The new border war mechanics sound interesting. Also nice that the warlords can use the political influence system to vie for control of China.
Still hoping for a “here’s how we fixed all of your most vexing AI problems” DD.
I think in the past they start doing AI related DDs (or dual dev diaries) as they approach release. Those have been some of the most interesting ones to me, so hopefully we see something similar with this expansion!
China sounds like it is going to be an interesting country to play. I wonder what happens if Japan conquers it?
I’m surprised they haven’t given us a release date yet.
Every since the game first came out, I’ve been salivating over a China update. It was so ripe for additional mechanics and detail, I’m glad it’s finally arriving!
I hear you on the release date. Once they put the pre-orders up, I was really hoping this would be out before my Christmas vacation because it’d be a great time to really dig into the new expansion. Looks like we’ll have to wait for the new year, though.
If you watched the dev stream, you wouldn’t, there’s a lot missing a a lot of balancing to do. It’ll be a lot of fun, though.
Oh, I don’t want them to release what they have now. I just wish development was further along and that it was all finished up before Christmas, so I could make my girlfriend feel neglected and spend countless hours driving tanks around Europe – just as Jesus intended!
LOL, you go boy!
They look very cool. I can’t believe that haven’t even given us a release date yet. I want the damn game.
So looks like we’ve missed a couple of DD’s on some small new features and the Japanese puppet. Today a DD on: war changes and game difficulty
Kevin is way too quick and rushing me!
Anyway, I welcome the changes. It seems like the war handling in particular was a thorny bit of code to untangle. Still, I look at the changes underway in Stellaris and the HoI4 changes seem much more modest. I guess that’s appropriate since HoI needs fewer changes, but there are still some very core things I wish they’d look at.
Edit: Looking back over the DD list, maybe I should say “somewhat more modest”. There is a quite a lot of stuff there. Most of it very welcome! The scale of changes in Stellaris is surely an outlier.
War merging was a nightmare in play, I can’t imagine what a pain it was in code. Really looking forward to improvements in that area.
You’re right that HOI4 doesn’t have the core design issues that Stellars has(d). I think the scope of the games makes a big difference too. With a Scifi game like Stellaris, the only limit is imagination. In HOI4 they can’t just add space panzer mechanics. Which is unfortunate, because space panzers would be amazing.
People want new things with an expansion and a new patch, and I agreed that the scope of new stuff is more limited in HoI4 because it should be something that could conceivably have happened on planet Earth during a fairly narrow time frame. So the new features tend to be quality of life stuff, or more detail in previously neglected areas like China.
However, the stuff I most want to see them address is in the category of “design decisions in the launch game that could be better”. So a supply mechanic that really captures the build up for an offensive and its subsequent logistical exhaustion. Supply that takes into account transport distance and overall transport capacity. Manpower for logistics. Global fuel shortages affecting mobility.
Then there is stuff around the basic combat model, experience gain, casualties being too light in a lot of circumstances. No loss of manpower due to attrition. Inability to properly model understrength divisions. One thing that bugs me probably more than it should is the whole treatment of unit size, combat width and org. The basic combat mechanism unfairly penalizes small divisions, so then they give small divisions an unfair org bonus. They over-penalize going over combat width, which just drives cookie-cutter division sizes.
What I want most is another Armageddon expansion. It doesn’t need to be exaggerated or become a full Cold War simulator game (hopefully they’re already working on that!), but it would be nice to have some interesting play after UK/US and Soviets beat the Nazis, or alternatively competition between the Nazis and Japan should they have won.
Yes, I really want a cold war DLC, with a couple of starting points including the “Man in the Iron Castle”.
That would be amazing.
I want this game to have a DLC that turns it into a 4x game, that would be awesome.
I want a DLC where after the cold war is over I can develop space flight and then fly around in my spaceship and fight aliens and buy land claims. Also, my spaceship has a functioning bar and hangout lounge. Also hats for my ship.