The Road to 56
The Road to 56 is a vanilla-like major overhaul mod for Hearts of Iron IV, overhauling and expanding its content as late as 1956.
Features[edit | edit source]
- New focus trees or improvements for almost all starting nations, and overhauls of vanilla ones.
- Technologies to do until as late as 1959 with a new dedicated specialization and mechanization tab.
- New troop experience system.
- New governmental laws in the country tab.
- Expanded game rules including switching between base game and Road to 56 trees, and player control over peace conferences.
- Many behind the curtains bug-fixes and improvements to things like the AI compared to the base game.
- Dedicated Art in the style of Vanilla, ranging from portraits, focuses, and spirits to all sorts of different icons.
Further information[edit | edit source]
Credits[edit | edit source]
Road to 56 has been authored by many people, especially as its Github is public. Current notable people:
Team Leads
- Greatexperiment (Original Creator)
- Abbus
- Thinking Waffle
- Lord Alfie
- SpicyAlfredo
- The Brit
- Fantom
- marijn211
- BiccyThiccy
Artists
- Ghost
- Arvidus
- Vinctories
- Egzs
Developers
- Llutozz
- Featherus
- Abraxsas/Lemuel Sora
- RobloxFanboy86
- E
General information[edit | edit source]
All of our developers and contributors can be found in our Official Discord Server and if you ever wish to support The Road to 56 Project to unleash its best potential, you can always become a Patreon!
We are all working alone on separate projects but we always count on our fellow team members to help us out when we are in dire need of help or inspiration. All the features are always checked by a different member and run through multiple balance factors so that we ensure each addition to the mod is as balanced as possible.
The mod also includes custom Achievements that are currently being developed. Achievements such as:
- Banana America - As Fascist Honduras puppet the USA
- It's 1527 All Over Again - This one I am really not sure of. How do we represent Rome being sacked in an icon? Habsburgs
- That's not what I meant by Anschluss - As Austria, refuse Anschluss and capitulate Germany.
- Hibernia Rules the Waves - As Ireland build a battleship and ensure the UK has no capital ships.
- A Truly International City - As Danzig, control a state on every continent.
- Anyone Want Some Freedom? - As the USA, control all oil-producing states in the Middle East.
- You Canute do that! - As Denmark, restore the North Sea Empire.
- Bringing the Revolution Home - Win the German civil war as the communists, and don't ally with the Soviet Union.
- Finlands Sak är Vår - As Sweden, join Finland in the Winter War and force the Soviet Union to capitulate.
- Guess who's back - As Mongolia, restore Genden to power after he is imprisoned.
And many more achievements are on their way!
Off-course all of these being said, the mod is also lucky to have a dedicated Artist group that is working tirelessly and around to clock to provide the highest quality of icons in any form possible. From portraits to focus icons, the mod takes the benefits of the Vanilla style, and improves upon them, from attempting new techniques and sometimes overcoming the vanilla style in certain ways. Previews of the mentioned art styles can be found below showcasing some of the focuses and portraits that were made specifically for the mod.
History[edit | edit source]
Road to 56 was originally a released as a ‘mod pack’ in December of 2016 that contained Greatexperiments personal mods and some of the communities’ most popular country-specific mods at the time. It was operated from December 2016 till the Fall of 2018 as a ‘mod-pack.’ During this time Thinking_Waffle joined the development team, having previously developed a stand-alone country mod that was included in Road to 56. JudgeAlfred joined the mod team during this period as well. The mod would periodically update its content from the outside mods that comprised the mod pack and doing maintenance to make sure the content worked well together. This period of the mod’s life is known as ‘old-school’ or ‘legacy’ Road to 56. This is the period of time where the stigma’s of the mod being horrible unbalance and buggy took root because admittedly it was. Starting in the fall of 2018, the mod saw a large influx of new developers and artists who would help set the new course for the mod. As in the fall of 2018, the development team decided to stop updating the mod with outside content, and the last update that included content that was made outside the internal development team occurred in March 2019. From the fall of 2018 onward, the internal development team made new content in-house for the mod and work tirelessly to bring old content within the mod up to the communities’ high standards. This work has accumulated in Road to 56 becoming the most played Hearts of Iron 4 mod as well as the most subscribed to item on it’s the Hoi4 steam workshop. The hard work and hours spent on the mod was recognized when during PDXCON 2019 Thinking_Waffle stepped on stage to accept the 'Outstanding Modding Achievement' for the Road to 56 team.
