Hearts of Iron 4 announced

That sounds expensive to develop. Maybe some kind of crowdfunding campaign could help.

I’m in for $11 million! Who’s with me?

Let’s petition the Derpspace dev to make this game for us.

Derpspace is a great idea. What if this was fully integrated, so that our avatar could play the HOI4 DLC on a terminal in our spaceship in between low-grav volleyball and recreational space vasectomies?

Waking the Tiger on March 8th

It feels to me like the Stellaris dev team is putting out new content at a much faster rate. The last HoI4 DLC released in June, while the last Stellaris DLC released in September. The scope of the changes for the next Stellaris increment is IMO a lot bigger than the scope of changes for Waking The Tiger, but the Stellaris Team is still getting it out the door faster.

Maybe the changes behind the scenes are very different? Or Stellaris has a bigger team?

Stellaris seems to be the big ticket project they’re pushing, as it has wider appeal. You can tell from the trailers and other marketing it gets vs the other games. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Stellaris team was a little larger.

That being said, it depends a bit on how you slice it. The last (and only) real expansion for Stellaris was Utopia back in April 2017, so from that metric it’ll be 10 months between major releases. Synthetic Dawn was a more limited content pack.

This will be HOI4’s 3rd major expansion, so maybe taken all together it’s about even? I know I’ve seen people complain that Stellaris isn’t getting the attention that HOI4 is, so maybe it’s just perspective. :)

I could see people having a different perspective. On the other hand, I think Synthetic Dawn did as much to change the game as “Together for Victory” or “Death or Dishonor”. And that’s leaving out the Leviathans, Plantoids and Humanoids packs. Didn’t the HoI4 team even acknowledge that those DLC were a bit on the weak side while they focused on core issues?

Stellaris is going to be releasing its 10th patch , while HoI4 will be releasing its 5th patch. My vague sense of accumulated changes since release is also about a 2:1 ratio. Though there is definitely more low-hanging fruit of things to correct in Stellaris.

Yeah, they did mention that the DLC-exclusive content might be on the weak side, because the big fundamental work was in the accompanying free patch.

Synthetic Dawn I haven’t played yet, that’s pretty awesome to hear that it’s so good. I think Plantoids and Humanoids were strictly cosmetic? I know the Plantoids are, anyway.

Fundamentally, I think HOI4 is harder to develop for. They’re both more limited in terms of scope (Unless there’s a Synthetic Reich DLC coming… damn, I’d totally play robot nazis!) and the AI seems like it would be significantly more difficult. I know HOI4 has 2 AI developers, so maybe more of their resources are taken up with those considerations.

I have no idea on any of this obviously, but it’s fun to speculate. :)

It’s not really a judgement about how good it is (though I had fun) but more the scale. I figure playing as a new type of empire, with three significantly different sub-flavors, is as much content as Commonwealth gameplay. Plantiods and Humanoids are cosmetic, true. I will actually see them in Stellaris though, since in HoI I just turn off the 3d models :)

You might be right that HoI4 is just harder to develop for.

Maybe the fact that HoI 4 had an expansion pass with 3 DLCs (it includes Waking the Tiger right?) sold at launch was a mistake, and gave Paradox a financial incentive to pull resources away from HoI 4 DLC production towards other projects that will get more fresh sales. It’s a cynical perspective and I am not trying to say it’s likely that’s the reason, just bringing it up as a possibility.

I don’t think that’s likely. Paradox went ahead and said that the season pass owners will be getting the 4th expansion included as well.

Paradox themselves have said they place a $ figure on their releases based on the content contained in the release. They are the best ones to judge what is in each one, so how much money have they charged for each title?

Stellaris was released in May 2016. Counting next month, in the 21 months since its release, it has had 4 DLCs and 2 expansions (again, Paradox’s terminology) priced on release at $76 ($20 Utopia and Apocalypse, $10 for SD and Leviathans, $8 for Humanoid and Plantoid).

Hearts of Iron 4 was released a month after Stellaris. Counting up to March, in the 21 months since its release, it will have had 3 expansions priced on release at $45 ($20 for Tiger, $15 for TfV, $10 for DoD).

Not even including patches, over the exact same period, HOI4 has had 60% of the post release content that Stellaris has received.

Wow that’s great! I suppose they are doing this because they had promised $50 of value and as @SamS just mentioned the first three expansions are priced at $45. Still, they could have easily pushed out a $5 tank model pack and called it a day, and I still would have been happy then.

Well, it’s also true that HOI4 needed much less post release content than Stellaris did at launch.

All the free changes to Stellaris (with stuff like the Horzion Signal DLC story pack and Cherryh update) would easily add up to another expansion - that’s another $20 of content there I reckon.

Sound, Music and Art DD

I’m a bad person because for me this is a placeholder. Though I guess this stuff could well be having a stronger subliminal effect than I realize.

Some changes to naval invasion mechanics perhaps?

Still keeping my fingers crossed that the pre-release AI DD will have a lot of good news.

I’m really curious to see how the new audio “feels”. I’m not normally an audiophile or anything, but when it comes to games I find audio is very important when it comes to immersion and how games feel to me. I must rely heavily on audio feedback, because playing games without sound is like watching a tense/scary movie scene without the backing tracks. Instead of being on the edge of my seat, it just falls flat.

I think for a strategy game for HOI4 audio would mean less to me, minus audio cues for important events. But I wouldn’t at all be surprised if I end up noticing this addition a lot more than I expect.

I’m actually pretty excited about the audio. The way the civilization themes got more complex as you entered different era was my favorite thing about Civ 6. (Ya I know really low bar). I spent a couple bucks during some Paradox sale and bought the new soundtracks, I really liked them. Even the weird heavy metal tracks.

Not for me, I play with sound off…all Paradox games, and most others.

Do you play your own music instead? If there’s literally no sound, not even UI clicks or environmental effects, it’s too silent for me.

I sometimes mute Paradox games and play my own music when I feel like it, but even then I recognise that the way I play changes when I do this. I tend to play faster and min/max more, which is great when achievement hunting but otherwise I try to leave the ingame sound on.

Most of the time, I prefer to turn off only the music, but the other sound effects only turned lower.