effects that target the state for GER, JAP, PHI (i.e.: focuses that take control of pacific islands etc.).

• Fixes issue where division templates used in a garrison could be edited to have zero suppression.

• RAJ: Loc typo for displaying current resistance in string currentStateResistance.

• AST: Communist Civil War should no longer happen if Australia is already Communist.

• Fix Shift+Click allowing Spain to deploy locked HQ templates.

• SIA: Fixed a bug where the Asian democratic compact wasn't updating correctly. It will now always be updated once at the end of each month.

• SIA: You now need to be a faction leader to get updated bonuses from the 'Asian Democratic Compact'.

• SIA: Fixed tooltip for 'Asian Democratic compact'.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where invite country to Asian Democratic Compact wasn't showing

• ETH: Fixes Ethiopia being able to annex colonial powers through the Horn of Africa decisions if the colonial powers moved their capitals there.

• AST: Focus completion time increase/decrease in event Halfway to Federal Election & decision Final Reforms has been edited to match

• INS: Fixed typo in Murk Boerstra's name.

• INS: Fixed typo in the Focus 'Overallwagen' -> 'Overvalwagen'.

Generals! ️

Summer is officially here and with it we bring you the latest Summer Sales, including unprecedented discounts.

The Steam Summer Sale has started, with discounts up to 80%.

Thunder at our Gates just released, did you review all your briefing material?

The Official Thunder at our Gates Release Video

Missed the Release Stream? Watch The Official Release Livestream here!

The Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Announcement, including a special teaser at the end!

Don’t want to wait til the end? Here’s the teaser in full.

Even if you can’t engage at work, you can still enjoy the soundtrack (while you count down the minutes.)

Hearts of Iron IV x Print Clever: 10 Year Anniversary Store

From the frontlines to the home front, we've got you covered. Whether you're wrapping yourself in a Hoodie and Bomber Jacket for the long winter campaign, hydrating with a Water Bottle between decisive encirclements, or sipping from a Mug while you repaint that world map at three in the morning, there is something here for every self-respecting general.

To grab your own merch, click here or the title of this section!

Hearts of Iron IV × Makeship: Private Platypus Plushie & Once More Mate Pin Pack

Private Platypus is reporting for duty, and he's brought mates.

• Private Platypus Plushie, fully kitted in field gear, rifle and all

• Once More Mate Pin Pack, two pins, including a glow-in-the-dark kangaroo

Secure yours now~

Generals!

We decided it would be best to run 1.19.2 as an Open Beta over the weekend to get some potential player input over the weekend. This will allow us to make any necessary fixes as well that might pop up as a result from having a wider testing net.

The upside is earlier patch notes!

One thing I want to mention beforehand however is that there are no massive balance changes in this patch at the moment. This does not mean that we are not seeing the flagged issues, and we are aiming to do a wider balance pass, but more on that next week.

For now, thank you for the input and stay safe out there.

/Batya

How to join this Open Beta:

This beta client is Operation Postern v1.19.2.0.a69c (d7b6)

To install Open Beta client, follow the instruction below:

• Right-click the game in your library

• Select Properties from the drop-down menu

• Select Game Versions & Betas

• Select the beta branch called open_beta

If you are already on the Open Beta client, you should get an update automatically.

Finally, to report any issues you find, in relation to this beta, please use the bug report forum and make sure to include the version you’re using. That way our Jira won’t go nuts trying to figure out what bug report belongs to what.

Open Beta Notes

Known issues

• Pending hotjoins can be overwritten by new requests, resulting in an inability to launch the game

• Players bypass the hotjoin flow when joining a lobby that has loaded into the map, but not started yet

Balance

• Expeditionary Leader trait Non-Core Attack and Defence reduced from +15% to +10%.

• Tuned down the "Spirit of St. Bernard" spirit, which in combination with other things could give 105% casualty trickleback and unending armies of resurrected zombie Swiss. Fixes

• INS: Feint uprisings now cost more manpower (2500 > 5000), but less infantry equipment (2500 > 1500).

• INS: Indonesia will now core all of their starting states in the revolution

• AST: Decreased Non-Core Attack / Defence values by roughly half on the 'Australian Military Forces' National Spirit .

• AST: Decreased Citizen Army penalty to non-core Attack and Defence from -25% to -15%.

• AST: Rebalanced the Australian Air Branch, decreasing especially their mission efficiency.

• SIA: Increased Siam's starting stability from 19% to 29%.

• SIA: Reduced Build cost IC for 'Unconventional Tank Designs' from -15% to -10%.

• SIA: Removed Reliability penalty for 'Unconventional Tank Designs' and added a -5% Soft attack penalty instead.

• SIA: Reduced compliance gain from full Civilian support from 10% to 5%.

• SIA: Reduced compliance gain from the Focus 'Built to Withstand Every Flame' from 10% to 5%.

• SIA: Reduced Research speed, Production efficiency cap, Defense, Organization, Entrenchment and Output by on average ~1% gained from Asian Democratic Compact per faction member.

Gameplay

• Updated tooltip for "Establish the ABDACOM" shared focus to make it more clear that only faction members are eligible to receive invites to join the ABDACOM.

• Fixed the description for the focus "Reestablish the Guominjun" to not make the rather bold claim that Sinkiang was led by Moustache Man in the 1939 start. Fixes

• A subject owning a single state no longer creates a 'new war participant' popup when joining a war.

• Added a new event sound tickbox to disable/enable scripted event sounds. For example speeches.

• The new releasable nations in Indonesia now also have access to the Nusantara/Greater Indonesia formeable decision category

• Added joint focus tree icons to ABDACOM focuses.

• INS: Clarified the effect of the Focus 'Privately Owned Military Industry'.

• INS: The Indonesian focus 'The Timor Issue' will now dynamically switch icons & loc if Timor is independent.

• INS: Indonesia can now core East Timor using Unity in Diversity decisions.

• INS: Indonesian decision "Order a Ceasefire" now requires escalation 2+

• INS: Allow an Indonesian-formed Netherlands-Indonesia union to take most Dutch economic focuses from the joint tree.

• INS: Added a decision for the Netherlands-Indonesia Union to move its capital to Amsterdam or Batavia.

• INS: Hollandia will now be renamed to Jayapura if Indonesia is independent.

• INS: Added a small naval branch for the Dutch East Indies joint tree, which is available during peacetime.

• AST: Added the Australasia formable.

• AST: The Focus 'Reclaim the Lost Territory' now transfers all land, naval, and air forces to Australia.

• AST: The Focus 'Singapore Strategy' is now available if either ENG or AST controls Singapore, instead of only ENG.

• AST: The 'Alice Springs' Focus has been reduced to 35 days.

• AST: Australian Infantry Divisions now have the proper division icon.

• AST: A. Ruthven set as leader if monarchist UK starts uprising in Australia.

• SIA: Added a decision to increase the Civil/Military wings approval of you if they are rebellious at the cost of a temporary negative National Spirit.

• SIA: A civil war triggered through the Khana Ratsadon only happens once now. If they become rebellious again a negative spirit is applied instead.

• SIA: the Royal Palace Directive focus now unlocks a decision to increase the Military/Civil wing opinion of you, without pissing the other party off. This has a 365 day timeout.

• SIA: Added a new focus in the Pan-Thaiism branch that allows you to end the factionalism of the Khana Ratsadon if both the Civil and Military wing approve of you for 270 days. This focus shuts off the Khana Ratsadon system and merges the civilian and military wing spirits.

• SIA: Added the king of the white elephant as a Movie poster decision, giving weekly stability.

• SIA: Removed increasing cost for theater decisions.

• AST: Decision 'Scorch the North' gives effect when specific states are naval invaded instead of when at war.

• SIA: Added option to pick a new leader when the Seri Thai Takes over, Phin Choonhavan or Khuang Aphaiwong.

• SIA: Added options to sway individuals via decisions for the Seri Thai. Each general increases the strength of the civil war for your side by 5%.

• SIA: The Seri Thai civil war can now be avoided if the combined civil war strength for the player is over 80% (5%/general swayed + total democratic support).

• SIA: In the Seri Thai branch the Focus 'Prepare to Drop' now gives a special forces National Spirit.

• SIA: Rising up as the Seri Thai against Japan now seizes some valuables, giving a temporary bonus.

• SIA: Made the requirement for forming the Greater Thai empire more clear.

• SIA: Starting a limited war now requires the territory to be adjacent to yours.

• SIA: When agricultural tax reduction is removed you now gain a one time tech bonus for industry.

Stability & Performance

• CTD: Fixed a crash that occurred when calling 'gain_xp' command on a fleet without an Admiral.

• CTD: Fix a crash that occurred when assigning a deployed Field Marshal to an Army Group

• OOS: Fixed a late-game gamestate OOS caused by MIOs.

• OOS: Fixed an OOS that happened if a client had previously played an ahistorical game in the same session before joining a historical MP game.

UI

• The Division Designer click-shortcuts now also apply to HQ templates.

• Fixed an issue where Division Designer dropdown items buttons did not have the right size.

• Added dams to the States & Construction mapmodes.

• Fixed wrong interactions and tooltips for Generals while assigning a leader to an Army Group.

• Now showing all manpower modifiers in tooltips even if they sum up to a neutral number.

• Divisions with multiple active commander abilities now show them all instead of just one.

• Divisions with an active ability that is being nerfed because of late joiners show that reduction.

• Fixed Assign Commander tooltips with TAOG disabled.

• Improvements to MP security

AI

• ITA: Introduced historical Italian fighter designs for the AI to build.

• GER: Introduced some intermediate plane variants for the improved_small_airframe.

• ENG: The UK will build more synthetic refineries to safe guard their supply of rubber. (autarky is king)

• USA: Added home guard defense logic to protect the continent once the Axis become a threat.

• JAP: Japan is more likely to naval invade Borneo now.

• ENG: The UK will be more likely to take 'Gateway to Europe' decisions on Historical mode.

• INS: Indonesia's AI will have a higher risk tolerance for raids if the only alternative is cancelling them.

Modding

• Added logical AND, OR, XOR and NOT math expression functions.

• Added a lerp function to the math expressions.

• Add 'always_show_on_actions_tooltip' bool field on Advisors to avoid 'on_add and on_remove' effect tooltips being lost when the advisor has a trait with a custom tooltip.

• If a radio station is disabled, scripted 'play_song' effects will respect this.

• Revert " If a radio station is disabled, scripted play_song effects will respect this".

• Added support for scripted 'unit_animations' on raid types.

• Added atan and atan2 math functions

Bugfix

• Fixed a bug where a leader's description would appear twice.

• Fixed an issue where Volunteers would not come back when Air Base Access is enabled.

• ICE: Fixed 'Reclaiming the Empire' focus for Iceland to be doable again after a war with the owner of Greenland is concluded.

• Fixed a case where Romania could snatch Bulgarian territory from a third party occupying them totally via the 'Puppet Romania' focus. Now Bulgaria is required to be at peace for this focus.

• Fixed a bug where a spearhead or offensive line order was not advancing to destination tiles

• When writing a file, it's now guarded by a try/catch and will error when unable to write.

• AST: The Focus 'World Peace' will now actually allow sending Volunteers to the Spanish Republicans rather than Nationalists.

• AST: Australia now gains the 'Liverpool Dockworker' uprising from 'Out of the Den'.

• AST: The Focus 'Lang is Right' shows the right tooltip (it is -0.05 Political Power Cost instead of -0.05%). Colour is also now green for good.

• AST: Fixed missing localisation in Smuggle Arms decisions, and made the Irish and Northern Irish smuggling use the same timer.

• AST: The Focuses 'Liberate the Colonies' and 'Red Solidarity' now have a tooltip to show what they do.

• AST: The Focus 'Join the Comintern' has a better tooltip explaining what is going on. Australia's faction will only merge into the Comintern, if Australia is the faction leader.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where you could demand to release your own territories.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia could have two resource trades.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia would suddenly become the Republic of Indonesia again after forming the Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed certain characters not appearing for the Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed a bug where Indonesia could start a new volksraad decision before clearing the event, allowing the same decision to be taken twice.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus description 'Women in the Military'.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus 'Women's Sufferage'.

• INS: Fixed a typo in the Focus description 'Continue the Hybrid Politics'.

• INS: Fixed several Focuses occasionally attempting to target Interior Borneo.

• SIA: Fixed missing tech names for tech bonuses.

• HOL: The Focus 'Continue the War in Batavia' now moves the capital to Batavia instead of Bandung.

• Fix Army Leaders cloned for a Civil War still thinking they are deployed with the Army of the original Leader.

• Fixed a bug where infiltration tokens disappear when loading saves.

• Fixed an issue where Army HQs became the default garrison garrison template if all other templates were locked.

• AST: 'The Phosphate Commission' now requires both owning and controlling Nauru.

• INS: Indonesia's leader will no longer reset after peacefully gaining independence.

• AST: The National Spirit 'Nauru Pact' tooltip has been edited so its effects alter depending on GER being in the faction or not.

• AST: Phosphate Commission spirit is now being removed by completing the Nauru's Return to German Hands, instead of being removed by the event, making the effect clearer.

• AST: Added fallbacks for effects of event Nauru's Return to German Hands to cover if Australia is subject of UK but not in the same faction or if not subject at all.

• AST: Event Nauru's Return to German Hands either gives a German Guarantee or adds Australia to German faction, not both.

• JAP: After being defeated in the war, Japan is npw discouraged from joining the Axis.

• Fixed a bug where lobbies with more than 20 players would struggle with more people connecting to the game

• SIA: Fixed a bug where the Allies could decline Siam's join offer from Seri Thai.

• SIA: Fixed a bug that caused the Seri Thai to not add intel bonus properly

• SIA: Fixed a bug that caused players without La Resistance DLC to not get a proper bonus from the Seri Thai OSS Focus

• AST: The Focus 'Defying American Interference': Added fallbacks if the Philippines are no longer subject of the USA.

• AST: The Focus 'Defying American Interference': Added event chain asking JAP to guarantee AST if they're not in the same faction, and updated tooltips for the focus and its event chains.

• AST: Changed event images for AST_diplomatic_events.73, AST_diplomatic_events.76

• INS: The Indonesian communist branch will no longer create a generic faction with the 'Strength in Unity' manifest.

• INS: The Indonesian AI will no longer wait before establishing a revolutionary HQ, and will be far less likely to build the HQ in Papua.

• Fix the commander skill bonus modifier not being properly applied

• JAP: Fixed Japan's 'Strike the Southern Road' Focus being unreachable if Siam no longer existed.

• HOL: The Netherlands will no longer sometimes cave to the British when going communist or fascist.

• AST: Added TAOG check to event The 1938 Sesquicentenary (AST_political_events.6)

• SIA: Fixed an incorrect tooltip in the Seri Thai Branch.

• HOL: The Netherlands will now be invited to the Allies despite being at war with Indonesia after getting invaded by Germany.

• Fix issue where militia raid unit models were in an idle pose while displayed above the raid arrow.

• HOL: Fixed bug where the Netherlands would not get the 'Obtain Foreign Colonial Investments' decisions after completing the required focus.

• AST: Focus Done Meddling will no longer flood error log on hovering over it.

• Remove incorrect tooltip which falsely claimed an advisor would be unlocked.

• Fix AI constantly deploying and withdrawing Army HQs under Field Marshals.

• INS: Indonesia can no longer take the 'Purge the Opportunists' Focus, which creates a faction, if Indonesia is puppeted.

• INS: Fixed an issue where the Indonesian National Revolution ending would sometimes not whitepeace the rest of the Allies.

• Fixed some missing idea icons - for Design Companies and others, amongst them AST_kirov, BEL_kirov, smb_organization_of_american_states_member

• AST: Set to correct Fascist cosmetic tag when becoming independent manually.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where changing laws would not properly adjust the Khana Ratsadon.

• AST: Renamed the Bristol Blenheim to the Bristol Blenheim Mk IF (this variant replaced the bomb bay for extra under-carriage guns).

• SIA: Advisors when playing without Thunder at Our Gates enabled should no longer be displayed as question mark placeholder.

• AST: Added tooltip for Planned Extraction to show this focus will give access to the endless Pilbara steel decision.

• AST: Mount Isa Industrial Concern will now display correctly when upgraded through Planned Extraction.

• Division Designer should now save correctly restricted equipment types

• Fixed the crash that could happen due to the spy operative mastering ability to be in two countries at the same time

• Fixed the tooltip for the Maphilindia achievement

• Fixed the Treaty of Saadabad focus branch overlapping the Kurdish focus tree as Iraq when obsolete focus branches are shown

• AST: Event The Prime Minister Succumbs localization has been fixed to reference correct character

• Fixes Czechoslovakia not puppeting Hungary after taking the Neutralize Hungarian Threat Focus and capitulating Hungary.

• Sync HQ deploy template and CP reservation when retemplating a deployed HQ

• Anzac Achievement is now correctly only triggered by generals and field marshals

• Event Loyalties to Britain: Added triggers to hide old options if the Dominion is on the same ideological path as ENG, making it unavailable to leave the Commonwealth through event; Added new option with triggers to show if the Dominion is on the same ideological path as ENG.

• ENG: Fixed an issue where the United Kingdom wouldn't Bypass the focuses Secure Iraq and Secure Iran when they already had them as their puppets or were at war with them

• Give Control of State action should now display why you can't give control of a state in a specific condition, instead of allowing it to be done, but failing to properly act.

• AST: Fixed an issue so the Focuses 'Done 'Meddling & 'The Ultimate Overseas Duty' don't reset war participation.

• INS: Fixed an issue where the Indonesian Volksraad would be inaccessible after a veto.

• INS: Conrad Helfrich is no longer unavailable as a Chief of Navy for Indonesia

• HOL: the National Spirit 'Profitable Colony' is no longer removed immediately upon being added

• HOL: The achievement 'Bevrijding' is no longer impossible with TAOG enabled.

• SIA: Fixed 2 planes not showing up in the tech tree without BBA.

• AST: Updated Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient name to CEFEO.

• Heavy Armor HQ Security is now capable of exercising instead of relaxing all day in their Tanks.

• The Regimental Support Rocket Battery no longer affects division speed.

• GER: German focus 'Around Maginot' now targets an Indonesian-formed Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

• INS: Fixed a missing loc string in an Indonesian event

• INS: Indonesia no longer needs to control impassable states such as Interior Borneo in order to win the revolution

• AST: Now has access to their second Special Forces branch via the Marines focus.

• SIA: Fixed an issue which caused a limited war to white peace without transfer instead of correctly transfer states if France capitulated while the limited war was ongoing.

• SIA: Removed a redundant requirement in the Focus 'Spread Democratic Ssentiment In Universities'.

• AST: Failsafes for mission 'Organize a Strike' and spirit 'Strike Ongoing' to cancel both when completing the Focus 'All for One, One for All'.

• AST: Removed misplaced trigger on 'Strike Ongoing' which made it cancel if not owning Nauru.

• AST: Fixed so advisors Milford, Northcott, Jeffrey, Goble & Burnett get discount from Relief of Command/Independent Air Force,

• ETH: The Focus 'Freedom at Gunpoint' now will only take african states and leaves the rest alone.

• AST: The Focus 'The Irish Anti-Britain Pact' now correctly grants Australia military access and docking rights through Ireland.

• AST: Decisions Vichy Out of Africa is now removed by the Focus 'Undeniably Ours', not 'Done Meddling'.

• ABDACOM: Vichy France no longer has access to the ABDACOM joint focus tree.

• INS: Indonesia will no longer lose Dutch generals when having completed Volksraad Compromises.

• INS: Made it so that Indonesia cannot side with Japanese invaders if the focus 'The Industrialized Colony' has been completed, making it no longer possible to gain 7 research slots as Indonesia.

• Block disbanding armies with a deployed HQ, preventing an exploit

• GER: Decision Reichskommissariat Australasian required states has been adjusted to match map changes.

• SIA: The 'Artillery Enthusiast' trait now no longer applies to the Self-Propelled Artillery.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where limited wars would cause France to not be able to join a faction.

• SIA: King of the White Elephant propaganda poster tooltip and its effect on Weekly Stability have been fixed.

• Fixes the conflicting available tooltip for 'The Between the Seas Concept' to be clearer

• GER: Bougainville added to focus Break the Anglo-French Colonial Hegemony

• Bougainville has now been included in effects that target the state for GER, JAP, PHI (i.e.: focuses that take control of pacific islands etc.).

• Fixes issue where division template used in a garrison could be edited to have zero suppression.

• RAJ: Loc typo for displaying current resistance in string currentStateResistance.

• AST: Communist Civil War should no longer happen if Australia is already Communist.

• Fix Shift+Click allowing Spain to deploy locked HQ templates.

• SIA: Fixed a bug where the Asian democratic compact wasn't updating correctly. It will now always be updated once at the end of each month.

• SIA: You now need to be a faction leader to get updated bonuses from the 'Asian Democratic Compact'.

• SIA: Fixed tooltip for 'Asian Democratic compact'.

• SIA: Fixed an issue where invite country to Asian Democratic Compact wasn't showing

• ETH: Fixes Ethiopia being able to annex colonial powers through the Horn of Africa decisions if the colonial powers moved their capitals there.

• AST: Focus completion time increase/decrease in event Halfway to Federal Election & decision Final Reforms has been edited to match

• INS: Fixed typo in Murk Boerstra's name.

• INS: Fixed typo in the Focus 'Overallwagen' -> 'Overvalwagen'.

As you were!
(And try to leave this place in one piece while we're out.)

Generals!

It’s been a week since launch, and we are working on our usual post release support. 1.19.1 released yesterday, doing a first balance pass, as well as quite a few encountered issues. We are working on 1.19.2 to be released before the summer break. That patch will also contain a first batch of core networking improvements, aimed at improving the Multiplayer experience.

The release itself was fairly smooth from our side (even if the reception was not what we had hoped for.) Balance is a bit rough, but we will continue to work on this, and we are aiming for another open beta focused on a wider, more holistic, balance pass over the summer.

As you can see from the Anniversary Video (did you watch until the end?), we’ll be back soon with NEW Dev Corners as well. The team is very eager to start with that!

I also have the pleasure of announcing our new Game Director, Laszlo, who will introduce himself in more detail below. Additionally we are doing interviews with various content creators, where you are able to get a closer look at us. They will release those videos when they’re ready and then we’ll share them too.

- Gorion, Studio Manager

Hello everyone, it’s a nice feeling to finally be able to talk about this openly. As Gorion mentioned, I am Laszlo and I’ve been at Paradox for about 2.5 years now and have been making games for just shy of 9 years.

Just to immediately make this easier, on the forums I actually go by the name PDX_Batya. So you might have seen me come by under said alias.
It’s a real honor to take up the mantle of Game Director on HoI IV and they are no small shoes to fill following Dan and Peter. I still look to them for the occasional guidance which has been very helpful throughout the last few months and also to make sure the original vision is not lost.

Of course an adjustment of vision is natural when direction changes but HoI IV should feel and play like the HoI many of us (including myself) came to fall in love with over 10 years ago.
It’s an amazing game that does the time period justice and engages millions of people across the world for historical interest or competitive play (and the occasional powercreep alt-history path).

One of the core values for me thus far has been to listen to the community and keep an honest conversation going. I know this sounds cheesy, but it is key to interact with you and listen to what you have to say both big and small. It is not an easy feat to do so, mainly due to the spread of players and wants that are out there and we might not always reply but we do see what the community talks about.

In the end I am a firm believer that making games is a co-operative undertaking. Not only between me and my many talented colleagues, but also the community.

The aim is to support this game with some bangers as long as you all enjoy playing it, and I intend to do exactly that.

I will see you all out there, and I will try to answer some of your questions if you have any! And as Gorion mentioned as well, keep an eye out for a few interviews that we’ve planned with some of our community members.

Thanks, and I will see you in the next post!

- Batya, Game Director, Hearts of Iron IV

Generals!

Thanks for all of the feedback we’ve received over the last few days. We’re hard at work addressing as much of it as possible and plan to incorporate more into another patch that will happen later down the line. The main issues we wanted to address were the country selection screen being broken in several mods, as well as an exploit regarding ‘Force Attack’. Both of these issues are fixed now alongside a bunch of other bug fixes and balance changes.

Besides letting us know what to focus on, I’d also like to ask if there are any changes people would like to see regarding the patch notes. For example I’ve bounced between using country tags and full names for highlighting purposes. I’d like to know if there’s a preference.

/Batya

PATCH NOTES

Balance

•
Blockade Runner admiral trait requirement reduced from 37 to 32 knots to allow for support and repair ships.

•
The Grand Assault milestone 'Forward Command Posts' supply reduction was reduced from -0.05 to -0.01

•
INS/HOL: Significantly reduced the factories required for the focus 'The Industrialized Colony'.

•
INS/HOL: Significantly reduced the factories required for the focus 'The Soetardjo Act'.

•
INS/HOL: The focus 'The Republic of Indonesia' no longer requires a minimum number of civs, mils, and dockyards, and instead only checks your factory count, regardless of which type. Also reduced the factories required to take the focus.

•
INS/HOL: The focus 'Economic Integration' now requires a minumum of 50 factories of any type, instead of 45 civilian factories specifically

•
AST: Changed focus length from 70 to 35 for several focuses, and swapped a few icons.

•
AST: Tweaked the values of Decisions and National Spirits for the Fascist branch.

•
AST: Locking default advisor to die in Air Crash event.

•
AST: Fixed a bug with the small portrait of John Lavarack showing the wrong portrait.

•
AST: The 'Governor General' Advisor Trait has had a balance tweak lowering the Democracy drift from 0.10 to 0.05 and adding -5% consumer goods factor.

•
AST: Rebalanced Australia's various population growth modifiers

•
AST: Democratic branch autonomy gain has been increased from 0.1 to 0.3.

•
AST: Fascist autonomy gain has been increased from 0.1 to 0.3.

•
AST: Edited advisor Richard Dixon available check, added leader trait to focus Eastern Focus, and tweaked prereqs of focus The Pacific Pact

•
AST: Toned down the tech rushing capability through 'Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk III*' and 'Owen Gun' focuses.

•
AST: Added MILS to fascist focuses 'Walls Like Uluru' and 'Crush the Gates' + spirit National Defense modifier tweaks

•
AST: Decision Call On Fascist now has a dynamic cost.

•
AST: Upgraded the focus 'Coastwatchers' with Air Wing Experience Loss When Killed reduction, and Naval Auxiliary Patrol with Casualties on Sink reduction to represent the many airmen and sailors saved by these two organisations.

•
SIA: Slightly increased the probability that asking for the return of territories goes in Siams favor


•
SIA: German Tank Studies now grants +5% piercing bonus instead of a -10% build cost reduction.

•
SIA: American Tank Studies now only grants its attack bonus instead of -5% build cost reduction as well.

•
ABDACOM focuses are now mostly 35 days (first and last are 70 day).

•
SIA: 'Asian Democratic Compact' now only counts non-puppets that are in your faction.

•
SIA: Unconventional Tank Construction now grants -15% build cost instead of -20% and -10% reliability instead of -15%.

Gameplay

•
INS: Militia unit upgrades now increase the success chance of Indonesian raids.

•
INS: Indonesia now gets events after finishing a militia base decision.

•
INS: Clarified an Indonesian tooltip in the declaration of independence focus.

•
AST: Rebalanced AI weight to focus a little more on air.

•
AST: Tweaking Democratic and Communist volunteer focus effects.

•
AST: Australian Communists no longer need to deal with the Cabinet Trust following the Canberra Air Disaster. Their government has already changed.

•
AST: Refunding UAP/ALP advisors when they're removed; Counting completed Castle Crumbling mission as election win; Adding party votes modifier to Castle Crumbling mission fail

•
SIA: 'Army of Siam' is now a dynamic modifier instead of a National Spirit to reduce spirit bloat.

•
SIA: Added decisions to Develop Northern Malaya and Eastern Burma.

•
SIA: Finishing the 'Triangular Defense network' now gives a flat +10% Compliance boost to any occupied territory.

•
SIA: Kedah is now renamed to Syburi if cored by Siam.

•
SIA: Recover Indochina and Demand the return of lost territory are no longer mutually exclusive

•
SIA: Thailand is now evil red instead of blue when Siam turns to Thailand.

•
PHI: Added Sergio Osmena as a country leader option after Manuel Quezon's death.

•
Shift + Clicking a Commander while assigning to an Army will now also automatically start deploying them in the field with an HQ.

UI

•
AST: Added mission to Australia First Movement decisions to visualize and keep track of the insufficient funds timer.

•
AST: Tooltip for locked Air Crash advisor to show he's available only if Canberra Air Disaster hasn't happened.

•
Pending Commander now shows up as a smaller portrait when re-assigning them to another army.

•
Allow queuing the HQ deployment of en-route Commanders.

•
Armies with deployed HQ can now change Commander, who will wait for the HQ to be withdrawn.

AI

•
Indonesian AI will be heavily encouraged to switch to a different leader after completing the focus 'A Democratic Indonesia', if Indonesia's leader is still a governor general.

•
Fixed a bug where the AI could be over-eager with their lendlease offers, they will now keep in mind the amount of available convoys you have in their offer.

Modding

•
Add impassable_ignored_links for impassable states, a list of state IDs that will be ignored when computing the owner and controller of an impassable state

•
Added a few common math functions pow, sqrt, cos, sin, tan, exp and log

Bugfix

•
INS: Fixed several incorrect equipment names for Indonesian mechanized and armored cars.

•
INS: The mission 'Moestopo demands promotion for his efforts' no longer gives +2 levels without the relevant skill increases.

•
INS: Fixed a broken modifier added by the Indonesian 'Arm the Students' focus.

•
INS: Fixed a broken command power modifier given by the Indonesian 'Laskar Rakyat' focus.

•
INS: Indonesia can no longer use demorcatic elections (which dont work) after forming the Netherlands-Indonesia Union.

•
INS: The focus 'A Democratic Indonesia' will no longer reset the country leader to Cornelis even if Tjarda was chosen to replace him

•
INS: The Netherlands-Indonesia Union will now transfer all characters, including advisors.

•
INS: Indonesia can no longer access the Volksraad when independent.

•
INS: No longer display an inacurrate icon for the M23 Vickers

•
INS: Fixed unlocalized string in Indonesian democratic elections tooltip.

•
INS/HOL: Fixed a missing icon in Dutch spirit 'Agricultural Taxes'.

•
AST: Setting and clearing flag in Vichy territory requests for decisions Vichy Out of Africa.

•
AST: Removing effect for focus Under the Rule of Canberra that gave puppet to puppet; instead it annexes the states that are owned by an AI player

•
AST: Applying A Sound Voice trait which failed earlier in the decision A Sound Voice

•
AST: Adding a is_coastal check to several focuses that gave coastal forts

•
AST: NCNS disabled fallbacks to focuses giving Faction effects

•
AST: Australia now must own Nauru for The Phosphate Commission focus.

•
AST: Australia now has a level 2 rail connection all the way from Canberra to Alice Springs if they complete both 'Standard Gauge Line to Darwin' and 'Alice Springs' focuses.

•
AST: Changed Naval Engineer (Percival McNeil) icon to be more relevant.

•
AST: Added TAOG/Non-TAOG DLC checks for Custom Game Rules / AI Behavior to prevent displaying a double set

•
AST: Fixed a bug where communist Australia had a hard time ending civil wars.

•
AST: Hidden Australia's prospect decisiosn which were TAOG only (they never worked, but showed up in the list).

•
SIA: Fixed a bug that would cause Yellow Dossier events to fire after 'Spring the Trap' was completed.

•
SIA: Fixed a bug where you could get a wargoal against yourself if you controlled parts of Indochina while asking France to return it.

•
SIA: Pridi now gets his Civilian Wing Leader correctly when completing Secure the state.

•
SIA: Replaced an inappropriately themed focus icon.

•
Tooltip for maximum command power now correctly shows the name of the advisors.

•
Added missing spriteType entry for event picture and switched out two event pictures.

•
Sir Mohammed Iqbal and Agha Khan III will now be unhired when Pakistan starts existing.

•
Load and continue buttons in main menu now correctly displays cosmetic flags

•
Fix a bug where deployed Generals were able to be deployed as Field Marshals.

•
Fixed a bug where Command Abilities cost was affected by a general's planning skill

•
Fix an issue where Czechs puppets would trigger the Sudetenland Crisis.

•
Fixed a missing localisation string (Mt. Isa Mines).

•
Fixed a bug where Special Forces doctrines were shown to everyone, even if you didn't own the relevant DLC. (AAT or NCNS).

•
Fixed a bug where Commander Ability cost was determined by number of divisions instead of number of battalions 

•
Fixed an issue where dynamic countries could be created without valid Army HQ templates, causing a crash.

Anniversary SALE: Up to 80% Off! Shop Now.

Generals!

We’ve just released a small hotfix (1.19.0.1) to address two of the issues that we’re seeing right now.

•
There was a particular crash related to the Spanish civil war kicking off into a four-way civil war and the new Army HQ feature.

•
There was an issue where the TaoG DLC icon in the main menu wasn’t lighting up properly if you have the DLC unlocked.

Both of these should now be fixed.

Crashing and MODs

We also can see in our reporting telemetry that most other crashes players are experiencing right now are related to playing with mods. If you do crash, and you are 100% certain that you’re NOT playing with mods, please submit your crashes in the crashreporter tool so we can look into fixing them.

Balance and stat bloat

We hear your concerns with balance & stat bloat, and we’re looking into this. We also see the complaints about command ability cost being affected by the general planning skill, causing in rare cases the ability cost to be pretty much free. This was unintentional and will be reverted in 1.19.1.

More patch

We’re already working on Patches 1.19.1 and 1.19.2.

Our aim is to release the former (early) next week, and 1.19.2 should be not too far after that.

PATCH NOTES

Stability & Performance

•
Fixed a CTD when Army HQ units were destroyed in combat under specific conditions (risks happening in, for example, a 4-way Spanish civil war).

Bugfix

•
Main menu icon for TaoG now correctly shows ownership.

New Hearts of Iron 4 expansion Thunder at our Gates has just arrived, and it's all about stepping into the heart of command. The new 'theater pack' continues to grow the now decade-old WW2 game (happy tenth birthday, HoI 4, you've now lasted 60% longer than the conflict you're based on) across three nations that don't often get enough recognition. Become the last bastion against Japanese forces with Australia, carve out an empire as Siam, or determine whether Indonesia should push for independence. Add in the introduction of military HQs and ship captains, and your skills as a leader will be put to the test.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Hearts of Iron 4 Thunder at our Gates just brought three undervalued WW2 players to life

Generals!

Thunder At Our Gates is officially out now! Jump into the thick of the South-East Asian rainforests and battle your way through to victory. Or if you prefer a more grainy environment, stick to the Australian continent and send your expeditionaries to hold Tobruk like a real desert rat.

This is our first Theater Pack, a smaller DLC which includes both country content as well as gameplay features. With it you get new content for Australia, Siam, and Indonesia as well as the inclusion of the new Army HQ feature and Ship Captains (and regimental support in the free patch!).

We hope to see you out there protecting the Pacific or uniting it under your banner!

/Batya

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3796290/Theater_Pack__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Thunder_at_our_Gates/

Enjoy the brand new Thunder at our Gates soundtrack!

These Major Mods have, or soon will be, updated so that you can keep playing them (or try them out!)

(The dates can change, however)

June 11th
End of a New Beginning

World Ablaze

June 30th
Cold War Iron Curtain

We’re almost there, our free weekend is starting today!

Need some Help getting started? Have a look at HOI Designer (Not affiliated with Paradox Interactive)

Generals!

Tomorrow at 18:00 CEST we’ll be releasing Thunder at our Gates. It feels like only two months ago that we brought you Peace for our Time.

Accompanying this release we’ll bring you Patch 1.19.0 and, just like the recent Anniversary Patch, it’s another beefy one.

Patch Notes (1.19.0)

Thunder at our Gates

•
Added new Focus tree for Australia and a new Democratic Election system.

•
Added new Focus tree for Siam.

•
Added new Focus tree for The Dutch East-Indies.

•
Updated states in South-East Asia.

•
Added new VO for Australia, Siam, and The Dutch East-Indies.

•
Added 6 new Music Tracks.

•
Added 50 new and revamped airplane models

•
Added 4 new and revamped ground vehicle models.

•
Added 21 new and revamped tank models.

•
Added 3 new infantry models.

•
Added 14 Army HQ commander models including 3 generic cultural variants.

•
Introducing Army HQs which allows for the deployment of generals into the field to provide additional support to their army.

•
Deployed Army HQs can be assigned to specific orders and buff troops accordingly.

•
Added 11 unique HQ support companies that allows for tailoring Army HQs to different needs.

•
Added 5 new commander abilities that are unlocked through HQ support companies.

•
Added Dispersed Operations doctrine for Thunder at our Gates, focusing on hardening logistics & reduce the effect of enemy air power.

•
Added Ship Captains to Naval vessels and the ability to grant them medals and promote them to become Admirals.

•
Added 8 Historical Ship Captains in both bookmarks for all Major countries (and Australia!).

Free Features & Models

•
Added a new row for Regimental Support to the Division Designer.

•
Added 12 Regimental support companies that are unlocked through techs and synergise with the doctrine system

•
Added the new Doctrine system for Special Forces.

•
Added 3 revamped Infantry models, and 2 Artillery models for the Commonwealth

•
Added 2 revamped tank models.

•
Added 4 revamped ground vehicle models.

•
New Zealand received several new Focuses, Advisors and Industrial Concerns.

Balance

•
The Pearl Harbor raid now has a lower base success chance, but it is improved by taking the focus 'Form the Kido Butai'.

•
Command powers daily costs now scale with amount of battalions affected.

•
The negative effects of failing the 'People's Trust' mission as the PRC are now better displayed in the tooltip, and have been merged into one National Spirit.

•
Split the Japanese Home Islands airzone into Northern, Central, and Southern Japan.

•
Manchukuo: Improved the trait the leader gains when completing the focus 'Claim the Mandate of Heaven'.

•
The UK is now less likely to select a faction rule that reduces the tension needed to guarantee other nations when playing on historical.

•
Commercial Nuclear Reactor will now contribute 0.01% Daily Breakthrough towards 'Physics/Nuclear' category. (As it already contributed to the production of the Nuclear Bombs, it will now also be listed in the respective tooltip).

•
Iran no longer gains redundant research bonuses when going down the Negotiate with America / Establish the Iranian Nuclear Program focuses, instead getting breakthrough points.

•
Rejigged the Mexican AI strategy plans so that they build up and prepare more before they eventually go to war with the USA and the Allies.

•
Supervised States can now decline being called into a war, to represent the difference between regular puppets and democratized governments.

•
Continuous Offensives: All armour additionally gains +10% breakthrough.

•
Self-Sufficient Battalion: Armored signal battalion_mult on tank destroyers nerfed: AP attack reduced from +20% to +10%.

•
Artillery Groups: Support artillery now also benefits, gaining +5% soft attack and +10% breakthrough.

•
Pakfront: Anti-tank brigade +20% defense moved to Emplacement Rotation & +20% soft attack moved to Weakpoint Studies

•
Multirole Support Vehicles: Moved all SP-vehicle bonuses to regimental-support equivalents.

•
Shoot and Scoot: All three SP categories had max organisation reduced from +10 to +5 and recovery rate from +20% to +15%. SP artillery additionally gains +5% soft attack; SP anti-air additionally gains +5% anti-air; tank destroyers' hard attack reduced from +15% to +5%.

•
Integrated Support Batteries: Support artillery soft attack nerfed from +10% to +5%; anti-tank and anti-air support companies now also benefit (+20 max organisation, +5% AP and +5% hard attack for anti-tank, +5% air attack for anti-air).

•
Breaking Out: Army-wide soft attack nerfed from +20% to +15%.

•
Combined Arms Integration: Removed +4 max organisation for tanks; removed +10% air attack for anti-air support company (migrated to anti-air battery).

•
"Quick Decision Offensive Warfare" Militia now gets 1.5% Initiative bonus instead of 1%

Gameplay

•
Added in more critical states for ships: Leaking Pressure Hull, Leaking Battery, Jammed Torpedo Tube, Broken Diesel Engines, Broken Bilge Pump, Shortcircuited Radar, Leaking Fuel Tanks, Reactor Coolant Loss, and Fire Direction Breakdown.

•
Inflexible strategist is now Stubborn Defender.

•
UK: Reworked the Fortify East Asia focus tree branch.

•
Clarified tooltip for Dominions on effects of accepting Imperial Federation.

•
UK: Changed 'Blackshirt replace dominion government' decisions to send event instead of changing dominion ideology unilaterally.

•
Fascist China now has access to the Sino-German Technical Mission tank MIO after approaching Western Powers.

•
Iraq forming the Hashemite Arab Federation will now annex any subject included in their newly gained core territories.

•
Brazil: Pedro Gastão can now take over the throne when his father dies.

•
Portugal: Added focuses regarding the Asian colonies to the colonial branch.

•
The two Japanese focuses locked behind having Yamakawa Kikue as the country leader can now also be taken if she is hired as an advisor, which she can be if her husband is the country leader.

•
Added the ability for all releasable nations within the British Raj as well as Nepal and Bhutan to unite the Indian subcontinent into a formable nation.

•
Raid units are now sorted on success rate rather than distance to raid source.

•
When sending multiple armies as volunteers, they will be preserved instead of combined into one.

•
Torpedo Mountings and Anti-Ship Guided Missile - they are considered one family, and as such Upgrade Option in the Plane Designer will upgrade them Torpedo Mounting I -> Torpedo Mounting II -> Torpedo Mounting III -> Anti-Ship Guided Missile

Stability & Performance

•
Reduced save file size from provinces.

•
Trade system now use more cores.

•
Optimized Naval HQ calculations & reduced pathfinding for Army HQ.

UI

•
Tweaked the Ship Details window: moved manpower, display fuel consumption, removed Terrain tab.

•
Move the Naval HQ button to the Navy Overview screen.

•
Shows en-route duration on generals in 'Select Commander' window.

•
Added the ability to Shift+Click on a template icon to open the division designer for that template from the Army List view and Unit Details view.

•
Added filters to the Country Selection Screen for unplayed countries and the various continents.

•
Added arrows to the Italian BoP decision names to indicate which direction they will push the Balance in.

•
The Indian focus 'Princely States Policy' now shows the effects of the unlocked laws upfront, and if taken by an ai the Independent Rule law is now automatically applied.

•
Map Arrows that are too short will now display the arrow head anyway.

•
Hovering a province will now show the information about the province control instead of the state's.

AI

•
Added a small optimization for borderwars where the AI tried and failed interacting with it while technically not allowed to do so. (AKA: Made the AI stop trying (and failing) to cheat in border wars).

•
Added script support for changing Taskforce ship target settings.

•
Updated the Japanese AI to be more willing to attack islands to their south when they are going historical.

•
Stop AI continuously exchanging Army Groups Field Marshals while they are in combat.

•
Stop AI creating Frontlines they cannot reach (because of a demilitarized zone for example).

•
Made the AI verify that they don't have access to special research facilities before building another one of them.

•
Made United Kingdom more competent at defending egypt and attacking Tripoli, and Iraq.

•
Germany will produce slightly more light tanks, and produce less trains overall.

•
Italy will use its airforce more in Africa and keep a strong presence in North-Africa, even when its attacking Yugoslavia, and Greece. They also no longer will reinforce mindlessly in the Sub-Saharan region.

•
AI is more keen on training their Air Wings.

•
Added basic infantry template to Iraq.

•
Added early tank destroyer variants to Soviets, USA and Germany.

•
Soviets and Germans have updated AT and armored templates. The AI will also more likely prioritize templates that need updating.

•
An AI hosting governments in exile no longer stops upgrading its own division templates as a side effect of refreshing exile templates.

•
The UK is encouraged to help with air in north africa if needed.

•
AI is better at filling their carriers with airplanes, even if they can't field the best, they will reuse old equipment.

•
Increased UK naval dominance in the Mediterranean for better naval invasions.

Modding

•
Add support for subdoctrines being assignable to multiple different doctrine track types.

•
Add allow_in_multiple_tracks property for subdoctrines, which determines whether one subdoctrine can be added to multiple tracks simultaneously (default is no).

•
Decision's war_with_on_remove/timeout/complete are now scoped variables.

•
reduce_focus_completion_cost now correctly localizes dynamic text in its description.

•
Add unlock_subunit effect which unlocks a subunit for a country.

•
Add ship_modifiers to medals.

•
Add captured_army_leader as a raid target type.

•
Implement xor property for subdoctrines which makes subdoctrines mutually exclusive between separate tracks.

•
Add officer_xp field to unit medals.

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Removes support for 'add_temporary_buff_to_units' and adds new 'unit_modifiers' to cover these use cases. All Army HQ abilities now use 'unit_modifiers'.

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focus_count command now also shows you a summary of the focuses and the days it takes to complete them.

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Add modifier for casualty_trickleback.

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Add avg_unit_entrenchment_ratio scripting scope.

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Added ai template weighting to imgui show ai_templates.

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Add is_leader_visible trigger to check whether the given unit leader is visible for its owner.

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Add ai_min_success_chance raid type property to override AI launch threshold.

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Add max_distance raid type property capping source-to-target path length.

Bugfix

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Fixed an issue where multiple Pacific releasable tags were missing generic military advisors.

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Fixed some timing issues with decisions.

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UK: Fixed Dominions getting event to leave Commonwealth when UK goes fascist/communist even if a dominion has the same ideology.

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Chile: Fixed an issue where taking the focus 'Treading the Straight Line' would break Ibanez' small portrait.

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PRC: The MIO Dalian Shipbuilding Company now properly requires control of Dalian rather than Liaoning.

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Romania: Fixed a broken AI weight in the event King Carol's Lifestyle - 'King bans critical book'.

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Added missing unit namelists for new Chinese Warlord states.

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Fixed an issue where the Japanese AI would sometimes puppet or liberate states out of its own core territory at the end of their Civil War.

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Fixed an instance where the Brazilian monarchist civil war triggered by Portugal would cease 1 day after.

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Nils Flyg can now join the German Reich again, let the reddit confusion continue!

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Fixed an issue where some warlord leaders wouldn't be promoted through the Personal Leadership focus.

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Fixed an issue where Iraq could become permanently locked out of their decisions to invite nation to the Hashemite Arab Federation if they ended up at war with them or they disappeared while the targeted decision was still ongoing.

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Fixed an issue where the 'Manchuko People's Army' and 'People's Liberation Army' National Spirits didn't give any Recruitable Population Factor.

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The British Raj will now drop their 'Raj' cosmetic tag at the end of a peace conference if they are either independent or a subject of a different nation than the UK.

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Re-added an airbase that had been accidentally removed for the 1939 scenario and fixed an issue where the Warlord focuses 'An Autonomous Tibet' and 'Conquer Tibet' wouldn't properly bypass.

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Fixed an issue where the Republic of Congo focus would not bypass if Congo was at war.

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Fixed an issue where the available tooltip would appear twice for the Radio Propaganda decision if not playing as Brazil or Afghanistan.

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Fixed two instances where the Stresa Front could be ratified while Italy was a subject of a foreign power.

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Japan: If the pressure Siam focus isn't available due to them being in another faction, Japan will now pivot to their focus Occupy Siam.

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Fixed 700+ typos across the game.

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Fixed fascist Latvia decision to incite civil war in Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland.

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Fixed an issue where the visual representation of the Naval HQ range did not match the range of the buff.

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Fixed an issue where Afghanistan would be forced into a faction with Germany despite being in its own one when completing either 'Into the Plains of the British Raj' or 'The Red Threat'.

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Fixed an issue where the Japanese focus 'Hasten the Integration of Taiwan' wasn't bypassable.

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Fixed multiple instances of VPs being scripted in the incorrect states.

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Raj: Fixed an issue where the Mughals could puppet existing countries when having the Princes Revolt against British India if they held a core of theirs. Also fixed a few characters not being correctly recruited, who are now available for the path.

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Fixed Balance Of Power transferring to new country after reusing a dynamic country tag.

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'And the Snake Smoked' achievement now requires you to be in the Allies, and requires germany to be capitulated or no longer exist.

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Nordic support collaboration tech now correctly reduces experience loss instead of increasing it.

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Fixed a bug where Canadian & Italian focus tree still referred to 'medium gun batteries'.

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Fixed an issue where the decision 'Diversify Elite Forces' checked for an implicit 'and' instead of 'or', causing it to not show up correctly.

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Added missing upgrades and MIO trait support for amphibious mechanized equipment.

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If Sweden joins the Winter War as a result of the Finnish focus 'A Cry for Help', it is no longer considered an offensive war.

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Axel Pehrsson Bramstorp and Gösta Bagge no longer keep the trait 'Minority opposition party in power' after being re-elected in the 1936 general election.

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Fixed an issue where in the Swedish focus, 'The Åland Issu', Finland would refuse to cede Åland if Sweden was much stronger, contrary to what the focus describes.

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Transport Plane 3 Technology - now has the same 1945 Year for both BBA and non-BBA technology.

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Take Control of the Executive Yaum now properly updates autonomy of Warlord Puppets.

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Nuclear Production Tooltip now counts all the buildings with nuclear_reactor = yes.

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Fire Concentration Subdoctrine will now properly provide +5% Defense Bonus as well as +5 Organization to the Line Artillery Unit Category in the Initial unlock.

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Change Mountain Gun tech localisation to reflect that it is not only Indian.

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Fixed an issue where the Indian focus 'Kingmaker' would grant two non-functioning rules changes.

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Fixed an issue where the Faction Research panel flickered on hourly ticks.

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Afghan focuses granting foreign ideological influence now mention that the ideas will last for 1 year.

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The Indian focus 'Varunas Armor' now has a name assigned to the tech bonus it gives.

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Fixed an issue where the event chain from the Iranian focus 'Push for Negotiations' was missing descriptions.

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RAJ: The Focus 'Constitution for the Masses' now also has a Political Filter.

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The Iranian focuses 'The Iranian Socialist Revolution' and 'Force Abdication' now properly inform the player that a civil war can be avoided if certain conditions are met.

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Afghanistan: The 'Eliminate dissent' in a state decisions under 'Shadows of the King' are available again if the decision got canceled without completing the decision.

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Fixed an issue where Navy leaders could be assigned to multiple Naval Headquarters after saving the game.

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Fixed a crash that can occur when opening the production window.

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Fixed various issues and inconsistencies with the decolonization game rule for Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

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Fixed exploit where you could gain more manpower from leaving and rejoining your faction.

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Fixed an issue where subjects could impose a naval blockade on their overlord.

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Fixed various issues where Syria and Lebanon could escape from war and territorial losses when Vichy France was created by siding with them or declaring independence, and made it so they properly peace out enemies or not depending on their choices in the event chain. The now also gain historical flags and leaders when becoming Vichy puppets.

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Sir Mohammed Iqbal and Agha Khan III will now be unavailable if Pakistan has broken free from the Raj.

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Only bordering states will be transferred if taking the 'Swear Fealty to the Invaders focus'

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The focus Propose Syrian Unification can now be taken if Syria is independent.

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Fixed an issue where Commanders gained through focuses would not gain XP for their traits.

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Fixed a bug where single lend leases could send 1 or 0 equipment.

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The Achievement 'The Juannines' now only requires the Philippines to control and have cores on Spain's European states.

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Fixed an issue where the Unruly Tribes in southern Iraq were referred to as Shia despite being Sunni.

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India is now more likely to annex Princely States that try and break free from them, rather than puppeting or liberating them.

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Fixed a crash that could occur during peace conferences when co-oping in multiplayer.

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The Famine state modifiers will now be removed if the owner of the state is not RAJ or a puppet of theirs.

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Fixed an issue where a few states were missing from the decisions unlocked by the Afghan focus Kabul Conference.

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Raj: Fixed an issue where Shubhas Chandra Bose was still available as an advisor and general while hiding away.

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Fixed an issue where the achievement 'En Svensk Tiger' did not work if No Step Back is enabled.

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Fixed a broken decision category image for exile governments.

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Corrected the starting population of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

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Fixed multiple issues of mismatches between small/medium/large flags for countries.

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Fixed an issue where Reza Shah Pahlavi would show up incorrectly in multiplayer if one player had GOE and the other didn't.

•
Fix 'Enemy Raids' alert shown when an ally raid is executed and gains control of the province.

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Fixed an issue where the Iranian focus 'Reach Out to Separatists' did not properly apply the opposition-control state modifiers to the western regions.

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Fixed an issue where Germany would fail to go down their democratic path when it was randomly chosen when historical AI was turned off.

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Fixed an issue where two street fighting tactics weren't available.

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Fixed an issue where the Soviet Union would sometimes reject communist Iran's request to join their faction.

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Fixed an issue where Iranian decisions to Plant Resistance Cells granted effects upon completion instead of removal.

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Fixed an issue where fascist Norway would be locked out of the focus Norwegian Reichsprotektorate if the democratic side ceased to exist.

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Game is now literally playable after fixing Typo in the Belgian Focus about Re-establishing Belgian Navy. Navy and game is now literally playable.

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'Improve Cross Border Rail Connections' focus will now also include subject nations when adding connections to bordering countries.

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Sweden can now bypass the focus 'Narvik Crisis' if Narvik and surrounding area is controlled by Sweden.

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Kurdish uprising instigated by Iran will no longer have the UK automatically join Iraq.

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Remove incorrect focus filter in the Raj focus 'Stop the Japanese Threat in Central Asia'.

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Controlling the correct states should now bypass the focus 'Unite the Sami'.

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Fixed an issue where Japan and Germany could be unable to send volunteers to Afghanistan or the Soviet Union despite promising to do so due to ideology and world tension.

•
Fixed an overflow in the event items in the decisions tab.

•
Fixed an issue where several Indian events had pictures not relevant to the region.

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Raj: Added correct focus filters to 'Break the Zamindars' and 'Five Year Plan'.

•
Fixed an issue where the PRC could repeatedly demand Manchuria from Japan and leave their faction despite being a puppet of theirs.

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'The Juannines' Achievement won't instantly be completed if Nationalist Spain loses the Civil War.

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Raj: Added correct focus filters to 'Royal Indian Navy Mutiny', 'Quality Training', and 'Soviet Indian Industrial Cooperation'.

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Raj: 'The Peoples Liberation Army' national spirit was missing an apostrophe in its name.

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Fixed 'The Fall of Cairo' events targeting the wrong state, and allowed them to also be triggered if Egypt owns the state but is in a faction with the UK.

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Fixed an issue that caused Swedish advisor Per Edvin Sköld to never be visible.

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Assyria can now restore Mesopotamia.

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Fixed a crash on MacOS that can occur on peace conferences.

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Afghanistan: Fixed 'Extend a Hand to Tokyo' - Faction name is missing in focus' effects.

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Afghanistan: Fixed 'Unify the Islamic World' - Faction name is missing in focus' effects.

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Fixed getting effects from recompleting goals by dismantling and recreating your faction.

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Wargoals gained from 'Return To Delhi' and 'Reclaim Transoxiana' do not show the correct states.

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Saadabad: 'Expand Road and Rail Connections' - Focus tooltip displays empty Bypass Effect.

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Invite to Hashemite Arab Federation decisions will now highlight the whole country.

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Iranian events from the focuses Demand Iraqi Territory and Demand Afghan Territory will now properly mention the name of Iran.

•
Fixed an issue where some Indian design companies would become invisible when their civil war started.

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Poland: The focus 'Institute Royal Guards' now creates a valid division template. Also it is now slightly buffed (instead of 2 Division 7 Infantry 2 Artillery it is now creating 2 Divisions of 8 Infantry 2 Artillery, Polska Gurom)

•
Warships of the Pacific: Fixed so only Commonwealth and ENG get Commonwealth ship icons, not all faction members of ENG which led to France getting defaulted to British ships.

•
Fixed an issue where the New Zealand decisions to demand Polynesian states wouldn't give all those that were demanded.

•
Belgium will no longer get a puppet war goal on Congo if they handover Congo through the German focus "Carve up Congo" and is then released as a puppet of Germany.

•
Fixed an issue where you could switch country by being able to click on the map on ironman save file screen.

•
Fixed an issue where France had 3D models for TDs and SPGs assigned incorrectly when playing without No Step Back.

•
Mandatory Palestine won't answer that they stand with the rebels opposing them.

•
Fixed an issue where you could not assign Commanders to an army when having multiple armies selected.

•
Fixed crash that could occur after resyncing from an ID OOS.

•
Fixed an OOS that would occur due to railway guns and rockets.

•
Fixed an OOS that can occur due to a character losing their advisor role.

•
Fixed an OOS that could occur when sorting Air Wings.

•
Raid auto launch success probability dropdown is now properly clickable even when running at high speed.

•
Fixed a crash that could occur from assigning faction scientists.

•
Fixed an OOS that would occur instantly after hotjoining.

•
Fixed an issue where not all resources would fit in the state view.

•
Fixed the inconsistent convoy count after reloading.

•
Fixed effect description for 'Embrace Stalinism' focus.

•
Fixed a crash that could occur during resync when playing with mods.

•
Fixed a crash due to accessing invalid controller area.

•
Fixed a bug where ships unable to escape the harbor as the province gets captured would get stuck in limbo. They either flee or scuttle the ships.

•
Fixed a bug where the Union of Soviet Workers could get the world to help them and 6000 divisions would arrive.

•
Corrected gender (localization) for Chinese characters (Li Zhen among others).

•
Joining a faction now clears all naval blockades with faction members.

•
Fixed a relation related CTD on MacOS.

•
Fixed a bug where Heavy Fighters were not correctly filtered as aircrafts when requesting license production.

•
Fixed an OOS from unsorted army requests.

•
Fixed an OOS related to Country Controller that would occur on hotjoin.

•
Fixed a few bugs in sub doctrines where a modifier was shown as a multiplication instead of an addition.

•
Fixed a crash caused by the career profile.

•
Fixed an OOS that could occur on mac with subject production lines.

•
Fixed an OOS that could occur if 2 AI's had the same peace conference score.

•
Fixed an OOS that would occur because of navy not being cleared out.

Coming soon:
We mentioned that we’d be adding the formable Australasia nation. Right now that is planned to be included in patch 1.19.2.

(Edited to add a missing patch note under free features.)

The Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Merch Store has opened its doors!

Greetings everyone and welcome to the Art’s Developer Diary for the upcoming DLC Thunder at our Gates! We are looking forward to showing you what we’ve been cooking up behind the scenes.
We’ll be showing off a selection of:

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Fresh Focus icons

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Gorgeous Portraits

•
Awesome 3D assets

•
A different spin on the Loading Screen

And, of course, giving you a sneak peak of the Achievements waiting for you on this DLC.

Focus Icons

Some of our favourite Focus icons.

Australia
Indonesia
Siam

Portraits

A few of our Lovely Portraits

Australia
Indonesia
Siam
Ship Captains

Loading Screen

A new campaign begins the moment the loading screen fades in and this one sets a new tone.
Usually, HOI4’s Loading Screens are very dynamic, action-filled battle scenes. While those are very exciting, for this one we decided to try something different. This illustration takes inspiration from the Battle of Milne Bay and depicts a brief and rare break where the young soldiers can be found resting and posing for a photo that will one day be part of history books.

3D Art

Hello, Slurpen_paradox here again to give you a look at some of the 3D art that has been added for the release of Thunder at our Gates!

Let’s start off by highlighting some of the soldiers for the feature countries. Australia has received a completely reworked infantry model with new weapons to go along with it as well! Siam now has its own unique 3D model.The default Indonesian model has been uprezed and they also have a new unique militia model!

Here are some pre-rendered images to give you a closer look at what they look like:

There are plenty of planes this time around as well! During World War 2 the Australia air force was quite a juggernaut so there are plenty of planes added to reflect this. With that said Indonesia and Siam will have plenty of new airplane models to choose from as well!
Since Indonesia was a Dutch colony at the time, it makes sense that there would be some overlap in what types of planes would have been used. Because of this, both The Netherlands and Indonesia will receive new planes. The Indonesian planes can be differentiated by the differences in camouflage that have been befitted to most of the planes. The old Dutch plane models have received a bit of a face lift as well!

I don’t want to come off like someone who has his head in the clouds all the time, so let’s have a look at some of the more grounded additions now:

Now it’s time to have a look at the 3D assets that have been added for the Army Headquarters!
We have a diverse group of generals that will appear depending on the country you choose to play. Each general also sports his own pistol of choice!

That’s a look at most of the 3D art that we have in store for you this time around! As a bonus, I will end this part of the Dev Diary with a screenshot of the unique Dam that can be seen in Australia with the new DLC. It’s the lovely Cataract Dam!

Slurpen_paradox signing out!

Achievements

And we’re back once more… because what’s a new DLC without a fresh batch of Achievements to conquer?
Some will be a victory lap, others might push your grand strategy skills to the absolute limit. Which ones will you breeze through, and which will have you restarting at 2 AM? There’s only one way to find out — go claim them all!

Disclaimer: Names and Descriptions of how to get the achievements may have been changed on release

A Bridge too Far
As the UK, have Bernard Montgomery's Army HQ take Rotterdam.
A Succulent Chinese Meal
As Australia, own and control a Chinese core state.
ANZAC
As Australia or New Zealand, have an Army HQ in Greece and ensure that Greece doesn't capitulate before 1945.
Et Tu, Paulus?
Capture a field Marshal.
From Rags to Admiral Stripes
Promote a Ship Captain to Admiral.
Grand Siam
As Siam, capitulate 4 nations within one year.
Hail to the King
As Siam, form Greater Thailand before King Ananda is 15 years old.
Hunt for the Desert Fox
Capture Erwin Rommel.
Java-Script
As the Dutch East Indies (or Indonesia), research the Advanced Computing Machine while your capital is on the island of Java.
Maphilindia
As Indonesia or the Philippines, form Maphilindo and control all Indian core states.
No One Will Notice the Difference
As Indonesia, station Gustav Adolf Ilgen in Stockholm.
Old Zealand
As New Zealand, control and own the states of Brabant (Zeeland) and Sjaelland (Zealand).
The Rightside Up
As Australia,control Jan Mayen.
Saving Private Bryansk
Capture a General in the state of Bryansk.
Thai Fighters
As Siam, have 10 aces.
ThaiTanic
As any nation, sink Siam's pride of the fleet.
The 7th State
As Australia, integrate New Zealand
The Man of Medan
Sink 100 convoys as Indonesia.
Waltzing Matilda
Deploy 25 Heavy Tank Battalions as Australia.

The Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Merch Store has opened its doors!