Hero image: Hearts of Iron IV. Image: Paradox Interactive
Paradox Interactive has released patch 1.19.4 for Hearts of Iron IV, a quality-of-life War Effort update that also brings in balance changes from the game’s summer open beta.
The full list is in Paradox’s 1.19.4 patch notes on Steam, posted on 27 October with checksum a783.
The post opens with a note signed by Batya, which explains the update this way:
“This has been an effort to address some of the outstanding requests we have been seeing over time from our community and we hope you will enjoy them. While there are quite a few things we’ve addressed, we want to do more of these updates that improve the overall user experience to feel more modern than the game actually is (TEN years is a long time…).”
The same note says the update rolls out “the last changes from the Open Beta ‘Summer Edition’”, including balance changes to doctrines and combat.
The largest quality-of-life addition is automated resource trading. Players assign a number of factories to trade and set which resources to trade first.
Diplomatic requests such as airbase access can now be answered automatically, and notifications are grouped when a war brings a run of calls to arms and military access requests.
Other additions include a repair priority queue, queued intelligence agency upgrades, saved fleet compositions, a mini-map for the Focus tree and the option to recall volunteer forces, as long as none of the units are encircled.
One change touches Australia directly. The notes say Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Raj can now receive Commonwealth medals rather than generic ones.
New Zealand gets its own tweak as well: the Bob Semple tank modifier now reduces the production cost of light tanks, at the cost of reliability.
The balance list is long. Motorized Infantry HP rises from 25 to 27.5, cavalry gains a 20% breakthrough bonus, and SAM missiles are described as “roughly 9x stronger”.
Tank chassis now scale the soft, hard and air attack bonuses from modules by generation, from -5% for interwar chassis to +15% for modern ones.
Hearts of Iron IV was 46th on Steam’s most-played chart when it was read on Wednesday afternoon.
Source: Hearts of Iron IV – QoL Patch Notes 1.19.4, Steam – most-played games