HOI4 mod "playsets" only load vanilla (2024)

I'm hoping that someone here can help me. Apparently my launcher for HOI4 updated, so I can't manually select what mods I'd want to load and can only use the "playsets" feature. Ever since this change happened, however, I've had nothing but problems.

Every time I try to load up a mod (Kaiserreich, Old World Blues, etc.), vanilla Hearts of Iron loads instead. So far, I've tried reinstalling HOI4, reinstalling all of my mods, using different playsets of mods (none work), and deleting the mods folder (I had an issue a while back with my mods, and that did the trick).

I'm at my wits end with this and could use any sort of help.

I found the launcher "playsets" a bit hard to figure out at first also.

First, be sure you have the most up to date Launcher and Game versions, and you have a playset selected:
Note: This screen is the ONLY place to assign a Playset to load when you click Play or Resume.

To change what Playset to load, you must use the drop down on the main loader screen, NOT the 'Mods' sub-menu, like this:

To Create a new Playset, or add/remove mods from a Playset, or Enable or Disable a mod within a playset, use the 'Mods' interface:

If you ARE doing all of this, and you still cannot get the mods Playset to load, you should post your problem in the Tech Support Forum here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/hearts-of-iron-4-tech-support.952/ and do what the PDX pros tell you to do.

Hope this gets you going.

@GSP Jr

Excellent reply to the OP.

Would you consider having @Niko92 add your post to the useful-threads-information-for-modders sticky thread?

Mister Analyst said:

@GSP Jr

Excellent reply to the OP.

Would you consider having @Niko92 add your post to the useful-threads-information-for-modders sticky thread?

Click to expand...

No problem.

I'd like to add a small step to @GSP Jr's excellent illustrated guide (by the way I love the desktop background greenery - is this your garden ). This is a recent addition to the Launcher and I found it a bit confusing.

There are now 2 similar buttons in the Mods section:
1. A "Manage Mods" button which doesn't let you manage mods at all . It just shows the list of all the installed mods.
2. A "Manage Playset" button which leads to the configuration shown and explained by GSP Jr in his 3rd screenshot.

Mousetick said:

I'd like to add a small step to @GSP Jr's excellent illustrated guide (by the way I love the desktop background greenery - is this your garden ). This is a recent addition to the Launcher and I found it a bit confusing.

There are now 2 similar buttons in the Mods section:
1. A "Manage Mods" button which doesn't let you manage mods at all . It just shows the list of all the installed mods.
2. A "Manage Playset" button which leads to the configuration shown and explained by GSP Jr in his 3rd screenshot.

View attachment 643858

Click to expand...

Great catch @Mousetick

@GSP Jr @Mousetick

I have already been doing that. The issue is that, despite me loading in these playsets exactly as you've described, the game launches in Vanilla regardless of what I have set.

@SovietTr0llGuy

I had the same problem, and I just solved it.

It seems the new update doesn't recognize non-English words among the path in mod files. It often results from your username. (ex. C:/users/XXXX)
Try to copy the mod folder to other directory whose path consists of only English words. Remember to also change path in the original mod file.

It works to me. Good luck.

EdwardTW said:

@SovietTr0llGuy

I had the same problem, and I just solved it.

It seems the new update doesn't recognize non-English words among the path in mod files. It often results from your username. (ex. C:/users/XXXX)
Try to copy the mod folder to other directory whose path consists of only English words. Remember to also change path in the original mod file.

It works to me. Good luck.

Click to expand...

That is something I would have never thought of.
Any idea if that is the Launcher or the game itself?

EdwardTW said:

See Also

11 Best Wooden Playsets: Your Buyer’s Guide

@SovietTr0llGuy

I had the same problem, and I just solved it.

It seems the new update doesn't recognize non-English words among the path in mod files. It often results from your username. (ex. C:/users/XXXX)
Try to copy the mod folder to other directory whose path consists of only English words. Remember to also change path in the original mod file.

It works to me. Good luck.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, could you explain exactly how you did all that? I'm not exactly... computer literate.

EdwardTW said:

@SovietTr0llGuy

I had the same problem, and I just solved it.

It seems the new update doesn't recognize non-English words among the path in mod files. It often results from your username. (ex. C:/users/XXXX)
Try to copy the mod folder to other directory whose path consists of only English words. Remember to also change path in the original mod file.

It works to me. Good luck.

Click to expand...

I can't see anything in my directory that "isn't in English." I also don't even see my mod folder here. I'm just exasperated with all of this.

SovietTr0llGuy said:

I can't see anything in my directory that "isn't in English." I also don't even see my mod folder here. I'm just exasperated with all of this.

Click to expand...

The mods should be in C:/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Paradox/Hearts of Iron IV/mod/.
Check if your "USERNAME" is all in English.

GSP Jr said:

That is something I would have never thought of.
Any idea if that is the Launcher or the game itself?

Click to expand...

My launcher is still v 2020.4 now. Everything had went well before the 1.10.1 update.

That's terrible how it is done, why they made it so that non-English names are discriminated against?
Why would my name matter for the file path? I never heard of such an issue anywhere, and I don't see how it can even be.

I really don't want to change folders, mess around mod files or do any such time wasting operations
Honestly, mod launcher on ancient Victoria 2 is better than all fancy features they make now when in reality I can't turn on and of
mods.

If only there was an option to switch to the same launcher as in Victoria 2 and other games from its era,
the current one is flashy garbage.

Ban Emerik Derencin said:

If only there was an option to switch to the same launcher as in Victoria 2 and other games from its era,
the current one is flashy garbage.

Click to expand...

Yes please. The only upsides of the new launcher are playsets and mod thumbnails, which are hardly worth anything if it straight up fails to load mods at all or takes minutes to load the mod list.

Ban Emerik Derencin said:

That's terrible how it is done, why they made it so that non-English names are discriminated against?

Click to expand...

Fundamentally, it's because programmers who don't have any such filenames on their own computers forget that they need to test their file handling code with filenames using characters outside the C0 Controls and Basic Latin (U+0000 through U+007F) and maybe C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080 through U+00FF) Unicode blocks.

And by the time the code's out in the wild, fixing it is a pain in the neck.