>>> Version 0.32

Mostly worked on making it so the Saavedra Lamas Treaty can be removed by the player so as to let it play as he wishes. There are currently three paths you can take in order to do this: Wait for the world tension to raise above 50, start justifying against a country (can take a while as it depends on a flag set by a vanilla event), wait until another signatory starts an offensive war. These apply to all who adhered to the treaty. Argentina will eventually get another option via focus tree (Reject Lamas Doctrine focus).

When deciding the to exit the treaty you will always be granted the possibility to abide by the withdrawal protocol (one year wait time) or do so immediately and pay the penalty in rep.

The Treaty itself provides a favorable opinion among all signatories as long as it’s standing.

I made sure you’ll be informed when other countries are trying to exit, exit through protocol or exit without protocol through news events.

Besides this, I’ve retouched a few modifiers and other minor things. Can’t really recall everything know. Minor fixes you could say, some balancing. A lot of time spent searching for suitable pictures for the events and news.

On the backend of things, I also worked on a series of events for Argentina that’ll allow you to influence all your neighbors, giving them a drift in the direction of your ruling party (and this drift will update in case it changes). This will also be activated through Focus Tree (Define Sphere of Influence focus). It’ll work sort of like the Monroe Doctrine, but with a narrower scope.

I also restructured the Foreign Affairs branch a bit, as well as switched the flavor text to accommodate the new concept I have for the branch.

I think that’s it. Mod should be fully playable right now. Please don’t forget to leave back your feedback.

>>> Version 0.31

Began work on the Ministry of Navy branch.

Branch proves easy to do, most foci are research bonuses same as Ministry of War. Added two new national spirits (again, much to my never ending demise). The Naval Military School and the Naval Engineering School. The former is the navy equivalent to the Palomar Military Collage (bonus to experience, conscription, training) and the other gives you a new research slot and bonus to dockyard building and output. The rest of the foci are just tech bonuses.

Note that the Naval Military School will take half a year to complete (actually expand), while the Naval Engineering School requires the AFNE focus to be finished. My way of balancing things out.

Not much else for this branch.

Note: Mod should be almost playable now. The only true deterrent is the Saavedra Lamas Treaty NS, which should be dealt with on the next update.

>>> Version 0.30

Began work on the Ministry of War branch.

Branch proves remarkably easy to do. Most of it are only tech research bonuses, replacing those that come with the vanilla tree. Army Ethos branch is different however. Had to create more ideas to go along with the foci (against my better judgement considering just how many ideas have been added already).

New event has been added to go along with the Mission Statement focus. Once the focus is completed and the player acquires the New Argentinian Army national spirit, a repeatable chain of events called “Volunteer Surge” will start happening every 180 days (or 120 if you are in war with anyone), with a chance of giving you 30, 20 or 10k soldiers (chances are better if you are in a war).

That’s pretty much it for this update I suppose. Struggled a bit coding the event but the rest was actually pretty easy to do.

Ah, almost forgot. Lowered starting technology slots back to 2, since you'll get rather easy access to 2 more through national focus tree (and there's a 4th and possible 5th slot planned in the future).

Note: I took some time to do a separate mod to include music. This was published without much testing. Now that I’ve tested it while working on Revised Argentina I’ve come to realize the songs can be a bit overwhelming they all come next to the other. Might be worth revisiting the chance factors or creating another event to let the player choose if he rather mix them up with the vanilla songs instead of having them replaced all together.

0.29b

Just a small update to the game version so it shows up compatible after the release of Death or Dishonor.

>>> Version 0.29

Began work on the national focus tree once more.

Modified “Standarized Educational Content” to make it more appealing in order to keep the tree balanced. Research bonus upped to 4% from 2%.

Rebalanced some of the bonuses on the Economic Policies branch. This includes changing modifiers and switching some of the foci out for other ones.

Removed YCF as an industrial concern, now it’ll be just a national spirit activated through focus tree.

Added SOMISA as a national spirit to be unlocked through the focus tree as well.
***

I did a whole bunch of work without keeping track of what I was doing so I’ll just try to recap.

***

Revised Electoral Politics tree. No changes deemed necessary at the time.

Revised Class Struggle tree. No changes deemed necessary at the time.

Revised Migration Policies tree. The Safe-Heaven Vs Directive 11 path is unbalanced. In order to make the choice harder, and to make the tree more realistic, I’ve planned an event that will remove Safe-Heaven if you go to war (defensive or offensive). This will be temporary; the event should be coded so it’ll give back the national spirit once things calm down. However, if your country has caused more than 20% world tension, then the event will be gone for good. This event is not implemented yet, just planned, but I’ve modified the tootltip for the focus in order to let the player now. Also, Directive 11 will give you events to recruit german scientists and officers in the case they are defeated. Also planned, not implemented.

Given the planned changes for the Safe-Heaven and Directive 11 foci, I changed the effects of the latter, lowering the consumer goods bonus from 10% to 5%.

Revised Educational Policies tree. Not entirely happy with the tree, but it currently works. It can be expensive if you go for every focus, but that’s up to the player to decide. I’ll leave the tree as it is for now, minor a few balancing changes described above.

Revised Economic Policies Tree, first branch. Some of my test runs have put into evidence that Domestic Focus is rather weak when compared to other vanilla trade laws. While it’s not supposed to be an end-game ability, the fact that you lose so much production power due to foci that take away consumer goods makes it convenient to keep open trade policies that allow you to regain some factories through traded resources. To compensate for this, I’ve given the Domestic Market trade law a 5% bonus to consumer goods and increased resources to market by 5%.

Following the same line of reasoning, I decided to change the Granary of the World trade law as well, increasing its resources to market to 40% and lowering the consumer goods factories bonus to 10% from 15%. Ideally, you’ll want a bigger resource to market ratio but the thing is that historically this economic model doesn’t export minerals, just food, so it wouldn’t make much sense. I’ll have to do a few more test runs to see how it works.

In either the Domestic Market Focus or Granary of the World trade laws, you can get access to the pacts with the major powers which give you consumer goods bonuses, so it should balance out.

Started work on the rest of the Economic Policies tree.

On the State Funded Companies I’ve modified the tree’s structure a bit. Adding the YCF, Altos Hornos Zapla, AFNE and SOMISA foci.

YCF has been taken off the company roster and changed into a three phase upgradable national spirit that increases factory output. Altos Hornos Zapla will allow you to develop the Zapla Forest (Public Works tree) iron mine, giving you a chance to keep increasing your production. It will also allow you to build SOMISA, both a national spirit and a huge iron production increase. The AFNE focus will unlock the AFNE naval manufacturer.

The Private Sector Companies branch has a few bonuses for your country, nothing too impressive to be honest. Honestly it could probably be removed all together to save space, but it’s historically accurate to have a branch like that so I’ll leave it. It’s also the place where you unlock both of the electronic concerns.

The Imports Substitution branch gives you access to an event to continuously boost your rubber production. Ideally I would have liked to do more with this but HOI IV doesn’t really have all that many synthetic elements (like Nylon or such) so it’s use is very limited. Rubber is nice though.

Revised Economic Policies tree. Having done work on the public works tree, I know that Argentina has no aluminum production capabilities. I could add ALUAR, but the company was conceived during the 70’s and it could be considered a bit of a stretch. Insofar, I’ve tried to remain somewhat grounded in time (1936-1950, though AFNE and SOMISA are already a bit of a stretch) but the complete lack of aluminum is a bit of a pain. It’d be a matter of balancing out realism with convenience… you can always trade for it I suppose. I’ll have to consider this further, ask players for opinions.

The rest of the tree seems functional for now. No further changes deemed necessary.

Started work on the Public Works tree.

The tree’s branches are pretty much self-explanatory. This tree is meant to replace the generic infrastructure, civilian and military construction foci in the vanilla tree. There’s a twist though. No construction is immediate. You’ll have to do the focus and then wait for the construction project to finish in order to reap the benefits (meanwhile you’ll suffer a penalty to your construction speed, as resources are allocated to specific projects).

There’s, however, a new feature: Mining Operations. In order to represent Argentina’s vast untapped resources, I’ve added a branch that will allow you to begin increasing production for almost every resource in the game. These events cost time and construction speed to maintain, but unlike the factories and infrastructure events, they are repeatable.

The Military Projects branch gives you access to foci that unlock companies like AFNE, the Aerotechnical Institute and the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base. There’s also the Palomar Military College National Spirit.

Revised the Public works tree. The construction time penalties are sitting at 10% and I feel they are a bit high. I’ll change them all to 5% for now and see how they run. It’ll take a few test runs to get the right feel for them.

Since most foci lead to construction projects and don’t show the actual result after the project is finished I’ve added tooltips for each focus so the player knows what they are getting into.

Added three more technologies to the starting Argentinian tree: Fighter I, Early Bomber and Tactical Bomber I. My research says that by 1936 Argentina had already produced aircraft in these categories, though only in small numbers.

Retouched some of the requirements for certain industrial concerns and manufacturers to be available. These are related to the newly created foci in the Economic and Public Works trees.

Created all the different ideas to go with the projects and related events. Scoured the internet for suitable event pictures. Made some generic icons to go with the projects.

Ran a test game to see how things work out in real time. Focusing on resource and industrial expansion first. Noticed some modifiers were wrong, corrected them. Noticed some event pictures related to previous versions of the events, used placeholder for the time. Rebalanced YPF bonus options to make it more of an interesting choice (otherwise it’s likely most people would choose resources all the time). Decided to reuse the YPF company logo for the related national spirits as well (lazy). Fixed some typos. Added research bonuses to the Foreign Investments and National industry foci (electronics and construction), this will help make them more relevant, hopefully.

>>> Version 0.28

Decided to turn back and finish the national industry concerns and manufacturers as they closely relate to different foci on the national focus tree.

Conducted extensive research on every major company active in Argentina during the dears 1936-1950. Came up with a decent list to work with. Many of these companies, especially the naval ones, didn’t really become relevant until later in Argentina’s history. Though adding them might not be truly historical, I think it’s worth the damage in order to increase gameplay.

Added three tank designers. TAMET, Arsenal Esteban de Luca and Hispano-Argentina.

Added six naval designers. Arsenal Naval de Buenos Aires, Arsenal Naval Puerto Belgrano (requires focus to unlock), ASTARSA, CANM, AFNE (requires three foci to unlock) and Base Naval Mar del Plata.

Added two aircraft designers, with seven variations to them, Fabrica Militar de Aviones and Instituto Aerotecnico (requires focus to unlock). This is to allow player which type of airplane they rather focus on. Sadly, Argentina didn’t really have many aircraft manufacturers at the time. Most of that activity happened around these two companies (actually it’s the same company, though reorganized).

Added five materiel designers. Fabricaciones Militares (requires focus to unlock), FORD, General Motors Company, Hispano-Argentina and Arsenal Esteban de Luca.

Added seven industrial concerns. Compañia General de Obras Publicas S.A., Molinos Rio de la Plata, SIEMENS A.G. (requires focus to unlock), Phillips (requires focus to unlock), SIAM, YCF (requires focus to unlock) and YPF.

Finalized flavor text for every new added company and manufacturer.

Added two new foci to the national focus tree to work in tandem with the new companies.

Modified the ‘Granary of the World’ trade law. Reduced consumer goods factory bonus to 5% (down from 10%) and increased recruitable population penalty to 3% (up from 2%).

Considered enough work has been done for a new version.

>>> Version 0.27

After a quick inspection of the Economy Branch of the focus tree I decided to switch the Roca-Runciman idea to a Trade Law. This makes more sense and lets me give more utility to the focus tree. Fortunately, it wasn’t that hard to do.

Trying to make an event to go along the denounce the roca runciman pact, allowing you to choose from one of the focus immediately after it automatically, but for some reason making the choice is crashing the game…

After an hour or so of testing and trying it seems that the command “complete_national_focus” crashes the game when used in events. No idea why. Will have to discard my event idea.

Created another trade law for the Eden-Malbran focus. It’s somewhat between Export Focus and Free trade. I toyed with the bonus of this law for a while and finally settled on something between Export Focus and Free trade, otherwise it’d be very unlikely people would ever choose it.

Made it so you have to go through Seek New Markets to reach Prioritize Domestic Market. The way Seek New Markets work is that once you finish the focus you’ll get an event chain that will allow you to send trade missions to other countries. The missions will succeed or fail depending how good your relations are with those countries (it’s all up to chance, but chances of success are better if your relations are above 40 and worse if they are below 20). Once you have at least 2 trade partners, you can go for the Granary of the World focus, otherwise you’ll be stuck with Prioritize Domestic Market.

Working on the event chain for Seek New Markets. It’s definitely the most complex event I’ve worked on so far. It’s taking some time to get things to the point I want them.

After some hours of work I managed to get the event chain working exactly as intended. Some refinements could be done for sure, make the events run smoother, still need some pictures to go along with them, but I’m satisfied with the overall result for now.

So I did away with the Trade Laws Roca-Runciman and Eden-Malbran, turning them back to national spirits. Didn’t want to flood the game with too many trade laws that would quickly get discarded anyway. I turned Prioritize Domestic Market and Granary of the world in trade laws, but while Domestic Market is easy to acquire (you just go for the focus), Granary of the World requires you to do the Seek New Markets event as explained above.

I’ve refined the Seek New Market event. It took me hours of trial and error until I figured out how to make the event so it’ll work as intended on its basic level (allowing you to send missions to each country is easy, the thing is configuring the buttons so they show up at the right time, then configuring buttons to close the event, etc.), then after the basic was done I added events that’ll remove the buffs you get if you go to war with the country you made a pact with. A third step was making the entire event chain repeatable, allowing you to keep trying to get those pacts, even those you lost because of a war (assuming the war has ended and the country still exists with the same TAG). This took me a solid 5 hours to figure out… yeah… did I say I’m not a skilled modder? Finally, I added ideas to the buttons that postpone the trade mission and the one that tells you there are no more possible deals at the time. This will stick around for roughly the same time it takes for the event to pop back again, thus allowing you keep track of when you are going to get your next chance at those pacts. Now, since I don’t like giving you a national spirit with absolutely no bonus (these were initially meant just to track time), I decided to add a very minor bonus to them. Ideally I wanted to add something that made sense, but I have no idea how to mod trade influence modifiers so it’ll have to be something else.

Hell… it’s the most work I’ve done for a single feature. Next is adding the icons for all these ideas so you can keep track of them in the very busy national spirit monitor.

Did the icons for events and some of the new ideas added. As always, these are all place holders until someone who actually has skill crafting icons is kind enough to give me a hand.

Fixed the Saavedra Lamas Event not firing. Should be working as intended now.

Although this was just a tiny branch in the economy tree, I think enough work has been done to merit a new version. For one, I’m glad I left this the focus tree for last because there’s no way I could have done things the way I did without the experience I got from all the previous work I did.

>>> Version 0.26

Started work on the national focus tree again. Revising what’s already been done.

Redid effects of the Electoral Politics branch. Reduced drifts modifiers by half.

Added new starting national spirit, Strikes and Lockouts.

Added new starting advisors and chiefs based on historical data. Since I didn’t have enough room in the political advisors’ slots for everyone I just picked the three I thought were more relevant.

Reduced Agustin Pedro Justo’s leader trait “Civilian Engineer” effects.

Trying to add an event chain to the Class Struggle branch, going back to my original idea of giving the player a brief respite from the strikes and lockout event for the time it would take him to finish one of the branches. Ideally, the player would finish one of the two branches and be given an event that will remove the debuff idea completely. If he hasn’t finished, then the event will give him the chance to pay up again so he can get more time to finish or tell them to sod off and get the debuff again until he finishes one of the branches. Sadly… I just can’t get the events to work properly. I simply don’t know how to code them. I’ve wasted three hours (pretty much all the time I get on a day to work on the mod) just trying to do this but there’s something screwing me over. Tempted to just do away with the event idea but I will need to know how to use them for other branches so it’s putting me on a tight spot.

So after another hour I finally managed to get the events to work like I wanted. Apparently I was messing up the triggers. The way Class Struggle branch works now is: 1. You start the branch, get an event that removes strikers debuff at a 5% consumer factories cost for 160 days. 2. If you finish either side of the branch before the 5% debuff runs out, you’ll get an event telling you one side or the other has won and it’ll remove the debuff and prevent the strikers debuff from coming back. 3. If you don’t manage to complete either side of the branch by the time the 5% runs out, you’ll get an event telling you the workers are getting restless. Here you will have two options: Either you bribe them again for another 60 days, or you tell them to sod off, but get worker strikes debuff again. 4. Completing any of the branches sides will allow you to remove the worker strikes debuff, even if you regained it after failing to do it before the Brief Respite debuff ran out.

I’m afraid that to further customize the focus tree I’ll have to resort to spamming ideas since for some reason the game doesn’t allow me to code in modifiers to the foci per se. It won’t look good, but at least it’ll be functional.

I’ve done a first pass on the Educational Branch. Overall the purpose of the tree is to get research bonuses and some national unity (useful considering you start very low and some options cost you in NU as well). I think some options require a bit more balancing since people will most likely always choose some over the others but well, for now I believe it’s functional.

Done some rebalancing of the Migration tree.

Lowered completion time for all foci to 28 days in order to compensate for the huge number of options available. Argentina now has 136 foci (not counting exclusives), when Germany has 50 and England 70. This requires playtests to see if it affects game balance.

Did some play tests. Running time for foci seems reasonable but research bonus is a bit too much. The cost on consumer factories is too high as well. Lowered the bonus and the consumer factory cost for the entire tree. It shouldn’t be so crippling to your economy.

Did some more play tests, tweaked the bonus some more. More play tests, more tweaks. Really bothers me how I’m forced to flood the player with ideas, but no idea how to get around that. Maybe I could use events or something to condense them… it can wait I suppose.

Rebalanced the traits of both Education Reformers to keep the research bonus balanced.

Many ideas remain without icons but since it’s just a cosmetic issue I decided to move on.

Considered enough work is done to merit a new version.

Version 0.25 >>>

Started work on the theorists.

Added 8 new theorists.

Retouched Manuel Savio’s trait as political advisor.

Must remember to retouch Carcano’s trait, add Alejandro Korn.

Went ahead and retouched Carcano and added Korn (no time like now, right?)

Went ahead and removed Saavedra Lamas from the starting position. It’s still available as advisor, mind you. He came already recruited since version 0.1 something though it was only intended for testing purposes. I might do a bit of research and include all advisors, chiefs, etc., etc., for the 1936 starting date at a later time.

Had to redo Korn a bit when I realized I already had an educational reformer added (doh!). Luckly, they are kind of opposites in their ethos so I managed to make both work, though you can only have one or the other thanks to that.

After doing some extra research I’ve concluded that Argentina already had marine divisions by the year 1936 (created as members of the coast defense forces by Admiral Videla in 1935, though historically they were around in other shapes and forms for a while). I’ll add them as a start technology from this version on.

So my take on theorists is a bit different from vanilla. Many of my theorists provide additional research bonuses besides doctrines. In order to compensate I’ve made it so these options also cost you in consumer goods, the logic behind it being that theorists need money to theorize. If you guys think I should do away with the idea and just make them more vanilla like, please comment.

While I’ve added both genius aircraft and armor designers which provide great bonus to all research in those branches, I haven’t added a genius naval designed because… there simply wasn’t one. Sad but I just couldn’t find any famous Argentinian naval engineer, much less in the military branch.

Total theorists upped to 15. Considering a few more before finalizing this step of the revision.

I’ve worked on some flavor text for theorists but am not sure if I should add it to every one of them. Many of these guys I’ve already used in other advisor options so I’m afraid I’d just be repeating myself. I’ve added flavor text for every new face though.

Considered enough work done to merit a new version.

Version 0.24 >>>

Before starting to add High Command or theorists I’ll first try to code it so you can only have the same person occupying one position. For example, Videla can only be Chief of Navy or High Command, not both. This might not be always the case (planning in allowing players to have videla as Political Advisor and either HQ or NC).

Far as I can tell, there are a few ways to accomplish what I want. Either with conditionals or country flags. Country flags seems like the “tidiest” option, but I don’t know how to work them properly yet and I rather do this quick I can move on with something else. For now, I’ll use conditionals dependent on traits. It’s the same result it just doesn’t look as good.

Noticed a bug with Fincati’s portrait as Navy Chief. Must remember myself to fix this.

Changing videla’s trait as high command, want to do something that’ll decrease repair time for damaged ships but can’t find the proper modifier for that… will go with something else for now.

Added a lot (10+) high command officer options. While on the chiefs section I tried to keep historical, only adding people who actually became Chiefs of their respective branches during the time period, I was a bit more lax with the high command so as to provide more variation for the player.

Since it has been bothering me for a while I also modified Argentina’s starting technologies to include support equipment and engineer brigades (1936 OOB).

Fixed Fincati’s portrait.

Added a few more High Command officers.

Finished with traits and flavor text (went lighter with the HQ text).

Considered enough work is done to merit a new version.