Changes from Vanilla HOI4

Extended Technology Tree

Equestria at War incorporates a fork of Road to 56 by Greatexperiment (used with permission), that has been edited and streamlined to fit our design goals better. This allows for a longer game with more technologies to research.

See the Technology page for more in depth information.

In addition to simply expanding the tree with higher tier units, it includes the following:

• Nuclear submarines, cruisers, carriers, and battleships;
• Without By Blood Alone, Jet fighters have carrier variants;
• Without By Blood Alone, Jet Strike Craft have been added to represent the advances in attack aircraft, able to perform well both in anti-ground and anti-naval missions;
• Primitive helicopters are available as support companies for land units.

New Equipment and Resources

EaW introduces Magical Equipment and a new resource - crystals - used to produce it. Magical Equipment provides a more resource, IC-intensive, less reliable, but more powerful alternative to regular Infantry Equipment.

Pre-Industrial Infantry Equipment and Artillery have been added, to represent the weapons used by nations that have not yet industrialized.

Equipment Conversion

Everything can be converted to better models. Infantry Equipment I to Infantry Equipment II, Light Tank I to Light Tank II and so on.

New Commander traits

For a list of new commander traits see Commander Traits

New units and Racial System

Furthermore, EaW introduced the Races system. There are 26 races in total, and ten of those -  Changeling,  Deer,  Diamond Dog,  Griffon,  Hippogriff,  Horse,  Kirin,  Polar Bear,  Pony, and  Zebra - have their unique racial tech tree folder. The  Other races use a shared generic racial tech tree. While they don't have their own racial tech trees, the  Minotaur and the  Dragon has special division types available to them from the start. Races cannot be changed during the game.

Universal

• Magical infantry are more powerful variants of normal infantry, equipped with the more expensive Magical Equipment. However, magical equipment is also much less reliable than normal equipment.
•  Ponies can significantly upgrade their magical infantry via the Specialised Magical Training tree.
•  Airships are available in addition to regular planes. They are extremely versatile, able to perform almost any mission, depending on your needs at the moment, but also more fragile. A decent option for less developed nations fighting against enemies without an air force or anti-air.
• There are no cavalry. None. Zilch. Not to beat a dead horse, but mounted infantry are dead. Why? Horses can't ride other horses. It's a Paradox game engine limitation.

Racial Special Forces

•  Knights are heavily equipped  Griffon special forces that can shrug off gunfire with their magically augmented armour and break through lines with heavy weaponry. They share some similarities with mechanized infantry, bringing some hardness (and to a lesser degree armour) stats to your army in the early years, though they move only as fast as leg infantry.
•  Jaegers are light  Changeling special forces that move quickly (5.2 km/h) and have decent breakthrough. They excel at fighting in cities, forests and jungles.
•  Pegasi are flying  Pony special forces that can move quickly (6 km/h), be paradropped. They are particularly well suited for river crossings, but hindered by forests and jungles. They can handle hilly and mountainous terrain pretty well, too, but not as well as dedicated mountaineers.
•  Ironpaws are heavily armoured  Diamond Dog special forces that are specialised in utilising rough terrain of hills and mountains to their advantage. They are stronger when defending, especially when fully entrenched. They struggle in jungles, marshes, and deserts.
•  Chargers are  Zebra special forces. Empowered by alchemy, they are slightly faster (4.4 km/h) than regular infantry, excelling at offense, but they are not the ideal choice for defense. They can handle deserts and jungles a bit better than regular infantry without any drawbacks in other types of terrain.
•  Panserbjørne: you know what's scarier than a  Polar Bear charging at you? A Polar Bear wearing heavy armour charging at you. In addition to regular rifles, they use equipment that is unique to them, which may pose some extra logistical challenge. However, they don't count towards special forces cap either.
•  Vanguards are elite  Kirin light infantry that move quickly (6 km/h) despite their lack of wings. Their initiative bonus allows for quicker reinforcement in battle. They can be motorized after researching the right technology, which keeps them relevant as your fastest unit. They are better in forests, marshes, and jungles, especially compared to motorized infantry.

Racial Support Companies

•  Magical Support Companies are  Pony and  Horse support units of unicorn spellcasters that provide a variety of buffs to units through their use in communication, healing, shielding, and offensive spells.
•  Infiltrator Companies are recon  Changeling support units that provide small bonuses to the effectiveness of troops, especially in recon and assault against cities and forts. They may also be a good addition to your garrison division, alongside the MP.
•  Valiants are the warrior monks of the  Kirin, utilising their ability to ignite themselves to inflict terror upon their enemies. They are a big help when attacking enemy forts and after some research can improve your division's ability to pierce enemy armour.

Development System

In order to better represent the differences in industrial/societal and research development of nations in Equestria at War, Development and Scientific Development idea categories have been implemented. Development represents the general state of industrialization and advancement of economy and society. Low levels of Development impose Industry, Research and Political maluses. Development can be improved by National Focuses or Decisions, depending on the country.

Scientific Development represents the level of education and research capabilities of the nation. Low levels of Scientific Development impose Research maluses but grant some extra daily political power. Scientific Development can be improved by National Focuses or Decisions, depending on the country. For griffon countries, owning major centres of learning in Griffonia can be used to improve Scientific Development as well.

Nuclear Changes

The potential of nuclear warfare and the horror of unleashing such terrible weapons is not quite seen in Vanilla. In order to rectify this, EaW introduces the following changes:

• Nuclear attacks will now reduce the population of a hit state, using believable casualty numbers depending on state population and development (using multiple nuclear bombs on a state in short succession will not reduce population as drastically).

• A state hit by a nuclear attack will receive the Fallout state modifier, reducing state factories, supplies, division organization and increasing division attrition. The modifier will last for a year. Subsequent nuclear attacks will not stack the modifier, but will reset the one-year timer.

• Production of nuclear bombs requires a supply of 12 Crystals. If none are available, no new nuclear bombs will be produced. Each Nuclear Reactor consumes 12 Crystals.

Tech Capture

After a country has been defeated in a war, and a peace conference has ended, the victors will have a chance to receive one-time 200% research speed bonuses to technologies that the loser had researched, and the victor has not.

The chance to receive the bonus is random, and calculated per technology. The more of loser's Industry that has been taken over by the victor (either by puppeting or annexation), the higher the chance to receive a bonus, which means that not every victor will have an equal chance. The level of Development of the victor is also a factor - the worse the Development, the smaller the chance.

AI Tweaks

An effort was made to improve the AI. While it is by no means perfect, and most of the real improvements can only be implemented by Paradox, the devs have done their best to tweak AI's behaviors, and improve AI's handling of Division Templates. AI will use all of the added units and technologies. AI will intelligently choose Doctrines based on the bonuses they receive in their Focus Tree. AI will use dynamic strategies to respond to events and changes on the world stage. Peace Conference AI has been improved, though it is not perfect.

Occupation Rebalance

The consensus on the dev team was that the occupation laws of vanilla were too weak for our mod, and thus we have increased their effectiveness. Below is the occupation table. The main buffs were to Local Police Force, but Secret Police and Civilian Oversight also received buffs.

Name	Resistance target	Compliance gain	Required Garrisons	Damage to Garrisons	Local Resources	Local Factories	Local Manpower	Additional effects
No Garrison	+40%	-	-100%	-	-	-	-	Compliance change disabled
Civilian Oversight	-	-	-40%	-25%	-	-	-	-
Local Police Force	-15%	-0.025%	-50%	-50%	-	-	-	-
Secret Police	-30%	-0.04%	-20%	-15%	+5%	+5%	-	Enemy intel network strength gain: -25% Enemy operative detection chance offset: +1%
Military Governor	-35%	-0.045%	-5%	-	+10%	-	+8%	-
Forced Labor	-40%	-0.08%	+15%	+30%	+40%	+5%	-	Civilian Factory Repair Speed: +25% Resource Sabotage Chance: -25% Resource Sabotage Duration: -25% Not available for Harmonists
Harsh Quotas	-40%	-0.08%	+15%	+50%	+5%	+25%	-	Military Factory Repair Speed: +25% Civilian Factory Repair Speed: +25% Military Factory Sabotage Chance: -25% Civilian Factory Sabotage Chance: -25% Not available for Harmonists
Martial Law	-60%	-0.055%	-	-	+10%	-	-	-
Brutal Oppression	-75%	-0.11%	+25%	+100%	+10%	-	-	Resistance Decay Speed: +100% Exclusive to Supremacists
Liberated Workers	-15%	-0.025%	-5%	+25%	+30%	+20%	-	Exclusive to Communists
Local Autonomy	+10%	+0.02%	-30%	-25%	-	-	-	Exclusive to Harmonists and Non-Aligned
Secret Police (Changeling)	-35%	-0.03%	-30%	-30%	+5%	+5%	-	Enemy intel network strength gain: -50% Enemy operative detection chance offset: +2% Exclusive to Changelings
Integration	-20%	+0.03%	-60%	-25%	-	-	-	Resistance Decay Speed: +50% Exclusive to anyone with the ability to core at 40% compliance, on their relevant cores. Every focus tree with it will mention it and what occupied nations it's applicable to.

Additionally, the Rebellion stage of occupation has been reworked. Instead of spawning in a new tag, it essentially ruins the state's worth until resistance drops below 90%.

Viable Super-Heavy Tanks

Yes, it's true! In EAW, super-heavy tanks are actually usable. They still aren't really good, but they are usable regardless of which DLCs you have, due to a large range of buffs. If you have them in a division, they will provide useful bonuses to all armored battalions in the division.

Changelog

Many, many small changes have been made from vanilla. Below is a full list, primarily aimed at meta enthusiasts and number crunchers used to vanilla's balance. No lategame extensions are included in this list.

Base Game Changes

A Failed Attempt at a Ponycycle

• The effects of a negative research speed bonus have been adjusted to their pre-1.6 values. In vanilla currently, a value of -50% cuts your research speed in half, while in EAW it merely makes it take 50% longer. Additionally, a -100% research speed in vanilla means you will have no ability to research anything! Conversely, -100% in EAW means it will take twice as long. Essentially, countries with terrible research speed will not be totally destroyed.
• Removed cavalry. Ironically for a game entirely about small horses, EaW has no cavalry. You'll have to slog it by slow foot, motorise your divisions, or bring in fast special forces to get the speed you need.
• Buffed nuclear strikes but made nuclear production cost a new resource (crystals). See above for full details.
• Bicycles are race-exclusive. Currently only the Minotaurs can access bicycle infantry.
• More equipment is convertible. Not all, but most techs can be upgraded from one to the next by way of conversion.
• Total rebalance to occupation laws. See above for full details.
• Increased infantry suppression. Without cavalry, an alternative for suppressing resistance was needed. Base infantry suppression was increased to compensate, with magical infantry even higher.
• All non-MTG ships use MTG stats and modules. This change was made primarily for consistency so that players with and without the DLC have ships of similar performance available to them.
• The Floating Fortress doctrine now increases battlecruiser org as well as battleship organisation. Battlecruisers deserve love too, simple as.
• Non-BBA Jet aircraft have had their stats overhauled. The performance curve of their techs better matches up with that of the preceding fighter aircraft.
• Non-NSB super-heavy tank production cost has been reduced from 100 to 40 to account for the increase in equipment requirements per battalion from 15 to 40. Given the recent reduction in the usability of super heavy tanks, leaving them at such an incredible production cost in spite of the increase in equipment requirements in the one battalion type they can still be used seemed almost like an oversight and has been tweaked accordingly.
• Increased naval output of concentrated industry. Although concentrated industry had a use case prior to this change, increased naval output gives it a slightly larger niche.
• Removed terrain nerfs to super heavy support companies. This debuff was unnecessary in a newly created and already highly restrictive support company type.
• Super heavy support companies boost armour variant armour value and breakthrough by +15% and their own breakthrough by +15%. Given that super heavies are now limited to a support company (a generally controversial decision at best) we decided to make the support company provide a significant bonus for the late game stage in which you would be producing and using them.
• Increased entrenchment of engineers to be close to pre-AAT levels. Many players enjoy playing defensively and the entrenchment reduction from the AAT changes was considered to be too significant.
• Reduced Great War Truck hardness by 2.5%. This keeps truck techs in tune with the stats curve of their tech line (great war truck - 7.5% hardness, truck I - 10% hardness, truck II - 12.5% hardness, truck III - 15% hardness).
• Increased signals initiative back to 20%, their pre-AAT bonus. Signal companies were already fairly niche in their use cases and the reduction to the initiative they provided was generally considered to be unnecessary.
• Added a "Commandeer Civilian Trucks" decision, similar to the one for trains. This is just a nice quality of life decision for nations that struggle with production.
• Submarines starting at the 1015 model can engage other subs. They can't do so very effectively, but at this point they get some depth charge attack as well.
• Tripled fuel and rubber of synthetic refineries. Synthetic refineries are a niche tech already, and with EAW's resource distribution, there was almost no reason to build them. These buffs do not make them very powerful, but they are a welcome bonus to those who use synthetics.
• Doubled the HP of airbases. Strategic bombing is difficult to balance, but one thing that was unambiguously overtuned was bombing airbases specifically to immediately seize control of the air. We made airbases a bit more durable to prevent this frustrating and anti-fun experience.
• Moderately reduced the cost of supply nodes and railways. Logistics are already bad in EAW, and we felt that the vanilla costs for these structures were simply too high for our mod.
• Snow can fall on deserts. There are a few cold deserts in EAW, and sometimes they should see snowfall!
• Increased maximum factories that can be allocated to produce one line of railway guns, capital ships, and floating harbours to 10. Limiting capital ship production to five dockyards per production line in vanilla is generally considered to be frustrating by casual players and unnecessarily limiting by those with deeper knowledge of the game. Floating harbours and railway guns have also received this quality of life improvement; though we would be lying by omission if we did not admit that it was primarily done so as to fix shared interface GFX issues caused by the change to capital ship production lines.

Man the Guns Changes

• Reverted all nerfs to mines to pre-AAT levels, added a new nerf decreasing naval supremacy boost by 50% (from 100%). Mines were generally underutilised but had one specific usage which was far too powerful, that being using them to get enough supremacy to permanently prevent naval invasions through particular zones; we believe nerfing this is far more appropriate a solution to the only real issue that mines presented.
• Submarine torpedoes starting at 1015 gain a small amount of anti-sub attack. As mentioned above, this allows submarines to engage each other a little.
• Heavy cruiser cannons (medium cannons) have had some of their heavy attack moved to light attack. This allows heavy cruisers to engage light ships, albeit inefficiently.

La Resistance Changes

• Armoured car organisation and HP have been doubled and the suppression they provide has been increased from 2.5 to 4. This gives armoured cars a niche as particularly efficient garrison equipment as well as making them slightly more effective in combat oriented division templates
• Encryption and decryption have techs, as without the DLC. They also adjust operative detection changes. With many countries having smaller industries, we decided to keep the encryption and decryption war in the tech tree, and it is logical for these techs to help with operatives (both allied and enemy).

No Step Back Changes

• NSB heavy tank hulls have had their base production cost reduced by 10%. Heavy tanks were dethroned from their meta position in the wake of NSB largely because they became wholly inefficient to produce relative to the stats they could offer; this tweak does not reverse that change, but it makes them a little more appealing.
• NSB super-heavy tank chassis production cost has been reduced from 24 to 17. Super heavy tank models more than make up the cost of a super heavy tank and the significant additional base production cost of the hull is largely unnecessary, given their niche applications.
• Added "Naval Cannon" as a 1007 (1936) super-heavy gun module, unlocked by 1007 destroyer (without MTG) or 1007 destroyer cannon (with it). An early super-heavy weapon module for those of you insane enough to make a heavy TD in the early game
• NSB modern turret now gives +10% soft, hard, and piercing. Although modern tanks provided large amounts of armour and breakthrough, their module restrictions meant that heavy tanks could achieve higher soft and hard attack stats with small cannons and similar modules; this changes helps to give modern tanks an edge over tanks that should generally be inferior
• Added "Heavy AA" tank modules at double the production cost, resource cost and a size category larger, with greatly increased anti-air damage. SPAA was quite hit quite badly by NSB and though this change does little to make the battalion type generally worthwhile, it at least gives players the option to make heavies that actually make use of the larger weapon mounts of the tank types.
• SPAA gets buffs to air attack from small AA techs. Another tweak to make SPAA more viable, given that it’s excluded from the list of AA types buffed by small techs in vanilla.
• Did not implement many of AAT's tank chassis changes. Most of these changes were poorly considered or too small to matter and thus we reversed them to keep better track of balance and the performance of tanks in general.
• Did not implement AAT's changes to tank armour and engine upgrades with NSB. Because the values for speed and armour are typically quite low until the late game, the change from flat to percentage increases with AAT made armour and speed points do significantly less than they did previously; we reversed these changes as armour is already a little too low (most tank guns have much more piercing than the armour of tanks they will face) overall and needing to spend 15 points on speed just to get the first medium chassis to 8kph is more than a little silly.
• Added close support gun secondary turret. A module present in the game files but absent in NSB by default, we re-added it into the game; it functions similarly to the small cannon secondary turret but provides more soft attack, less hard attack, less breakthrough and adds an additional steel cost to the tank design
• Removed +50% production cost and reliability reduction of super-heavy tank turret modules. This was an unnecessary nerf to an already niche and expensive equipment type.

By Blood Alone Changes

• BBA guided missile and fixed explosive charge (for suicide aircraft) modules targeting increased to 15 from 10. This change was to make them more competitive relative to the new torpedo technologies recently added.
• Early ICBMs have been delayed from 1017 to 1023 (1946 to 1952), and a new "Improved Guided Missile" has been added in 1017 (1946). Essentially, this adds an intermediate technology for realism and additional intermediate modules for BBA aircraft.
• BBA medium bomb bay logistics strike stats quadrupled and all other logistics strike stats except machine guns/aircraft cannons halved. Tactical bombers currently lack a vanilla niche and this change gives them a specific mission type which they are particularly good at whilst nerfing an otherwise overtuned mission on all other airframes.
• Increased Rocket Engine thrust to pre-AAT levels and increased their speed as well. This was an unnecessary nerf to an already niche aircraft module.

Arms Against Tyranny Changes

• Unindustrialized countries (Agrarian Society law or lower) cannot access the arms market. Given the substantially less globalised nature of the EaW universe and the 'Development System' we have introduced on top of that, it stands to reason that international arms dealing should not be a service available to countries that are yet to embrace trains and factories.
• Pioneers are no longer exclusive with engineers, but still are exclusive with Jungle Pioneers. As default engineers are overall superior to either jungle or regular pioneers (the latter cost more equipment, generally provide fewer terrain buffs and as tech progresses basic engineers become even better over time), we have allowed players to use either of the two pioneer types alongside basic engineer support companies; but you cannot use both pioneer types simultaneously.
• Made some Heavy Tank MIO traits heavy tank exclusive (i.e. no longer applying to super-heavy tanks) to further differentiate the new Super Heavy MIO added by the mod.
• Made some Medium Tank MIO traits medium tank exclusive (i.e. no longer applying to modern tanks) to further differentiate the new Modern Tank MIO added by the mod.