Version 1.0.4. Feature, compatibility, and balance patch



Rebalancing

- Further nerfed the air branch of the NE generic focus tree, as it was still a tad too strong. This time one research bonus was removed each from the mutually exclusive fighter and bomber focuses.

- Late air branch rebalancing, "Modern Aviation" now gives one jet research bonus and one air doctrine research bonus, instead of two jet research bonuses.

- To make up for the new focus lowering political power gain, the "Why We Fight" focus adds some daily political power to keep non-aligned and democratic nations fully viable.

- Secret weapons now give three 50% bonuses instead of four 25% bonuses, which fits better with all the other research bonuses in the game which are mostly 50% bonuses.

- The generic collectivist tree now gives 10% instant political support to the ruling party instead of the former instant 20% to make it somewhat more realistic. It's also a part of the NE political overhaul which aims to make it impossible to get 100% support for a political party from internal sources only.

- Collectivist ethos now lowers democracy support by 0.1% per day instead of 0.2% per day.



Fixes

- Switched around some Persian cores and claims (one less claim on Turkey, and Mosul claim upgraded to a core).

- Finland no longer gets claims on Estonia in addition to a puppet war goal, now there's only a puppet war goal, and even that is only for players (so we won't have to watch the AI declare war on an overseas nation without having researched landing crafts, which was just sad). In exchange Finland now gets a claim on Murmansk (Kola) in addition to their cores on the rest of Karelia, which means both players and AI should have a somewhat easier time to create the historical dream for many Finnish people, Greater Finland, with Karelia under their wraps and short defensible borders towards "the Red Menace".

- "Removed" Paradox' leader retiring bug from "Army Effort" (actually I just refrained from copying it over to my generic focus file, but the point is you won't see it while playing NE at least).



Features

- Siamese unlockable cores

- New lategame "Military Cooperation" focus which adds an idea that cost you political resources as you set up military and intelligence cooperation with your allies, but rewards you with more army experience as well as commanders who learn much faster as they get access to tactics and innovations from allied militaries. This both makes minor nations' commanders more competitive towards their colleagues in major nations, but also serves to solve the problem of excess political power later in the game.

- New hidden idea "Naural political drift" unlocked as soon as you start on the generic political branch, which drifts your nation towards ideologies based on their typical attraction to different parts of your population. This can eventually be removed by going "Why We Fight" focus, allowing democracies and non-aligned nations to shape their politics at their will, while the collectivist branches allows you to oversteer it with your choice of shameless nationalist propaganda, or excess amounts of communist indoctrination. But even if you get all the internal political boosts, and even some from the outside, having 100% support for an extremist ideology should now be a thing of the past (as long as you don't cheese it and avoid picking any political focuses, that is >_>)

- Added temporary idea "Anti-extremist Rhetoric" to "Liberty Ethos", allowing the liberty focused nations to combat extremist ideologies very, very well for one year.

Version 1.0.2. Rebalancing patch.



Rebalancing

- Political power from both infrastructure focuses down from 75 to 50. To make up for this they now give the new vanilla values of infrastructure, 2 in one state and 1 in another, instead of one in each.

- Removed 100 political power from "Indoctrination" (from 150 to 50). Getting 6% recruitable population and 150 political power from one focus was pretty insane, and minor nations which went Communist tended to be flooded in political power after this.

- To compensate somewhat for the above removals, "Nationalism" and "Internationalism" once again gives 0.5 daily political power. Might nerf it again and add flat political power somewhere in the future if this shifts political power too much towards the lategame.

- Increased tension gains from declaring war slightly, and base tension gained from justifying wars VERY slightly.

- "CAS Effort" and "NAV Effort" now only give 2 research bonuses each, instead of 3.

- Removed the 25 air experience from "Rocket Effort".



Fixes

- Added the fixes of the last two patches to a handful of nations that had eluded my eyes when applying it.

Version 1.0.1, mid-sized update.

Features

- Cores on the southern cone of South America for Uruguay and Paraguay on the same basis as Argentina got them last patch.

- Claims and cores for Oman based on the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman.

- Ukrainian releasable nation got four unlockable cores based on Ukrainian populations living in the border areas of the Ukrainian SSR.

- Luxembourg loses its puppet war goal on Belgium, however, the claim it had on Wallonia has been upgraded to a core.

- The Netherlands got unlockable cores on South Africa, while Portugal got a claim on Cape. I also upgraded one of the Portugese claims to a core.



Rebalancing

- Slightly lowered the permanent political power bonus from Internationalism and Nationalism ideas from 0.5 daily political power to 0.4 daily political power.

- Advanced Production Methods now gives 5% more factory and dockyard output, instead of 5% production efficiency growth and 10% production efficiency retention, which felt somewhat random there. Also altered flavor text on the focus slightly due to this (though does anyone even read it?)



Fixes

- Finished the work I started last patch with applying the fix to nations not being able to unlock their claims and cores from the focus tree if they tag switched.

Version 1.0.0, the official release patch. Large patch with a bunch of changes.

Here's a short taste of the features[imgur.com] for those who want picture proof.



Features

- Buffs for the Polish focus tree, including 80 army experience, 50 naval experience, and 50 air experience spread around the relevant trees (previously no naval/air experience). Also added claims through the authoritarian paths, and one extra air and naval doctrine for the end of the air and naval branch respectively.

- Extra claim and core to Hungary, two claims to Romania (had actually forgotten about them, but now Europe is finally done), and an extra core to Yugoslavia. Romania was a hard one as interwar Romania is generally considered "Greater Romania", but I gave them two claims based on minorities outside of their nation. Also added unlockable cores to Argentina based on the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

- Italian focus changes: Increased length of "Support Nationalist Spain" focus from 30 to 35 days. Also added 50 pp to make it more worthwhile to players. Decreased length of "German Military Cooperation" from 70 days to 35 days. This should see Italy back on the 70 day cyclus that most nations are on regarding focuses, making things more systematic, instead of them lagging 5 days behind or staying 40 days ahead of other nations.



Rebalancing

- Nerfed the "Mechanization Effort" and "Armor Effort" focuses in the generic tree. The first one has gone from two ahead of time bonuses on mechanized infantry, to one reasearch bonus or ahead of time reduction (it was a bit broken how you could get the last mechanized technology several years ahead of time if you waited with spending this until you could get the first one without using it). Armor effort is down from 4 armor research bonuses to 3. Army experience on "Equipment Effort" and "Motorization Effort" moved down one level on each path. Now on "Equipment Effort II" and "Mechanization Effort".

- Also nerfed "Special Forces", it went from 30 of each experience to 25.

- Generic naval branch rebalanced. The choice is now between "Flexible Navy" and "NAV Effort", or foregoing "NAV Effort" for more instant bonuses in "Large Navy" (including a bonus to researching new capital ships).



Fixes

- Improved on my previous fix to Italian focus "Claims on France". Now it's almost foolproof in the way it works. See the picture link I provided above for details.

- Fixed the issues with nations that had changed tags in civil wars not being able to pick up their unlockable cores/claims/wargoals. Mostly an issue for AI nations, but I found a solution and it's already implemented for the majority of nations affected by this mod (most importantly Spain). Will add the rest in the next version.



Files removed/added

- Re-added events/Germany file as Anschluss was just a tad too high a jump in world tension. Removed ai_strategy/default, as the limit to divisions was no longer as necessary for lategame performance. The expeditionary force limiter in 00_defines I find is enough in the current version.



Other tweaks

- World tension gain from justifying war goals down, while relations penalties with democracies for WT have been raised to vanilla values again to compensate. Taking stuff in wars generates just a tad more WT now, but still less than vanilla.

- Removed some cases where there were overlapping puppet war goals and claims. Now each nation only get one of these on a province or another nation. The AI tends to full annex instead of puppeting whichever they get anyways. An example is Finland which had both a puppet war goal and claims on Estonia. Now they only have the puppet war goal.

- Added an unlockable claim on Petsamo for Sweden at last. While it wasn't a part of the Swedish Empire, it's doubtful that the Swedes, or the Finns, would leave Petsamo out should they be united again. It was an integral part of Finland during the interwar period, and it gave them access to the Barents Sea, which was considered very useful.

Version 0.9.8a hotfix and performance improvements.

- Re-added the 6% recruitable population modifier to the "Why we fight" focus/idea. It got removed by accident in one of the earlier patches. Rest assured I want democracies to be able to have a shot at standing up to Fascists and Communists.

- Encoding improvements on .mod files and some of the .txt files. This has seen vastly improved loading times, no errors popping up with debug mode on, and a more stable and smooth ingame experience. I've been learning Notepad++ which is a massive improvement over regular Notepad. Some errors stemmed from lack of knowledge and unoptimal editing programs, but now the errors have been corrected, I have better modding tools, and I know more about the different forms of encoding in text files. Make sure to enjoy the mod now. It's both better and smoother than it's ever been before!

Version 0.9.8, final beta version. Updated the mod for patch 1.3.3 of HoI IV.

- Removed redundant files: "00_buildings" in the buildings folder, "Germany" in the events folder, and "soviet" in the national_focus folder. The buffs to refineries, fixes to M-R pact and nerfs to world tension were not needed anymmore as Paradox had addressed the issues and rebalanced the game a bit over the latest patches. As for the Soviet focus tree it was only partially true, but I wanted the mod to be compatible with the Soviet Focus Rework mod, and the changes I made were small, so it was removed as well.

- Upgraded Albania's (unlockable) claim on Montenegro to a core.

- Added a claim for Denmark on Gotland. Added a claim for Turkey on Thrace.

- Gave Switzerland their first claim, based on their last war before becoming the renowned neutrals. The claim is on Lombardy. This marks all existing generic tree nations in Europe having unlockable claims and/or core.

- The releaseable nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia can now unlock assorted historical claims and cores around the Causcasus region.

Version 0.9.7a. Updated the mod for patch 1.3.1 of HoI IV.

Not much else this time.

Version 0.9.7. Updated the mod for patch 1.2.1 of HoI IV.

Features:

• Updated the mod for 1.2.1 (and future 1.2 updates from Paradox), by adding my changes into the new files released by Paradox, or vice versa. Now you can enjoy the nice new features and fixes by Paradox alongside the NE mod features.
  
  
• Added two cores and two claims to Serbia (releasable nation within Yugoslavia at the start of the game). These are based loosely on the Serbian Empire of the 1300s, as well as the areas within Yugoslavia which had ethnic Serbs living there.

Unsure if compatible with earlier save games, but I would recommend starting new games this time around.

Version 0.9.6. Not too big of an update this time, but I think you'll all enjoy this one.


Features:

• Claims on New Zealand for Australia (through fascist/communist focuses)
  
  
• Claims on Australia for New Zealand (ditto ^)
  (Both based on them being the same colony once)
  
  
• Italian AI now actually takes the "Support Nationalist Spain" focus in historical mode. It should be taken right after "Industrial Effort" as of now (file "ITA" in "common\ai_focuses" added to the mod).
  
  
• Removed the 50 politcal power on "Nationalism" and "Internationalism", and added 60 political power to "Political Effort" instead (now 50% more politcal power on this than vanilla HoI4). This should buff democratic nations relatively to the fascists and communists, as well as increase political options in the early game when it really matters.

Fixes:

• Finished diversifying the icons for ideas unlocked by the democratic and communist paths in the focus tree (fascist path was already done). Now you can enjoy a range of different icons for each idea.
  
  
• Finnish, Austrian, Bulgarian and (nationalist) Chinese AI should now never go down the internationalism path in historical mode (especially important for nationalist China so they don't lose all their provinces to the PRC too easily). They still might take "Internationalism" in non-historical mode though.
  The above mentioned change was also done for the sake of adding to the realism of the game. Finland had somewhat recently had a civil war where the communists lost, so them making a comeback was quite unlikely at the time. In Austria the communist party was banned, and in Bulgaria the communists and agrarians were repressed, in addition to the communist party being banned.
  
  
• Also kept sorting cores and claims by area on some previously added nation specific claims/cores. This was also done for Australia and New Zealand this update. Just look how nicely they circle around Australia if you follow the claimed states as they're listed.

Save game compatible as far as I know.


P.S.
Thanks to those who took the time to answer the strawpoll about what to do about Australia and New Zealand in regards to this mod. It was very limited on feedback (two whole persons answered!), but they were in agreement, and I agreed to their opinions so it worked out okay. Claims have been added as requested, and thanks to your votes, there is no need to boost Fascism and abolish elections just yet. As for now enjoy the update!

Version 0.9.5. Gran Colombia y Gran Parche!

Features:

• Historical claims for (nationalist) China and the People's Republic of China. They can unlock different claims and routes of expansion. The PRC can do a historic invasion of Tibet and border dispute with India, while nationalist China get other claims based on the ROC's (Taiwan's) territorial claims.
  
  
• Yunnan and Xibei San Ma have also unlocked cores on their relevant parts of China.
  
  
• Gran Colombia can now make its comeback, assuming either Colombia, Venezuela or Ecuador can defeat the other two. Panama also gets a shot at this, but since their claim to this is weaker as they were a simple department of Colombia, they don't get as many cores to help them along.
  
  
• Portugal can now unlock historical colonial claims.
  
  
• Added an additional core to Bulgaria, and upgraded the Mexican claim on California to a core. Will probably update more of their claims to cores in the future, if I can find more information on Hispanic minorities in interwar USA.
  
  
• Added 25 air experience to the "Modern Aviation" focus.

Fixes:

• Started a process of listing cores, claims and puppet war goals in a sensible manner. Now always cores on top, then claims, and puppet war goals on the bottom. Also started some simple regional sorting of cores and claims so they're easier to find on the map (before I just sorted them after the state numbers, pretty silly considering this can't even be seen without debug mode on). Ah, the joys of a clean interface. But I digress...
  
  
• Tweaked British AI strategy file (file "ENG" in "common\ai_strategy" added to the mod). The "Royal Air Force" triggered strategy should now be less extreme. The British should now allocate around 50% of their factories to planes after 1937, rather than 90-95% of them (though they'll still be the most air focused nation). This means they'll be less of a one trick pony ("our planes will blot out the sky!") and more useful on land.
  
  In total it's a buff to the Allies on land, and a very slight nerf to them in the air (as they rarely get to use all the planes anyways). This is also more in line with actual production numbers I found on Britain in WW2. Historically they produced around 30% more planes than Germany throughout the entire war, not several times as many. In addition they produced a lot of other equipment (such as mortars and artillery), which is not well represented as of now. As an added bonus Britain should now be more helpful to minors in the Allies as they'll have more ground forces to spare.

As usual, save game compatible patch.