Developer Diary | Giant Bag of Goodies

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello there, Aveebee here to introduce this week's chunky Dev Diary covering a variety of topics. We’ll be covering everything free going into the upcoming patch that will release alongside Trial of Allegiance, an overview of some major map changes in South America, as well as some content pack specific updates. So without further ado, let’s get started!

First up, we have Jonathan!

Bolivar Patch Hello again everyone, now it’s time for me to show you guys some of the things for this bag of treats that I have been working on for the patch coming alongside the Country Pack Trial of Allegiance!

The Peru-Ecuador Conflict First up in terms of what I have contributed to this bag of treats is the Peruvian-Ecuadorian war of 1941. Now, Ecuador starts with ownership and a core on Pastaza, and Peru will have to take it through war, with the option of a scripted peace if they manage to take it. Ecuador can however also secure themselves a scripted peace from this ordeal, as long as they take Loreto, which means a skilled Ecuador player can even gain territory from the conflict.



New Formable Nations But wait, there’s more! Now onto new formable nations (that aren’t for the main countries getting a focus tree in the DLC) that are included in the patch. And for this part I’m especially looking at you Hovelax ;).

The First on up is the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, formable in-game by either Peru or Bolivia.



The next one is the United Guianas, formable by either Suriname, Guyana or Cayenne.



And finally for new free formable nations coming in this patch, we have Hispaniola, formable by either Haiti or the Dominican Republic.



New Releasable Nations Now then, we’ve arrived to the non formable, but instead releasable nations added alongside this patch, or at least the ones that I’ve implemented.

First up on the list we have Quebec.


After that comes Yucatan.


Then comes another historical Mexican breakaway state, the Republic of the Rio Grande.


And finally we have a new island nation, which you might have seen briefly in last week's Chile Dev Diary. That nation is Rapa Nui, most often known as Easter Island.


Canada War Effort And now, merged into this patch is a Canadian War Effort, updating and adding a small extra amount of content for our home and native land, Canada.

To start off with, Canada has a new industrial concern available to them, that being the Canadian Pacific Railway.


And after that comes the fact that the Canadian country leaders now start with their own unique traits.





And there are also three new focuses available to Canada, this time with more focus on the democratic branches.


The first two each give a National Spirit;



And then this focus allows you to gain Newfoundland and Labrador despite staying with the Allies, or even when going independent democracy.


A few of the old focuses have also been touched up, so I will show some. Not all of them are here, so you will have to find some differences on your own once the patch releases ;)

This focus now takes 35 days.


Taking this focus when having Mackenzie King as your country leader also gives him an extra trait.


And this focus now gives you two civilian factories.


Oh and what’s this?


Update Central American Formables The old formable nation of Central America now has two possible follow-up decisions that can give them a small bit of extra core states.

First up is Integrating Panama.


And then you also have Integrating Yucatan.


New American Industrial Concern And now we arrive at my final contributions to this patch. First up we have the Union Pacific Railroad for the USA.


New Operatives As for the owners of La Resistance, you will also gain new operatives such as the new American Operatives, George Musulin, Joe Savoldi, René Joyeuse, Willian G Sebold and Serge Obolensky. These operatives are unlocked for the USA through some of the various War Plans focuses.


As for new German Operatives, there are Erich Gimpel, Johannes Sigfried Becker, Herbert Hans Haupt, Norman Baillie Stewart and Fritz Joubert Duquesne.

Johannes Sigfried Becker;


Fritz Joubert Duquesne:


And finally, there have also been some new Japanese Operatives added. They are Patrick Vaughan Heenan, John Semer Farnsworth and Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln.

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln:


John Semer Farnsworth:


And that’s all from me folks, next up Mordred Viking!

Naval Trait Rework Hello! My name is Mordred Viking, and I have recently joined the Hearts of Iron IV team. As some of you may know, I have a bit of a thing for naval warfare in HOI, and have wanted to retouch the Admiral Trait tree for a while now.

Here’s the old version:


There were a number of things about this tree I was not a huge fan of, firstly how certain earnable traits (the ones you need to get through use) effectively blocked the latter assigned ones. Cruiser Captain being a particular pain to get due to Fly Swatter being very slow to gain.

Furthermore, there were a couple of traits which very rarely saw use, Mine Sweeper / Layer being most prominent. Having two traits for an area not often focused on anyway basically meant they just never got used.

Working together with C0rax, we rejigged the positions, trying to keep traits in some kind of role order; Raiding, Escorting, Cruising, Carrier-ing, and Big-Gunning. We also increased the number of pathways to the assignable traits, meaning you should find yourself soft locked far less frequently. Fly Swatter has been made an assignable trait now instead.

And here’s the updated version:


We also combined the mine traits into one, and it has quite possibly the best description in the game (I’ll leave you to find that for yourselves!).

Trial of Allegiance AveeBee here again! Before jumping into the content pack specific part of this dev diary, I think it’s also worth pointing out that there will be a lot of bug fixes going into the Bolivar Patch that have not been mentioned here but are no less important. We’ll be looking more at those in a later Dev Diary.

Amazon Rework The Amazon Rainforest is probably one of the most hostile places on the planet to get embroiled in a conflict due to the array of geographical features it includes. It is not the type of place you can sweep through with tanks or rapidly construct infrastructure to support massive infantry formations. As such, we’ve made some changes to its portrayal in Hearts of Iron to better represent the difficulty of fighting there.


As you can see in the screenshot above, we’ve added a number of impassible regions to represent the deepest parts of the Amazon where fighting would be almost impossible. However, we have created channels through the rainforest that follow the course of the major rivers along which troops can pass.


This creates some really fun gameplay due to the natural choke points that develop in the area. However, we wanted to make sure there were still enough provinces along the riverside to allow for encirclements and interesting maneuvers.


These changes have made the region challenging, but definitely more interesting. Anyone who can use the terrain to their advantage will likely enjoy fighting here. For example, using supply hubs along the river to support your troops without the need for railways can make a massive difference to your success in the region.

On the topic of map changes, we have also broken down the air regions above South America to make air combat more interesting.


Peron Hey everyone, it’s Eilidh again. After taking your feedback into consideration, we have decided to implement a short alternate path in the historical branch where you, as the player, can decide to elect Juan Perón as the leader of Argentina. The position in this tree means that you can either choose to support the allies or go on your own conquest of South America, depending on the type of game you want to play.




And before I sign off, allow me to show you the leader portrait we have cooked up for the man himself.


We hope you enjoy this addition to the Argentinian tree! We appreciate you giving us feedback as we go, and whilst we cannot implement all changes in the time that we are allocated, we will do our best to accommodate!

Paraguay & Uruguay Mba'éichapa!

Craniummuppet here to present two mini-trees, Paraguay and Uruguay. These trees started as a side-project for me after the release of AAT, mostly to give a small treat to you guys but kinda kept growing in size as time went on from a smaller shared tree into fully separated trees with a scope target like Aussa or Iceland. (Note that much of the icons are placeholders and will get updated)

Paraguay At the start of the game Paraguay is reeling from two costly wars - The War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War against Bolivia.

This is felt in Paraguay



In Feb 1936 Rafael Franco will launch his coup against the government where you can pick to either let him seize control of the country or resist him. Allowing him to take power will lead you down the historical path, and resisting him will plunge you into a civil war.


Seizing power will allow you to do various socialist and military reforms, while not a communist per-se Franco (not that one) certainly had policies that were left leaning in nature, but also had typical military dictatorship tendencies.

He didn't last long though, and got ousted by the military after pulling back troops from the Chaco region. You can keep Franco though (not that one) by not pulling back from the Chaco, which is the second alt-history choice.

Pulling back from the Chaco will lead to a revolt within the army, putting Higinio Morínigo in power


If Franco was more left leaning, Morínigo is the polar opposite. To put it bluntly he had strong pro-Nazi sympathies,with parts of the police force and the military adopting the symbolism of the Third Reich. He also allied himself with militias, banned parties and consolidated his power.

This focus path will pivot the country from the Franco left leaning military dictatorship towards a more fascist and authoritarian military dictatorship under Morínigo.
(As an example the police chief at the time named his kid Adolfo Hioritho … )

While starting as unaligned in this path you can eventually commit fully to fascism, or you can stay as unaligned


One of the biggest reasons why Paraguay did not drift closer to the Axis powers was because of direct intervention from the USA. They started financing various endeavours in the country which kept Paraguay out of the war, such as favourable loans, road finance and technical assistance..

In game this is modelled by accepting American investment, whereby you won’t be able to join the Axis for the duration of the investment. Going down all the investment paths will keep you out of the Axis powers, but grant you massive boosts to the economy. How far you exploit this is up to you.

Going back to the world where Franco does not pull back from the Chaco, the alternative is war with Bolivia, this lets you keep Franco, and get some early conquest. With Bolivia conquered, you can finally get a coastline by getting wargoals against Peru and Chile, which leads to a very weird shape of a country. This is my current playthrough


And yeah… it has an interesting shape.


Going back to the top there is the other alternative history, the civil war route. Should you resist the Franco takeover you will enter a state of civil war where the army will rise up.


The army will have the upper hand at the start of the war, but the Paraguay river gives excellent defense.

To win the civil war, you can use the American scare of a “communist” state in its sphere of influence to increase your power. You can also use your wife's ties to France to get some aid from there.

Most powerful of all are the Marines, which will be used to break the river and win the war, or you can goad Bolivia to become involved in it which leads to a three way war that you can exploit.


When all is said and done you can use your civil war general, José Estigarribia to purge the military and cement your rule over the country. This leads to co-rule between Ayala and Estigarribia, or you can let Estigarribia take full control. It will take a while to rebuild the country as the civil war and various other wars have likely taken their toll, but eventually it will lead to a flourishing economy


Uruguay Uruguay was comparatively more stable than Paraguay during the time frame, despite being under a quasi dictatorship under Gabriel Terra.

Despite this they enjoyed a rapid GDP growth and relative stability. The beginning of the period centers around industrialization and the policies under Terra.


Around 1938 he will step down and you can pick between either the Colorados or Blancos, which are the two main parties in Uruguay, but both are democratic aligned.


If Democracy isn’t to your liking you can instead go down to the Furhmann plan, ally with agitators like Adolfo Agorio become fascist and use it as a springboard for the Axis powers in South America. This path is now locked behind any election event and can be b-lined to at game start if so pleased.

Before asking, of course there's events for the Battle of the River Plate.


Which will be triggered whenever a British and German ship is in the Southern Georgia Sea or in the Argentine Coast at the same time.

Shared Branches

There are also some shared branches between Paraguay and Uruguay which will appear in both trees.


First off, the conquest branch allows you to do a small-scale war at the start of the game for some quick conquests if you are cheeky enough. You can even conquer parts of Brazil while being in the Paraguayan civil war to bypass parts of the river line.

Uruguay has access to this as well but they target Rio Grande do Sul and Región Mesopotámica. Later you can decide whether you want to go on a crusade against imperialism, forgoing any factions but having the ability to core more land, or a more conservative approach where you can core some land but you can still join factions.


Paraguayan Version;


Uruguayan Version;


A bit silly fun where hopefully it can be a challenge as well as long term goals in a playthrough.

The industrial branch focuses on the exports of the country, which mostly comprises Beef, Wool, Hides and other agricultural products.


You can also choose to empower the landowners, upon which they will start improving your economy automatically. In this screenshot they seem really keen on adding a building slot.


The research branch is where you get your 3th,4th and 5th slot. You require to have some industry to unlock each, with each slot getting gradually more difficult to get.


This focus will also unlock more civs the more you have invested in the industrial focus. So if you want those slots early you might have to sacrifice some industry.

Similarly to all other focus trees in this pack, Uruguay and Paraguay will use the shared military branch. :)

Uruguay


Paraguay


Next Week AveeBee here again, that's it for this week, hope you enjoyed it and are looking forward to Trial of Allegiance!

Next week we will be taking a look at alt-history Brazil.

See you then!

Make sure to check out Trial of Allegiance here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/