Hello there! Katten here. Today marks the final day of our Anniversary Week. It's been one thrilling ride, kicking off with our teaser for the upcoming expansion, followed by a giveaway that saw over 10,000 participants! Then came our secondary announcement: our first Content Creator Pack - Soviet Union 2D Art. Sunday brought the sweat with our broadcast of the grande finale for this year's Community Cup, where the Red Baron team claimed first place!
And now, today, we're excited to release the War Effort Update 1.14.6: Operation Badger, alongside the Content Creator Pack.
This post below will contain two key sections. First, we'll delve into the details of our War Effort update, followed by our second and final Dev Diary for the Content Creator Pack. But without further ado, I'll hand over the mic to Game Director, Arheo.
Wait, I almost forgot! Before that, we are also running a sale on the PDX Store with up to 70% off! Check it out HERE.
War Effort Update
Hey folks,
Arheo here with the change log for Operation Badger, the War Effort update which we've been brewing for some time now. We've spent a little more time than usual on making sure that there's some good QoL or small-feature items in here as a part of the anniversary update, so I hope these keep you going for a while!
Of course, this update goes live alongside the Content Creator Pack that the World Ablaze team have been working on, so I'll hand over to them for a deeper dive into what's coming there.
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######## Hotfix 1.14.6 "Bolivar" #########
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# Balance
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- Updated the French focus "Avenge Waterloo" to include Luxembourg in it's targets.
- Increased warscore from sinking ships by 4-5x (this will continue to be iterated upon). Increased warscore from sinking convoys, and decreased convoy build decay rate to warscore.
- Canada: Changed around the starting navy to be more historically accurate. Also fixed various issues regarding Quebec and their victory points, as well as a typo in their fascist party name.
- Canada: Updated Canadian Air Chiefs
- Norway: focuses “Invite Cadillac to Norway” and “Invite Soviet Designers” now grant extra levels to the MIOs unlocked, and the Cadillac focus now only takes 35 days to complete.
- Norway: Now only Germany can trigger civil war by attacking
- Norway: focus "Approach the Fatherland League" now gives -5% democratic support instead of -10% fascist support.
- Iceland: mineral prospecting focus no longer runs a random list to decide which resource you get. You will always get 10 iron and 6 aluminium. Fishing industry spirit now grants -10% convoy cost at both levels.
- Chile: Reduced research speed bonus from French Academia to 3% from 10% (this is not a subtle comment against French academics)
- Chile: Reduced the amount of political power and war support available across several branches.
- Chile: Rayen Quitral now grants 10% stability from 20%
- Chile: Manuel Manquilef now grants 5% factory output, from 8, and no longer grants ideology drift defense
- Chile: Antonio Neculman now grants 6% research speed, from 15%
- Chile: Manuel Panguilef no longer reduces research speed, however provides 5% war support and stability, from 10%
- Chile: Reduced most sources of attack & core division attack to be in line with similar nations
- Chile: Adjusted most sources of national manpower factor to be more consistent with other nations
- Chile: Reduced bonuses substantially
- Chile: Grand Armada focus no longer grants dockyard output, but has increased dockyard construction speed; rewarding future plans rather than flat improvements. Positioning bonus removed.
- Chile: Patagonian Giants focus no longer grants division attack and defense, but increases breakthrough by 10% from 8%
- Chile: Development Inwards focus no longer reduces military factory construction speed by 25%
- Chile: via trans radio chilena bonuses halved
- South America Shared: hot and cold acclimitization factor reduced to 15% per focus, from 25%
- South America Shared: Reduced potential for most direct combat stats from decisions and focuses (attack, defense & org)
- Brazil: Reduced speed for research bonuses granted by Promote Resource Extraction focus to 50%x2 from 75%x2
- Brazil: Increases research speed from bonuses granted by Stimulate Civilian Economy to 50%x2 from 40%x2
- Brazil: Reduced research speed from bonuses granted by Italian Car Industry to 50%x2 from 75%x2
- Brazil: Increased research speed granted by bonuses in Desenvolituddimeot.... that one; to 50%x2 from 40%x2
- Argentina: Increase research speed bonus for synth rubber granted by Reinforce the Education System to 100%x1 from 50%x1
- Australia: Australian Army Catering Corps now grants 3x100% research speed bonuses to logistics company, from 1x300%
- Australia: Airborne defence focus now grants 1x100% research speed bonus for paratroopers, from 1x300%. It also now grants 2x50% cost reductions for special forces doctrine
- Australia: CAC Woomera focus now grants 3x100% research bonuses for specific hulls, from 1x300%
- Australia: Uranium Mining now grants 2x50% research bonuses from whatever it was before, and now grants 2x100% research bonuses for excavation tech
- Australia: Dominate the Skies now grants 4 air bases from 2, and 2 doctrine cost bonuses from 1
- Australia: Rebalanced several focuses in the Australian military branch letting them unlock an additional special forces branch specialism (AAT) quite early and without being a major, and granting a significant number of doctrine cost reductions for the above.
- Baltic Shared: Original designs focus now grants 50% speed bonuses, from 75%
- Bulgaria: Uranium Prospecting focus now grants 2x 100% bonuses, from 2x200%
- Bulgaria: Normalized several tech bonuses, overall slightly reducing the efficacy of research benefits
- Canada: Normalized several tech bonuses. Canadian Parachute Battalion now grants 2x50% special forces doctrine cost reduction, but reduces paratroopers research bonus to 100% from 300%
- Finland: Normalized research speed bonuses
- France: France can now unlock a special forces branch specialism from their military branch. Military branch has been slightly rearranged.
- Special Forces Doctrine: special forces cap factor bonuses significantly reduced
- Ethiopia: Normalized -some- of the research bonuses
- Generic Focus Tree: increased army experience gains and normalized army research bonuses
- Generic Focus Tree: Add Truck
- Generic Focus Tree: Fascist branch now provides a total of 3% recruitable population, from 7%, but now also provides 25% mobilization speed and 15% reduced supply penalties on core territory
- Generic Focus Tree: Communist branch now grants 400 weekly manpower (yes this will stack with the military spirit)
- Greece: Normalized research bonuses
- Italy: Normalized research bonuses (while a few went up or had charges added, these mostly came down)
- Japan: Tweaked some research bonuses (no big changes)
- Reduced Nuclear research bonuses across all focus trees
- Norway: Normalized research bonuses
- Poland: Normalized research bonuses
- Portugal: Normalized research bonuses. Focus 'POR_tropas_paraquedistas' now grants 2 50% special forces doctrine cost reductions
- Romania: Focus 'ROM_expand_the_marine_regiment' now grants 2 50% doctrine cost reductions for special forces doctrine
- South Africa: Focus 'SAF_south_african_special_forces' now grants 2x50% cost reductions for special forces doctrine
- Sweden: Normalized research bonuses
- Soviet Union: Normalized Research bonuses (mostly unchanged, Jet research won't be as fast)
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# Gameplay
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- Mini-Feature: Variant version is now separated from name, resulting in an improved dynamic equipment versioning system. (Modding: unique version strings can be provided for ship, armor, and plane equipment on a per-country level.)
- Mini-Feature: Civilian Factories can now be assigned to prioritize repairing damaged constructions
- Mini-Feature: Captured ships can now be refit through the individual ship design screen. Once redesigned, you will gain a regular design variant to be used as normal. Redesigning this way will no longer cost the original creator the experience price.
- Added Rio de Oro (The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and Khuzestan as new cores gained when taking the 'Unite Arabia' decision.
- Updated the British Blackshirt March decisions to include Cumbria and the Isle of Man.
- Norway: no longer starts a civil war with historical focuses enabled
- Norway: Added unique leader traits to the Norwegian country leaders who did not yet have traits, and added Edvard Christian Danielsen as a new Admiral for the country.
- Changed the mutual exclusivity of the Nordic formable nations so that the "Kalmar Union" focus can be taken alongside one of the others, and only the "North Sea Empire" and "Nordic Union" are now mutually exclusive.
- Norway: Added an event for the Kingdom of Norway to choose their Stance regarding foreign policy, allowing for different playstyles.
- Norwegian fascist civil war can now be started when either Germany has declared war or when support for the fascist coup is significant enough. Other fascist powers can no longer be invited to invade.
- Made the first news event regarding the Italian annexation of Aussa fire only for Ethiopia.
- Equipment Variants are now a lot more 'sticky' with their names when you refit them, leading to much fewer instances of '1936 Destroyer Hull Class'.
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# UI
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- Many info popups now appear at the bottom-right of the screen and do not require manual interaction to clear. This change should drastically decrease the effects of 'popup spam'.
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# Modding
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- Equipment property is_frame should now auto-obsolete
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# Bugfix
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- Fixed an issue where the Chilean decision to Demand a Snap Election to become Communist was unavailable if playing with localization using a non-latin alphabet.
- Fixed an issue where the Icelandic Admiral from the event "A Danish King once More" and a Swiss Admiral from the focus "Train Navy Staff" would have General skills instead of Admiral ones.
- Fixed a minor typo in the event "War in South America".
- Fixed an issue where AI Turkey would not always select Adnan Menderes as president when made to go the Ottoman path, thus locking themselves out of the branch.
- Fixed an issue where in some fringe cases, completing the Spanish focus 'Caudillo of Spain' would accidentally kill Francisco Franco.
- Fixed various issues with the American event "A New General for China" triggered by a Chinese focus, where Joseph Stillwell would always become unavailable to the US no matter who they chose to send, as well as the advisor position of the character sent not being available to China.
- Fixed an issue where the full names for the Chilean political parties chosen in the 1938 election event wouldn't properly appear.
- Fixed an issue where the non-MTG tree for the UK could start overlapping when going down the Home Defense path.
- Fix OS inconsistency in how scripted bool values (yes/no) are parsed, leading to fixing a few script parsing errors on Linux/Mac
- Fixed an exploit that allowed you to bypass the Mapuche civil war as Chile by using war support to instigate a small-scale communist uprising, and also added is_subject = no triggers to various Chilean focuses regarding ideology, factions and wars.
- It is no longer possible to avoid air accidents by stacking air wings in bases. Air accident calculation has been adjusted as well, and the tooltip improved a little.
- State mapmode stops trying to display modifiers without icon
- Fixed two typos in the Soviet focus "Return Democracy to the Party".
- Fixed various issues and inconsistencies with the name of the Arabian formable nation.
- Moved provinces 13234 and 13235 in the state Northern Epirus from being erroneously counted as North America to being in Europe.
- Changed the name 'Attu' from being applied to a province in Shanxi to actually being applied to Attu Island.
- Fix focus 'Scramble for the Baltic' for Sweden where after one war the other war goals would disappear
- Fixed an issue where Greenland would not start with control of their capital state when released in the Nordics Fragmented game rule.
- Fixed an issue where you would be unable to construct Super-Heavy Battleships when running the game without MTG.
- Fixed a few instances where MIOs did not provide the reliability they claimed to be.
- NOR: Changed Extensive Recruitment and Expanded Conscription Drive to give a timed weekly manpower modifier rather than conscription factor.
- NOR: Changed Build Supplies Network to provide construction boost to Naval Base as well as Supply Hub.
- NOR: Notraskip and other focuses that used to require in exile government, now require capitulation instead for Man the Guns compatibility.
- Fixed an issue where the name from the research bonus received when doing the Norwegian focus "Military Police" had the wrong name.
- Fixed an issue where Chile could demand control of Guyanese territory from themselves if controlling any of the territory when taking their focus to do so.
- Fixed an issue where the Norwegian focus "Forsvarets Intelligence Service" would show up when not having La Resistance active.
- Fixed an issue where Genoa and Hinterpommern had incorrect names when playing with Russian localization.
- Fixed two issues where the small portraits for King Haakon and Prince Olav of Norway weren't showing up as intended.
- Fixed an issue where the Russian focus "Intervention in the Americas" was bugged and didn't have an effect.
- Fixed an issue where South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands wouldn't get cored when handed over to them by Japan as part of their scripted peace deal decisions/events.
- NOR: re-balanced preparation system.
- Fixed an issue where the North Sea Empire formable nation wouldn't get a core of Finnmark.
- Do not trigger the event creating Free France and Vichy France if Paris is not owned by France (Avoids possible crash in Peace Conference)
- Made the Brazilian focuses 'Join the Comintern', 'The Latin American Socialist', 'Reach Out to Our Neighbors', 'Establish Berlin Accords', 'Establish Rome Accords', and 'Form Mercosul'; the Uruguayan focuses 'Join the Allies' and 'The Fuhrmann Plan'; the Argentinian focuses 'Forge Our Own Future', 'Bastion of Peace', 'Argentina First', and 'Join the Axis'; the Paraguayan focuses 'Join the Axis', 'Join the Allies', and 'Join the Comintern'; and the Ethiopian focus 'Towards African Unity' require independence to be undertaken.
- Super heavy armor now works for both Man the Guns and non Man the Guns superheavy battleships
- Fixed an issue where Germany wouldn't get a core on Danzig when gaining it through the focus "Danzig for Slovakia".
- Fixed an issue where Brazil would be locked out of taking their "propose integration" decisions from the "United States of South America" focus if a member of their faction left it when the decision was still ongoing.
- Fix a bug where focuses (with modded icons) could get wrong icon in popups in MP
- Spain: Fixed an issue where the POUM couldn’t release nations, an effect which was only intended for the Anarchists.
- Spain: Fixed a minor issue in the Carlist Ai-strategy plan for Spain.
- Spain: Fixed an issue where the state modifier Autonomous State wasn’t removed from the relevant states if Galicia, the Basque Country or Catalonia owned them.
- Spain: Fixed a multitude of issues with Manuel Anazña not being an actual “character”, thus not being able to take certain focuses that required him as country leader if using non-Latin localization and more.
- Spain: The Spanish Republican AI should no longer be blocked from taking the focus Enlist the Carabineros.
- Spain: Made the falangist focus “Primo de Rivera Prisoner Exchange” take 35 days and also grant 5% war support.
- Spain: Added a new late-game focus for Falangist Spain to core all Hispanic lands, provided they control them all first.
- Spain: The Spanish focus in the Falangist path, “Unite Iberia” now also gives claims on Portugal.
- Spain: The Spanish focus in the Falangist path, “Absorb the Portuguese Empire” now has a different description, and alongside the previous wargoals on their former colonies, also grants cores on any Portuguese core states controlled by Spain at the time of Completion.
- Norway: Made the communist militias gained during the civil war disband at the end of it, returning any equipment and manpower they possessed to the player.
- Norway: Rebalanced the Norwegian Communist Preparations system.
- Norway: Fixed various issues with the Norwegian focus "Join the Comintern".
- Norway: Added is_subject = no triggers to various Norwegian focuses.
- Norway: Fixed an issue where the claims from the "Norwegian Royal Family Arrives" event weren't working.
World Ablaze CCP Developer Diary | Creative Process
Hi everyone! Coinciding with the release of the Soviet Union 2D Art Content Creator Pack ($3.99), Paradox has asked me to go over some of the creative process that has gone into this pack. Before we begin, I shall first introduce myself. My name is Aqeel Mughal, also known as Uncharted, and I am the founder and one of the head developers of World Ablaze. I have a degree in Illustration and Visual Communication and have spent the past 6 years working on artwork for Hearts of Iron IV. It became my most played game very quickly as I am a huge fan of grand strategy games starting all the way back from playing the board game Risk when I was a teen. Suffice to say, working on this CCP was an absolute treat, and I look forward to sharing the next moments with you all.
The creative process involved in this CCP falls under 2 main sections: the National Focuses/Spirits and the Technology tree icons. For the focuses, the first step when creating the focus icons was to ensure as many icons in the focus tree conveyed a unique concept that represented the description and effect it was giving, and that meant for the vast majority drawing a tailor-made centrepiece.
For the industry, this meant having factories or industrial machinery being shown, for example. For some of the political icons, I took inspiration from historical soviet propaganda posters/statues. I was very keen on each one being something 3D to help the focus pop out.
After the centrepiece was drawn, an appropriate frame was chosen that allowed the centrepiece to be shown without too much negative space, and either a bespoke or regular background was used depending on the importance of the focus. Laurels and colours were picked by which one fitted the theme of the respective tree and the focus itself (you will see a lot of red in the politics section, for example).
For national spirits, most of the icons created were either a smaller representation of the focus it came from or historical iconography. The rest convey the description of the spirit, such as the Trotsky Plot showcasing the intense rivalry of Trotsky and Stalin which led to the 1936 purges.
When it came to the style I chose, I very much wanted to inject more colour saturation and a higher contrast in what I drew to make the icons pop out a lot more and give them energy which would harmonise well with the dynamic scenes depicted.
A selection of focus icons taken from different trees illustrating the diversity of what you will find.
A showcase of some of the national spirits that are part of the CCP.
A comparison of vanilla art with CCP art.
When it came to the tech tree icons, there were a multitude of issues to try and address, a lot of generic and dated art was being used and I set out the goal to completely overhaul all of it to ensure consistency and higher quality for the CCP. After deciding what to draw I would seek blueprints or historical images where possible to act as my foundation. Each tech art starts with creating every shape and detail present in said blueprints/images before applying texture, shading, colour, and blending effects. The goal here was to create icons that fit in the game but pop out more, are somewhat proportional to each other (for example, light cruiser icons are smaller than battleship ones) and are consistent in their look.
For any designs that are entirely fiction, they were based on the closest historical counterpart to ground them as proper “what-if” designs.
Infantry and support icons created to be unique and high quality.
New and improved tank icons with a colour scheme appropriate to the Soviet Union.
A highlight of air pieces with historical camouflage schemes used.
A completely new spin on ship icons for HOI4 prioritizing scale and using new shading.
Unique artillery icons drawn that match the equipment name in the localisation.
An example of a historical correction
An example of a quality improvement
With an overhaul of all soviet tech art, consistency is achieved with variant icons.
Well everybody, thank you for reading and I hope you now have a good understanding as to the intentions and process of creating the artwork for this CCP. What I have shown is just a small snippet of what is in the CCP and with hundreds of icons included, I hope that all your future soviet games will be much more immersive and aesthetically pleasing.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2981720/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Content_Creator_Pack__Soviet_Union_2D_Art/