The Historical Plausibility Project mod for Hearts of Iron III: Their Finest Hour

A new version of the mod is now available from the downloads section. The focus of this version was to fix bugs, adjust the Trade AI, add a Gurkha unit for the UK and Nepal, adjust naval firing ranges, and add a decision for Japan to deal with the surrender of the UK. We've been able to get to 1946 without crashes in our hands-off tests, so the mod is now in an unfinished beta state. Full changelog is in the download.

The main new features are Gurkhas and some naval rebalance. Gurkhas can only be recruited by nations that either own a Nepalese core or are Nepal's puppet master. This means that the UK and Nepal can recruit these jungle/mountain troop units right away, but other nations can do so as well if they conquer or puppet Nepal. Naval firing distances have been lowered to more historical values, air defense and attack has been improved for ships, and destroyers are slightly less effective at finding submarines.

Also included are trade AI improvements based on player feedback. Nations are more likely to trade with land-locked neighbors, and the major raw material exporters are more likely to sell rares.

If you have 4GB of RAM or more, have a 64-bit OS, and are getting CTDs, then you need to download Podcat's LAA .exe from the official Paradox Tech Support Forum or apply a 4GB patch! The game as-is can only use 2 GB of RAM, so the CTDs you're seeing come from the game running out of memory!

The mod is now in a beta state and we expect there to be some bugs, but no crashes. If you follow the install instructions to the letter then it will start up without any problems; I'm testing with the exact same download you guys will get and I follow the instructions I wrote down in the download section and can start up the mod with no problems, so if you're getting startup issues then go double-check the install instructions. Once the game starts though, there may be buggy AI behavior due to TFH changes to the AI system from the FTM expansion. If you get a crash or see the AI fall asleep or build/research something silly then please comment here, in the ModDB forum for the HPP (check out the forum link to the upper-right, next to images), or the mod's main forum (official page in the mod's profile to the right) telling us what happened. The more detail you can provide the faster we can fix the bug or crash.

For trade, diplomacy, and production AI-related bugs, it would help tremendously if after you quit the game you would go to the folder Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\HPP\logs, open the file system.log in notepad or some other editor, and check the bottom of the file for errors. This file is deleted every time you start the game, so please look at it and report any errors at the bottom before you start the game up again if you saw the AI fall asleep. If you do see any errors please report them, because the errors will point us to the files we need to fix.

Also, please keep in mind that generating the map cache can take a long time and hog up a bunch of memory. If you have an older computer, you may want to go to Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\map and copy your vanilla cache folder to Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\HPP\map (make this folder if it doesn't exist). This will bypass the map cache generation. You'll lose out on the visual region changes (the thick black borders on the map), but nothing else.

Known issues:
*Game will crash if you try to view strategic resources in the statistics screen.
*unit-limiting strategic resources not implemented
*lend-lease, licensed builds, and the new spy system aren't fully implemented yet. SSmith can correct me if I'm wrong
*When the UK surrenders, not all nations will stop being at war. The outcome is fairly random, which makes it hard to figure out why some countries that get kicked out of the Allies end their war with the Axis and some don't, and the nations that get kicked out vary even if you save and reload. We're looking into a solution.

NOT bugs:
*Anything you also see in the base game is obviously a base game problem. I'm talking about stuff like the music stops playing, the interface disappears, supply system is stupid, allied nations do nothing, etc. Things like missing cores, AI not researching infantry techs, and events not working are mod-related bugs. Basically, if you see an issue related to the interface not looking right, music/sounds not playing correctly, or what the AI does on the map, it has nothing to do with the mod since those areas are hard-coded.
*If pictures are missing or wrong, then you didn't install the graphics pack from the addons section.
*If the mod doesn't start up, then you didn't follow the install instruction
*France has been coded to declare war on Germany once Germany's threat gets too high. This can happen as early as 1938 if Germany is too aggressive or allows spies to raise its threat.