• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

War Effort - Operation Capital [1.12.8 OPEN BETA]

Hello there Generals!

We have begun the final preparations for Operation Capital, and we now reveal our plans for you all! Below you will find a set of patch notes that are now live on an open beta branch. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord!
Operations-Roadmap, Capital open beta.png


################################################################
######## Hotfix 1.12.8 "Avalanche" ######### - Edited on the 13th of January with new changes
################################################################


##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Equipment variants created through focuses etc. will be created first when the technology they are based on is researched, if it's missing.
- Tank Design: Radio modules curve slightly changed, overall efficacy of radios reduced slightly
- Tank Design: Close Support Gun now has 10 piercing, from 12.
- Tank Design: Heavy Machine Gun now has 8 soft attack from 5, and 6 piercing from 10
- Tank Design: Secondary Cannon and HMG now have fewer drawbacks but higher production cost. HMG soft attack now 4, from 3, but hard attack removed
- Tank Design: Additional Machineguns soft attack reduced to 1, from 2
- Tank Design: Easy Maintenance module now reduces total build cost by 5%, but requires 30 XP, from 10
- Tank Design: Expanded Fuel Tanks now cost 1 IC, from 2
- Tank Design: Sloped Armor now increases armor by 25%, from 20
- Tank Design: Medium One-Man Turret now has 8 breakthrough, from 10, and reduces soft and hard attack by 10%, from 25%
- Tank Design: Three-Man Turret now has 24 breakthrough, from 20
- Tank Design: Torsion Bar now grants 15% reliability, from 10%
- Tank Design: Interleaved Road Wheels no longer reduces reliability, but has doubled production cost
- Tank Design: Welded armor reduced to 30% armor, from 40%
- Plane Design: Torpedo Mountings now have 14 naval strike attack from 12, -12 agility from -15, and 6 targeting from 5
- Plane Design: Reduced the lower end of plane engine IC costs; earlier planes should be a little cheaper on the whole
- Dive brakes no longer valid for naval bombers, increased naval targeting from dive brakes from 4 to 6
- Dive brakes no longer valid with naval bomber weapons (torpedoes and guided missiles)
- Carrier Naval strike multiplier increased, reduced naval strike detection chance from 0.7 to 0.5, reduced carrier disruption factor from 0.8 to 0.6
- Basic Medium chassis now 1938 tech, amphibious tank now unlocked only by 1936 light, tank armour tech dates are now 36,38,41,44, amphibious tank no longer gets medium turrets

##################################
# UI
##################################

- New variants received from auto-upgrades, focuses, events etc. are now highlighted in the production tab like variants received from research.
- In research screen for modular equipment (tank, ship, plane), stop showing a diff in stats when there is no design company attached
- Improved Tank tech tree layout

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Soviet Union no longer desires to be best buddies with Romania despite being instructed to ignore them for a while
- AI weights on hiring advisors now makes more sense. You should see a better split between political advisors & research bureaus, and the AI no longer saves all PP for hiring chiefs at the exclusion of all else. [This has a pretty radical effect on early AI build-up, thus there may be some imbalance in the early game in this open beta - feedback especially welcome]
- AI have a higher weight on Captain of Industry advisors pre-1939
- AI military spirit selection is less deterministic

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Added property allow_without_tech to create_equipment_variant which will create the variant even if the technology it's based on is missing.
- Fix the way character variables in script are stored
- From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in a character scope, will not work anymore
- From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in all_character, any_character, random_character, every_character, party_leader, characters_list_tooltip, will not work anymore
- Correctly retrieve variables stored in character scope for text
- Fixed tooltip function of trigger can_be_country_leader when used in country scope or all_character/any_character
- Fix add_ideas and activate_advisor effects. When applied to a slot that is already filled, dismiss the currently appointed advisor before hiring the new one. Will fix crash when opening Officer corps after.
- In script, interpret correctly when a character token is used in input
- Make has_character and can_be_country_leader work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token
- Make is_character work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token
- Align can_be_country_leader on other character trigger and always return false if the character is retired
- Fix crash in remove_advisor_role if the character had no matching advisor role
- When using a character token as input for a scope, search for the closest encapsuling country scope in order to interpret it correctly
- Fix crash when using add_advisor_role on a character with already a role in the same slot. Add a log error if trying to put triggers and on_action in the advisor role in add_advisor_role, those can only work if in database.
- Make set_temp_variable accept character token as input
- Removed check on unit leader type for add_unit_leader_trait. This check is only relevant for random traits.
- Make sure that advisor roles in characters duplicated during civil war keep the same idea_token
- Remove check on scope for hidden_effect and effect_tooltip
- Added country dynamic variables : country_leader, theorist, army_chief, navy_chief, air_chief, political_advisor, high_command
- Make sure all political parties are cleaned up when a character with multiple country leader roles retires
- Fix the tooltip for triggers inside a character scope, now the name of the character will correctly prefix the trigger tooltip
- Add can_be_fired boolean flag in advisor role block in database. If at 'no', then the advisor can't be fired once hired. Warning modders : completely replaces removal_cost = -1 !
- Add trigger advisor_can_be_fired checking new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block
- Add effect set_can_be_fired_in_advisor_role, setting new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block
- Fix dynamic variables when using a unit leader scope
- Add trigger pc_is_state_claimed
- Renamed trigger pc_is_state_outside_influence_for to pc_is_state_outside_influence_for_winner
- AI now correctly evaluates the weight of the traits that an advisor has, as well as the advisor entry weights

##################################
# Art
##################################

- Added portraits for political advisors in Spain and Portugal

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Fix all events related to Soviet Paranoia (value was always 0)
- Fixed issue where researching a new hull, chassis or airframe would not create the default variant if any variant of that type already existed.
- Fixed issue where variants created through focuses etc. would get unexpected modules and upgrades as a result of there being no default variant.
- Fixed typo in tooltip for Soviet Merge Plants focuses
- Fixed the manpower exploit by repeated splitting & merging of airwings.
- Italian Fiat 3000 and Fiat 3000B inter-war tanks will no longer be just hulls in the stockpile and will now show proper inter-war tank 2D icon.
- Italian AI should no longer release puppets i Balkans on historical via decisions.
- Decaying opinion modifers (for instance from improve relation diplomatic action) will not disappear after loading a save anymore
- Fixes to how AI selects target templates for upgrading
- Combat log tooltip now shows correct naming for losses breakdown
- Admirals can no longer erroneously gain the politically_connected general trait
- Fix bug with usage of pc_is_state_outside_influence_for trigger in ai desires
- Fixed issue where 'No Councilor' mission would complete right away.
- Fixed issue where Democratic Unrest National Spirit in Switzerland wouldn't be removed when declaring the Alpine Protectorate.
- AI no longer forgets top-most production line when reducing excessive factories
- Fixed Thrust/Weight issues in some plane designs after latest air rebalance
- Fixed not considering manpower casualties in the air combat.
- Unite Polynesia decision category now shows the appropriate decision category picture.
- Stalinist AI should now be more inclined to kill Trotsky.
- Cruiser Submarine icon will now be properly shown on the researched technology pop-up.
- Fixed Chinese general showing up with blank portrait when Nationalist China integrates Guanxi Clique army.

To end this, we thank you for an amazing year, and keep your eyes peeled for 2023 as we got exciting things on the way for the Hearts of Iron Brand!

/Katten
 
Last edited:
  • 78Like
  • 14Love
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
Thanks for the USSR -> Romania improve relations fix. I'll be interested to see what effect that has on the USSR's general war build-up.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Thanks for the USSR -> Romania improve relations fix. I'll be interested to see what effect that has on the USSR's general war build-up.

It is quite varied. The major reason the soviet AI struggles a bit is down to the quantity of different options they have to spend political power on. It's something we try to manage, but it breaks quite easily - some countries are always the first to suffer when new changes are made; Soviets, Spanish Civil War, and Bulgaria's internal management tend to be our canaries.

On the whole, the soviets perform better now, but there'll be more tweaks coming.
 
  • 28Like
  • 13
Reactions:
I'll repeat my suggestions this time too because I still think they're very important, even if the relationship bug has been fixed.


Can we update Turkey, and specifically the balkan path. The path is very broken. Greece randomly leaves your faction to join the allies even when it's already in your faction. The path is also just way too painful with all the 70 day focusses. By the time you get to inviting bulgaria to your faction they're always already in the axis, and you cannot invite them, making the path really bad and not worth it. It'd be great if the path could be shortened by having several more 35 day focusses rather than 70 so we can actually invite Bulgaria before they join the axis. It'd be great if there was also a way to have hungary be able to get invited to your faction and some general other flavor things because the path feels very lackluster and not worth it. For one, I'd add a 35 day focus that allows you to request a cypriot federation independence from the brittish (after greece is in the faction) and have them join your faction, and also to be able to mediate border disputes with your faction members such as hungary being able to get north transylvania or bulgaria being able to get macedonia with turkey as the mediator to take the role germany takes historically but peacefully. Lastly I feel there should be an idealogy drift defense modifier or democracy and unaligned party boost somewhere in the path for all faction members because romania randomly going fascist when they're in your faction makes little sense.
 
  • 11Like
  • 7
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
It is quite varied. The major reason the soviet AI struggles a bit is down to the quantity of different options they have to spend political power on. It's something we try to manage, but it breaks quite easily - some countries are always the first to suffer when new changes are made; Soviets, Spanish Civil War, and Bulgaria's internal management tend to be our canaries.

On the whole, the soviets perform better now, but there'll be more tweaks coming.
Thanks! It is great to see some fixed issues from AI related tread. Can`t wait to other coming changes.

I found new issue: Airwings do not recieve damage when their base airfield is startegically bombed. This worked in previous versions (1.4.x and earlier, but now seems to be broken). Link:

Also, do you have plans to rebalanse espionage? Some modifiers and mission results from there seems to be broken. For example stealig techs mission with +100% bonus chanse never provides any bonus... This is quite dissapionting.
 
  • 15Like
  • 1
Reactions:
A couple of minor suggestions that came to mind watching my current observer game:

1. It'd be good to have an obvious on-map indicator of the "active" areas of the Spanish Civil War. At present if you want to tell where the active areas are you have to regularly click around the map looking for the little "terrain" marker.

2. A pop-up when the Soviets take over Baltic states. I know people complain about pop-up spam, but I think a country ceasing to exist counts as worthwhile.
 
  • 23
  • 4Like
Reactions:
Hello there Generals Admirals!


- Admirals can no longer erroneously gain the politically_connected general trait
Thank you for all concerned.

Posting threads in this forum apparently helps sometimes.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
OK, ran the usual hands-off game - picked Haiti, set the game to Historical AI Focuses, took no actions, and let the game run until Germany declared war on the USSR. Then I tagged around to see how the AI is doing:

USSR

Compared to last patch the government is a lot more full - five military staff, three politicians, war economy - the Romania fix clearly helped. They sensibly conducted the Winter War and annexed the Baltic states. However:

1. They're still on "volunteer only" conscription

2. They only have 215 divisions. Historical numbers were 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades, so they're a long way behind where they should be.

3. They're only training a single division, a tank division. They're not building any tanks though, so it'll never complete.

4. They have 500,000 manpower spare and tons of spare equipment - I was able to queue up 45 extra 9 infantry/3 artillery units with the men and gear they had in stock.

My theory here is that the AI has prioritised their government figures and war economy over conscription, and is treating the 500,000 spare manpower as an emergency reserve, so it doesn't train any more units and ends up way under-manned.

5. Looking at the costs of the agitprop campaigns, I can see they've run "The Golden Idol of Capitalism", "We Will Accomplish a High Yield", "More Metal Means More Weapons" and "More Oil for the Motherland" once each, and "Transport is the Sibling of the Red Army" is active.

Of these, only "High Yield" was really worth running - "Golden Idol" gives you attack bonuses against the USA, "More Metal" is pointless because the lowest metal resource the USSR has is tungsten at a surplus of 51, "More Oil" is pointless because the fuel stocks are full, and "Transport" mostly speeds rail and supply hub construction and they're not building any.

So as it is the AI wasted about 60 political power in the build-up. Save those and you've got enough to raise conscription laws - the USSR even gets a discount!

6. Resistance in Poland is really high. Like above 30% almost everywhere. This is because the AI uses Local Police Force for controlling resistance.

7. Research is still weird. Armoured car tech takes precedence over stuff like artillery.

8. Trotsky's still alive, and no moves are being made to assassinate him, so the 20% stability penalty and 15% political power penalty are still in place.

9. Industrial build-up is pretty bad. They've got 94 military factories compared to Germany's 192.

Germany

1. Resistance is catastrophically bad. 50% or over in France and Poland, because the AI is running Local Police Force everywhere.

UtMIiAM.png


2. Somehow Germany got hold of a single province in Belgian Africa, so there's a stream of dozens of German and Italian divisions boating their way down through the Atlantic to go there and come back from there. This is partly me saying, "the German AI is stupid" but also "the UK AI is stupid" because they have a massive navy but they let tons of Axis divisions come and go under their noses.

3. Research is a bit weird, no synthetic rubber, no radar, artillery is behind the times. But they do have armoured cars and amphibious tanks! (researched, anyway, they don't build any)

UK

1. Spending almost all their civilian factory output on ports in places like the Maldives and Seychelles. The UK and Japanese AIs seem to really like building ports to supply their navies while completely neglecting their armies.

2. They only raid with submarines, and not in the best locations. A group of submarines or small surface ships in the Gulf of Gabes could do horrendous damage to the Axis forces fighting in East and West Africa.

3. They research radar but never build or upgrade any radar stations. Upgrading the one in Sussex and building one on Malta would help a lot.

China

1. All they build are infantry gear and artillery, but they've let these technologies fall behind in favour of AT guns and armoured cars.

2. They've researched 1939 infantry gear, but they're still building 1936 stuff.

Japan

1. Crazy number of ports in the Pacific - every island in the Marshall Island chain has it's own port.

2. Usual AI fixation on armoured cars and AT guns despite not building any.
 
  • 36
  • 16Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I'd say the most critical bug to squash in the AI right now is how they always seem to use "local police force" when harsher laws are more appropriate. The AI must be taking enormous losses to that one.

The USSR AI's improved considerably this patch, but it's still a way to go before it can have a decent-sized army and industry by the time the war rolls round. I reckon the solution is:

1. Make Trotsky die when the AI completes the "Behead the Snake" focus in historical (or teach the AI to kill him with spies if that's an option, right now they just ignore him)
2. Tell the AI to stay away from agitprop until it has the basics down - conscription, war economy, army/airforce leaders
3. Raise the priority on conscription up so dudes like Kruschev (interesting guy, but a really weak choice for the USSR in this game) don't take precedence

Then the USSR should end up with a lot more manpower, and should use it to train a more historical number of divisions.
 
  • 17Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
I know that patches are named after WW2 operations, but why are they almost all allied operation ? I would like to see Axis and Soviet operations names as well, like Operation MI, Operation Uranus, Operation Cerberus, etc.... It seems to show the dev's allied bias. As far as I know anly two patches had non-allied names, Sunflower and Barbarossa
 
Last edited:
  • 8
  • 6Haha
  • 5
  • 1Like
Reactions:
- Italian AI should no longer release puppets i Balkans on historical via decisions.
Does this mean that there will be no more protectorate of Albania or governorate of Montenegro as Italian puppets? I thought that these puppets were historical :(. If that is the case could the devs please reverse this change? :)

EDIT: I looked at the code and found this for why the puppets were removed: #ITA struggles to garrison puppets that can be naval invaded

I do not think that removing historical accuracy because the AI sucks is a good way to solve problems. I would actually rather it be the other way around, the AI sucks but still follows historical accuracy with historical focuses on. It would be much better for me.

Please revert this change if possible! :)
 
Last edited:
  • 6
  • 3Like
Reactions:
As you're tweaking the Torpedo bomber stats we have a bugfix for you related to torpedo bombers


The gist of it is that it appears that to create Torpedo Bombers in the airplane designer you must have MtG active; it is unusual for you to have features of one DLC dependent on features of another.

@Arheo
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I think before occupation laws were reworked Local Police force was a good mix for gaining compliance over time so getting factories, while also reducing the resistancd target somewaht compared to civilian oversight requiring a much smaller garrison.

I hadn't played HoI4 since that rework anymore. Was it changed that much?
 
I really didn't expect a supply crate filled with new beta dropping before the yearends usual stalemate and I absolutely appreciate the effort :) Some nice fixes in there!

- Combat log tooltip now shows correct naming for losses breakdown

This seems to adress the issue with swapped values for the attacking and defending side; a quick glance on the logs in my ongoing game:

CombatLogAfterPatch.jpg

There are though at least two issues with the log left (the 2nd could be also related to the combat calculation itself):

- As soon as equipment produced by many different countries comes together in the battle, the tooltip becomes too long and you don't have a chance to read the rest of the it (mainly concerning the opponent, but sometimes even your own list gets too long). I suggested that equipment could be simply grouped into variants (see my thread in the suggetion forum: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...oming-too-long-to-readable-completly.1555515/ ); another way to reduce the problem at least a bit or something to combine it with the former idea would be providing a separated tooltip for attacker and defender, depending on where you hover over with the mouse.

- You can still get more than 100% of lost equipment back by reliability...at least the tooltip says so (marked the examples in my pic with red dots)
 
  • 6Like
Reactions:
So, you guys bring to debuff for Tanks, Again ? While Tanks is already getting massive debuffs from Logistics and Fuel and Infantry getting huge buffs from Defense? So is there any point in using tanks anymore? They are very expensive, they have to be close to the railways and supply hubs to work, they can't move forward because they run out of fuel after they split the line. You can't Blitzkrieg. and You can push Tanks very easily just by putting Artillery Infantry + anti-tank support and Planes. There is no trace of the Tanks before the NSB.
 
  • 6
  • 1
Reactions:
I think before occupation laws were reworked Local Police force was a good mix for gaining compliance over time so getting factories, while also reducing the resistancd target somewaht compared to civilian oversight requiring a much smaller garrison.

I hadn't played HoI4 since that rework anymore. Was it changed that much?
Dunno when you last played, but a bunch has changed regarding resistance fairly recently. The rule I follow is "enact the most lenient (IE: compliance-generating) law that keeps resistance at 10% or less".

The rule the AI follows is "Local Police Force, no matter the casualties"
 
  • 2
Reactions: