Hoi4 How To Start A Civil War
Wilkommen!Edit
Welcome to the official wiki of the End of a New Beginning, a HOI4 mod that attempts to expand the timeline from the 1850s to modern day! Imagined of conquering the world as the Confederates and colonising Europe? Balkanising the Russians? Uniting the world under one flag? Until now the vanilla game and its short spanned game ended everything by 3 wars, but now this is to be no more, with End of a New Beginning!
What does End of a New Beginning mean?Edit
Civil war is usually the government agaisnt the people, save to say that the government will reject control and abuse there powers. This then turned to the 'civil soldier' (police) and then millitary force against its own people.
We understand it sounds like total garble, but it's a rhetoric that's a short version of our logo; 'The ending of an era is the dawn of a new beginning'.
The ultimate WWII strategy game From the heart of the battlefield to the command center, you will guide your nation to glory and wage war, negotiate or invade. You hold the power to tip the very balance of WWII. It is time to show your ability as the greatest military leader in the world. Will you relive or change history? Start game, load save game, use gainxp command, enjoy. (Optional turn back on binarization in settings.txt) cp Adds Command Power: cp 100 (capped at 100) st Adds Stability: st 100 (capped at 100) ws Adds War Support: ws 100 (capped at 100) allowtraits: Allows free assignment of general traits.
How can we help? Edit
EonAB is a community project that relies on support from the community far more than other projects. It has a wide span of content and ambitious goals, and everything you do from leaving a comment to jumping into dev work is a giant help to us.
Whether you want to be a proper dev or just want to support us from the shadows, most communication is done on our Discord server. All development process like this is public, and anyone has the rights to join and help out with the banter. It's also where we announce GitHub versions, versions that aren't uploaded on Steam but are small snippits of our development. If you want to follow us along the whole path, joining our Discord is first rate. Here's the link; https://discord.gg/VgufEME
Our main source of uploading is on Steam Workshop, and we won't upload our mod on 3rd party sites other than ModDB and even those will be scarce. Subscribing, upvoting, leaving comments are the most obvious way of helping us out; but you can also fire discussions about topics you think are wrong or lacking. Playing the versions we upload and informing us of any bugs or if it's actually fun is also an extremely important amount of help.
If by any chance you'd like to go a step further and directly help the mod, we're always open. We'll never say no to someone who wants to help out and there will always be a place for you to join in. Making let's play videos are also a giant help; you will be given an honourary title on our server and you'll be one of the first to be alarmed about new updates. Helping with mod dev is similar too; regardless of how 'good' you are with coding or how much time you have, as long as you have passion about history and doing stuff for HOI4 we'll always be open to you.
Latest activityEdit
- Talk:HOI4 Modding : The First Steps
new comment by A FANDOM userComment: nope - Talk:HOI4 Modding : The First Steps
new comment by A FANDOM userComment: This ever going to be finished? - HOI4 Tips and Tricks
edited by PowerbloAdded category: Modding Support - HOI4 Tips and Tricks
created by PowerbloNew page: Even for experienced users, learning to mod is a long and scavy road. Usually getting help from veterans is a great idea, but these pieces of help... Summary: Tips and Tricks page - HOI4 Modding : The First Steps
edited by Powerblo - Reporting Errors
created by PowerbloNew page: Bugs and errors are a nastuy nuisance that ruin gaming experience. However they are inevitable, whether it literally breaks the game, or is a... - Jargon
created by PowerbloNew page: Some terms used in the EoaNB team may be unfamiliar to new people or outsiders. This unexhaustive list of terms frequently used in the EoaNB team... - HOI4 Modding : The First Steps
edited by PowerbloEdited the section: Guidelines - Main Game Concepts
edited by PowerbloEdited the section: Peace Conferences and Peace - HOI4 Modding : The First Steps
edited by PowerbloAdded category: Modding Support
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Starting to mod in HOI4 is a long journey. HOI4 and in fact most Paradox games are very easy to mod, and spending a small amount of time to learn the code is enough to start modding; however this isn't the case for adding new graphics, provinces or juggling with interface files, which has no documentation at all. It can also be frustrating to learn coding in the first place. If you're clueless on how to start up, stuck or just want some shortcuts, you've come to the right place.
This guide will focus on giving the player a basic grasp on editing localisation files, changing flags and leader portraits. Note that this guide makes the assumption that the reader never has done anything to do with modding, creating content based on coding or anything of that sort. It's focused towards people who've spent their lives reading history books and staring at maps, so discretion is advised to people who are familiar with using coding.
Good places to start off Edit
The first few steps are a popular topic and various tutorial videos have been made on it. If you don't feel like learning modding from text, you can always receive visual guidance. These are some of the videos powerblo thinks are the most useful for starting off.
The playlist by MrKmproductions is by far the most informative and helpful series on Youtube, and help you get quite a far way.
The playlist made by Paradox themselves are the canon resource, and while they cover several complicated schemes(new resources, province editing etc.) it's not organised or user friendly and I wouldn't recommend it for the fresh green modder.
These series by The Iron Workshop give several tips on how to make several useful changes, and include a nice introduction on making new provinces.
Along with these videos, the wiki page below shows a good list of sites you can access to learn coding or refer to resources.
Making your First Mod Edit
While unfortunately Paradox hasn't given a lot of documentation about modding, they've given a lot of useful tools to help the modder get going. One of these is the ability to create an empty mod in mere seconds. When you launch HOI4, you'll notice a 'Mod Tools' button in the launcher.
Press it, and go to 'Create a Mod'. When you get in there, you can tamper with the title of your mod and add new tags. Unless you know what you're doing, it's advised to set your directory the same name as your mod(or an abbreviate of it) without spaces or slashes. The game version should also be set to the latest current version of the game.
Don't worry too much if you feel you've made a mistake; all of these can be edited later. If you've finished with all the new bells and whistles, click create mod and you're ready to go.
Your New Directory Edit
Mods are located in the folder ~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/mod(Mac and Linux) or C;Users<username>DocumentsParadox InteractiveHearts of Iron IVmod (Windows). Inside this folder there should be two nitbits;
- The mod folder, named what you decided your subdirectory was
- The .mod file, containing info on how the game should handle your mod folder
The EonAB .mod file looks like this:
With both of these folders/files, you should be able to select your mod in the game launcher. Right now it shouldn't do anything, but content is something you can stack along with time. But before we get working with brand new content, there's a few precautions and tools you should know of.
Guidelines Edit
- Never use Notepad as your default text editor. For simplicity, use Notepad++, for convenient folder management use Sublime Text or Atom. All of them are free; it's recommended to have at least two text editors (powerblo uses Atom to manage his projects and Notepad++ to edit individual files)
- ALWAYS create a workspace folder(where you do the editing) separate from your Paradox InteractiveHearts of Ironmod directory. Similarly, never edit vanilla files- those edits are permanent unless you reinstall the game.
- Try not to overwrite vanilla files unless their existence create errors or overwrite your content. It's almost always advised to create separate files for localisation, events, focus trees, etc.
- Use repository managing programs like GitHub to keep track of what you've changed, and to revert any fatal errors you made. Don't forget to upload every minor change to GitHub; if your game has errors it's very easy to go sieve through previous versions if you know what changed through tie.
- Use proper folder merging tools instead of copy-paste like WinMerge.
- Don't forget to use UTF-8 encoding for normal files and UTF-8 BOM files for localisation. Text editors like Atom automatically encode your files into these formats.
- Have a 'project' folder that includes all your resources, your workspace, and plans for coordinated modding.
- Always have several backup folders if you don't use GitHub. You won't regret it when your new edits cause CTDs the second you start the game.
- Use AFP[1]s or Graphical Tools to reduce coding time and make coding easier, but always use them with caution. They often have several bugs and might delete everything you've done if you don't backup.
- Proper indentations, comments using # and being smart with paragraphs make reading code much easier for other people. This won't break your game when you don't keep it, but it's much more easier for you as well if you know exactly what's going on with each line of code.
- Consult other modders or other mods to get help with things you can't seem to code - reverse engineering is very useful in both learning and decreasing code time, but never plagiarise other's work.
Localisation : Adding Loading Tips Edit
Now that we've created the empty template for a mod, it's time to create some dummy content. Localisation files are a good place to start, being easy to edit and create.
Localisation files give names to ingame variables, and add text for descriptions. This is where all the ingame text is rendered from, so editing these files would change the text that appears ingame. All localisation files are and should be located in <mod>/localisation. Another important point is that all localisation files have the .yml extension and are encoded in UFT-8 BOM format. If you don't know what these are, don't worry; you won't have to worry about these as long as you're smart with how you code.
The most straightforward piece of localisation the player first sees are the loading tips[2]; the lines of famous words written on the bottom of the screen while the game is loading. The best way to start off with localisation is to copy the file in the vanilla folder[3] and paste it into your mod, so you don't have to go through the encoding. Create a new folder within your mod called localisation, and copy the loading_tips_l_english.yml file and paste it in there. When you open it, there will be a list of LOADING_TIP_<number>:0 '<loading tip>' , the code that assigns text to loading tips. Within a localisation file, the variable name goes behind the :0, and the text goes inside the double quotation marks. By changing the text inside the double quotes, you can change what the game displays for the loading text. Every single loading tip has an equal chance to appear while loading, so erasing every other one (leaving just one loading tip in) will make only one loading tip appear for the entire loading process.
Using special nitbits of code you can format your loading tips, and in fact any localisation file.
n : The equivalent of typing Enter, adding this annotation jumps the text down one line. Useful for loading tips (you've gotta put the original quoter somewhere) or descriptions when you want them to look tidy. Note that you don't need to put a space after the annotation, like 'nAnd Lewis is to blame.'
' : Since the boundaries of the localisation is defined by quotes, to use quotes inside your text wall this annotation is used. This is optional, luckily HOI4 is smart enough to let you use normal quotes. However this is recommended for anyone making large scale projects, or just paranoid about how code looks.
UTF-8 and the HOI4 language Edit
The traditional Paradox machine, the Clausewitz engine utilises a programming language unique to itself, different from the well known Lua or Java. You don't have to read the stuff below to make portrait or flag mods, but it's recommended to know what you're coding in if you want to be good at it.
- HOI4 has their own 'coding language', making it much easier to code but much less versatile. It's similar to the EU4 or CK2 language, but being a new iteration and a different game there will be several places the code doesn't overlap.
- UTF-8 isn't a language; it's a format where the game can read code from .txt files. Don't go looking for UTF-8 encoders and just see if your text editor can do it.
- Localisations need an extra step named UTF-8 BOM. Not keeping this is a common cause of missing localisation files.
- The HOI language, HOI-ese doesn't utilise ;s or <>s, and links how your code is designed to how it functions. This is why using comments(#) is extremely important so you can keep track and have a clean, bugfree code.
- Indentations(tab and spaces) don't really matter in HOI-ese in function.
- HOI-ese operates using .txt files for most code. .yml files are used in localisation, .gui for interface design and .gfx for designating graphic files.
- HOI-ese is mostly independent from directory for graphic files. This has not been confirmed for coding files, but generally it's important to have thourough knowledge on the HOI4 directories.
- Make sure you don't name any ingame files or variables the same.
We assume that you have basic knowledge of how code works, and have at least common sense on what parentheses or equal signs do. Then now that you've got that through, it's time to start making edits to the actual game.
Hoi4 How To Win A Civil War
Changing Country Leaders Edit
Perhaps the best of modding HOI4 would be adding new leaders to nations. It's one of the more simpler, and straightforward changes to start off with.
Adding new country leaders, or replacing them requires you two edit two things;
- The 'history' file of the nation you're adding a leader for
- The portrait for your leader
The history file is the first step of adding a leader, faction, party or researched tech for any nation ingame. They're located in [mod]/history/countries/[TAG].txt. Opening it for the first time is a complicated process; but since we're simply adding new leaders it's simple right now.
Let's take the example of Germany; we're not fond that Hitler is in power and want to place a yodeling person in his place.
In the GER.txt, searching 'Hitler' returns this block:
create_country_leader = {
name = 'Adolf Hitler'
desc = 'POLITICS_ADOLF_HITLER_DESC'
portrait = '<directory>'
expire = '<date>'
trait = {
}
- ↑Automatic File Processor - A set of .bat files that automate simple actions like creating nation history files or converting flag image files.
- ↑They're called loading tips because traditionally (in Paradox games like EU4) they contained tips on how to play the game.
- ↑Wherever your HOI4 is installed - the localisations folder
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