Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Well, They started quite a lot of these wars. (Which they don't call wars because it would sound bad they started a war...)

 

War experience these days is invading small countries, arming proxies and maintaining a fleet at key locations.

Who the hell does more of that than the US?

 

You're being ridiculous here. If USA doesn't have "actual war experience" then not a single major power on this planet currently has any. No one fought as many armed conflicts as USA did in past ~30 years. Not even close, not even a contest. Whatever you think about the moral aspects of those, it's still remains a fact that USA fights someone almost all the time.
Sure it might not be the experience of a major conflict with an equal enemy but it is still relatively speaking a lot more "target practice" than Russia or especially China did in last few decades. Russia had a few occasions but not nearly as much as USA. And China had even less.
Whether other NATO armies are able to fight or not is irrelevant since 90% of NATO real military power is USA and politically USA = NATO anyway. As we already established USA is the major power with the most experienced and combat-ready army in the world - relatively speaking.
As to the "relatively speaking" part: no major power has real large scale experience with fighting an equal enemy in a "real" war these days. It's not like in first half of 20th century with the 2 World Wars. Or in the middle of 19th century (in the 1850s to 1870s period when France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, GB, USA were all in at least one major conflict - some were in 2 or 3 in the span of 2 decades). Or obviously in the 1600s and 1700s not to mention the Revolutionary France and Napoleonic era European "wargasm".
If we're talking about lesser countries, I'd say Iraq should have the most veteran army today . Think about it- they were in war the whole 80s, then in 90s against USA, and then again, and in the last many years they have constant war going in what's nominally their territory. They were in some sort of war for the major part of the last 40 years. They haven't won those wars but losing also grants experience points .
In short you're not thinking straight, probably because of being butthurt about USA politics which is OK but is irrelevant to the question of combat experience and readiness of any country.

 

EU has a bigger military than Russia even without USA.

 

Everything inside NATO can't work outside a NATO framework.

Don't check weapons an' shit, it's budget and logistics. Without the US, European militaries are helpless. Russkies run on fumes but at least their rusting fleet of Soviet-era stuff lets them act indipendently: bar France and maybe Britain (and even France has massive logistical problems) no Euro military is in any state to mantain minimal efficiency bar as American auxiliaries.

Maybe former WarPact members haven't declined enough, but I know little about post-1990 eastern euro militaries.

It's all moot though, the US has a massive military with a massive budget, a gargantuan logistical system and plenty of military experience , be it from training or from shooting sand people. If the Americans want something done, they get it done.

It's the follow up that's the problem.

 

That's just the natural state of things. If the EU states find they can't rely on daddy anymore they will build independent capability.

 

Old and out of date. Macierewicz is no longer the minister, this guy is :

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Mariusz Błaszczak, can't compete in the "look" and meme-potential department with his predecessor but he's no woman. Still i wouldn't call Polish army at this point in time capable sadly.

 

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

The build-up to WW1 took many years of increasing tensions and it was the same with WW2. EU has shit military because shit military is enough right now. If it ever stops being enough, there will be plenty of time to gear up and increase military readiness.

Putin is not a stupid man, he is well aware that he can only play Billy Big Cojones as long as he doesn't go too far and force the EU towards serious military build-up. Because push comes to shove we would have him outmanned, out-teched, outproduced, we aren't landlocked and we don't have to worry about 3 million Chinese rolling over the southern border of Russian Federation to take advantage of conflict in mainland Europe.

Americans are only relevant in this equation because they still cling to the illusion of global hegemony, so it's easy to milk their fat yankie titties and make them pay top dolla for our defenses.

 

Nukes. Everything you said is invalid.

Furthermore, a military has any use simply as a mean to a coherent foreign policy. The EU has no foreign policy (France has a foreign policy regarding former European colonies, but that's it). Most euro militaries are in the shitter because there's no use for them and the Americans want them to be dependant and useful just as auxiliaries. Also as a market for expensive military projects, but that's common since the Cold War.

There's no place in this world for "conventional war" like the one you describe. There's no place for a European foreign policy either: we do what the Americans want us to do. The idea that "But but but we're making them PAY for OUR defenses right guys aren't we so smart" is merely delusions: the US can do what it wants, the Russkies oppose clumsily American soft power with hard power (Ukraine) and the EU\NATO allies shut up and obey (or in the case of eastern euros, even beg for American bases). We need America: America does not need us if not to mantain the global hegemony they still have. The capabilities of the US military are astounding, and this comes from a left-winger with little love for the US.

In short, the US is powerful and rich, despite memes. All the others are American subjects in foreign\military policy or merely trying to keep their regional power up in limited ways. If things change, we'll see in the future.

Well, I forgot Israel, but they are a special case.

 

Nukes mean that everyone loses, so any kind of discussion if those are seen as a part of the equation by default is invalid.

It's also a false pretense that EU countries have no foreign policy or just blindly follow America's whims. Freedom Fries incident and the Coalition of the Willing come to mind, as do numerous other matters, such as the growing tariffs issue. Heck, just the disagreements about environmental issues are something EU and US never see truly eye to eye about. The key thing is that in the post-Cold War era of Pax Americana, military force was no longer seen as a necessity in vast majority of Europe. The international rules-based framework of relations and End Of History were seen as done deals. But this again overlooks the fact that Europe still has all it needs to rebuild its militaries in short order if there was just the political choice to do so, which is something Putin will never want to happen because Russia cannot hope to even come close to matching the EU in any metric save nukes (well, until their presently deteriorating expert manpower's depletion renders them unuseable).

Germany alone could easily outmatch Russia's backwards army if they wished to just build one, they have the cash, the technical expertise, and the industry to do it if they just wanted to. Heck, Germany could outfit the entire EU with cutting edge military hardware by itself if such production capacity was needed.

 

So why we're even having this discussion? It's like the endless banter about Soviet invasions during the Cold War "What could have happened if..." Nukes and after that silence. We're all larping.

The end line is again results. The EU can only grind its teeth and suffer, 'cause the Americans can do what they want. They can opt out of enviromental deals, nuke the Iran deals, place tariffs and easily outplay the frankly embarassing European diplomacy... the EU is weak and there isn't anything that can change that. Iraq told us that the US could start a unlawful war and get a shitton of countries to happily follow them as occupation troops.

C'mon, that's just memes. Contemporary Germany has no guts, no military culture, and even their technological superiority is mostly theoretical. Let us not forget that the only time "heavy" German hardware has been used in the last 30 years it blew up like your stock variety T-55s against a bunch of goat fuckers. Half of Europe fell for the Leopard 1 in the Cold War, one can only wonder what would happen if we did that for a second time.

But again, all moot. Nukes! They solve everything! Why the fuck are we even discussing?

 

LoL the retarded assumptions and the american cock sucking is real in this thread. Why do people assume that the west have the most technological army and the rest of the world fight with sticks is beyond me. Another thing is that superior technology doesn't equal a practical usefulness. The only countries with actual millitary force in the European nato are Poland,Hungary and maybe the Baltic block. Another major thing is the state of mind of the populace and the country's stability. What do you thing will happen with all those arabs and niggers if a prolong war begins,will they join the army and fight for their glorious EU adopters or will they spread discontent and crime. Another important part is the raw resources,Russia have a lot of them while Europa doesn't and even depends on Russia for them.

 

Putin don't care about EU rebuilding militaries, in conflict with Russia, all it has to do is to close valves. Then EU armies would have to dash to Russian oil fields, and we all know how much Germans were successful with that during WWII.

In fact Putin would prefer to have friendly relations with some EU countries, and dependable economic relations with other.

However militaries needs traditions and experience. When US killed few hundred thousand best Iraqi soldiers, the remaining population became less capable. When German population looks like it looks like, the best groups for quality German army are Turks, and Kurds. Because Turks and Kurds still stick together as a group. How many germans are willing to die for the Germany is quite unknown.

However from what I seen in Libya war, France and other EU countries were psyched up because "Finally a war close to Europe and we can do the same things as US.". Not because they have real need to blow stuff up instead of US. (Well, Germany threw 100 million euro to rebels instead of deploying forces, thus only real experience Germany has is from bombing random people without AA defense in remote countries if even that.)

So, majority of EU countries kinda sucks in military. And what advantage they had because of genetic, would be obliterated by allowing migrants in without massive restrictions. Remember, even Italians fought well under capable leadership. But what would happen when immigration and changes in culture/genetic would degrade leadership to WWII Italy level?

 

DD Fuel

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Hi everyone! We have now been working on Man the Guns for a bit and it is time to kick off dev diaries again!

For those who missed it, Man the Guns is the expansion we are currently working on. The main theme is naval warfare and it will be accompanied by the 1.6 ‘Ironclad’ free update. There is no release date yet. We will let you know when we can commit to a date
So without further ado, rev up your engines! Today we are going to be talking about fuel...

Fuel is something we originally decided to abstract into the production of vehicles in HOI4. The reasons for this were twofold: It simplified things, making the game easier to get into and learn and it avoided issues with fuel stockpiling in HOI3 (I’ll get to that later). I still think these were worthwhile tradeoffs with the gameplay impacts it had, but some areas, particularly naval warfare, never felt right without an overall worry over a supply for fuel, which essentially drove Japanese war planning historically. This in combination with a feeling that our fans can for sure handle a little nudge towards complexity now kinda cemented the idea that we couldn’t really make a naval expansion without expanding on this area.


(no numbers are final etc )

Land
Fuel is used by trucks, tanks and other land equipment with engines in your divisions. They will use much more when fighting and moving than when stationary or during strategic redeployment (in fact right now those consume no fuel, but that might change with balance work). A division carries a bit of fuel with it ( much like how supply works), so there is a short grace period if cut off. If a division is in bad supply it will refill its fuel more slowly (meaning you won’t be able to attack or move rapidly as frequently), and you might even be unable to refill at all if totally cut off. Being without fuel will negatively affect the stats of the battalions that need it as well as severely impact speed depending on how low they are.


Air
Your active air wings will consume fuel. The amount will naturally depend on the type of plane (strat bombers love to guzzle down that fuel) but also what mission type. Planes on interception will be very fuel efficient as they only take off when there are enemies attacking ground targets or bombing etc. Transport planes on air supply missions will also be able to deliver fuel to pockets etc. When low on fuel air wings suffer big efficiency penalties.

Sea
Running a lot of active capital ships is something you will need to be careful with in Man the Guns. These behemoths will be going through your fuel stockpile like starved baby whales on the teat. To handle this and make fleets act more realistically and in a more controlled manner we have changed quite a bit here, so stay tuned for future diaries. The main point is that big fleets are costly to run and you will need to make decisions on how to best utilize them and how much to fit into the rest of your fuel use. Speaking of, you’ll be able to control who gets first dibs on fuel through prioritization just like with equipment (but we are also working on adding extra controls on top of this so you can more easily balance between the different branches of the armed forces). A fleet that is low on fuel will suffer penalties to its stats as well as operational range.


Production
Fuel is produced from unused oil, and equipment that used to use oil now no longer need that to be produced. I am currently looking into possibly adding copper or another resource in its place (and in some other places), but we will see if that ends up being a good idea or not Will let you know. Anyways, if you are low on fuel there are several ways to go:

• Acquire more oil rich states.
• Increase infrastructure on your own oil rich states.
• Trade for foreign oil.
• Build synthetic refineries.
• Lend leased fuel.
• Capture enemy stockpiles.
• Research improved oil to fuel conversion technologies.
• Each unit of oil you have access to use your current techs to generate a certain amount of fuel. This fuel is then put into your stockpile for use by your forces.

Stockpiling
Fuel is possible to stockpile, in fact it is necessary if you can’t guarantee a steady stream of produced fuel during wartime. The size of your national stockpile will depend on the number of states and their infrastructure, your economic law and if you have built Fuel Silos. This is a new building that takes up shared slots and will probably provide the majority of your stockpile space. It is also a building that can be damaged from bombing etc. which in the worst case could lead to a loss of fuel. Capitulating enemy neighbors is also going to be a good way of acquiring more fuel as it will work just like seizing their equipment stockpile in that respect.



HOI3 also had stockpilable fuel, and there it was quite a problem. As a beginner you did not know how much (or even that you had to) stockpile and as an experienced player there was no issue in making a stockpile big enough that you wouldn't ever have to worry. In HoI4 we are aiming to force a tradeoff between building up your industry and increasing the stockpile (have to spend civilian factories to get more oil from trade instead of building more factories) as well as trying to keep the total amount you can stockpile within reasonable bounds. Our goal is fuel as something you’ll need to consider for all your operations and playing it really safe will mean less industrial output in the long run.

Since I bet this will be the first question, fuel is going to be in the free update, but there will of course be features in the paid expansion that tie into it (stay tuned for more diaries!).

We are still working on all things fuel so I’ll wrap up here. Hopefully it gave you an idea of what we have done and are planning to do. I’ve saved some interfaces talk for future diaries, and also, be aware that many things could end up changing based on gameplay feedback. Rest assured though, I’ll keep you updated on stuff like that in these diaries up to release. This is not really anything out of the ordinary, but I usually keep systems like this that need long term balance and iteration for later. Fuel however ties into a lot of future topics, so I wanna make sure you are all clued in

Now for something completely different...
I assume nobody has managed to avoid having their mailbox fill up with fun updated privacy policies and things related to the new European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). During all this a really smooth looking lawyer dog in the smartest little suit I have ever seen came over to visit us from Brussels. He told us there are a bunch of regulations we too need to follow in our games… so to make sure we remained Good Boys in the eyes of the law we have added a couple of things to Hearts of Iron IV. The most important is to include our Privacy Policy in the game and making it easy to find.


Legal texts are long and boring and nothing has really changed in how we do things. So I would rather spend my time answering questions here and writing the rest of the diary, so I will refer you to check it out ingame or here if you want to.

What I would rather talk about is how gathering data from players is useful to us. Because it is. Super useful! Without telemetry we would be resorting to guesses and risk only the most vocal minorities to be heard. For example, telemetry data is one of the major things we look at for deciding what nations to develop focus trees on. We get data on how popular difference choices are for focuses, letting us spot balance issues or unpopular paths that could use some love and care. We can spot if new out of sync errors are introduced in multiplayer in graphs and get crash reports automatically uploaded to help us fix problems easily. All this, combined with a scoopful of forum reading, is what helps us steer this ship, so thanks for helping

Oh I almost forgot, because we had to make the GDPR compliance hotfix we managed to sneak in a fix you guys have been asking for. We solved an issue for a case in China (similar things could also happen elsewhere) when a nation had both a takeover and inherited wars (like when seizing ownership in the Chinese power struggle) and was at the same time occupied. As a Japanese player this would lead to the less than happy situation of seeing your occupied areas flip back to the enemy and leaving troops cut off from supply. We also fixed a crash issue that was reported in some big mods. The patch should be releasing shortly.

Next week some of the team will be on summer vacation (including me!) but Bratyn is going to be here to talk about all the awesome stuff he has been doing with Britain, so don't forget to tune in!

 

Nukes are irrelevant as long as mutually assured destruction is a thing. And it is a thing, because even without US involvement the British and the French have enough second strike capability to turn every major city in Russia into rubble.

Lol no. We needed US in the Cold War because they accounted for half of GDP of the entire fucking planet. Pull your head out of your ass and look at the calendar, this isn't 1950s. Back then US was the only relevant industrial and economical power left standing while everybody else was licking wounds after the war, right now I doubt they could even outproduce the rest of NATO countries.

Times have changed, they need us more than we need them, which is why most of NATO countries bolted on all of the latest US adventurers in the Middle East, even though you'd think everybody wold want to impress their savior and protector Uncle Sam. But no, nobody actually cared, apart from the British who sucked American dick for too long to remember they used to be a serious country, and the Baltics and Poland who are too close geographically to Russia to risk alienating the US.

 

The great Kamchatkan Empire will rise again!

 

Don't forget Australia, #1 best buds with USA since WW2 (although we aren't in NATO).

 

We can provide a list of countries bordering the Atlantic for you to annex if you want to join.

 

What a bunch of uneducated people! Australia is clearly an European country as Israel,they are both part of the glorious EuroVision!

 

There is a certain beauty in the way that BICE is a sprawling mess.

Albeit one thing I'd give them a hint with is that they really should not fuck around with the SS formation events most of their crashes are because of those.

 

DD England

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the second dev diary for the 1.6 “Ironclad” update and the Man the Guns DLC. To all Americans among us, happy 4th of July!

While our poor programmers have been slaving away at Fuel, we Content Designers have been busy working on the new focus trees (as well as some other cool stuff you’ll see in the future!). As the theme of the DLC is naval (and today is Independence Day) it really shouldn’t be a surprise that we’ll be starting with... the United Kingdom.

As per usual, we asked QA for feedback on the base tree, and combined this with the general feeling about the tree that existed among fans and colleagues. It seems that most complaints boiled down to two things:

1. Being too restricted by World Tension - various focuses are locked behind WT limits

2. No alternate history

As a result, we felt the actual structure itself of the base tree was not that bad, and that we didn’t need to do an extensive rework as we did with the Japanese tree. Much like with the German focus tree rework, this means we’ve left the base tree largely intact, and instead are adding/changing minor things to it, while putting the main emphasis on adding alternate history paths. Also as with the German and Japanese trees, adjustments to the ‘base’ tree will be free, while alt-history options will be paid.

The end result looks like this:


*Note that this is still relatively early implementation-wise, and the tree is likely to undergo further changes. Any numbers may be prone to change, etc etc.

First off, in the rearmament branch we felt there were a few things we could change or add. For instance, a major complaint was that the British needed to take the focus “A Motorized Army” to even get a motorized template. Now, we’ve made the UK start with that template, and the focus instead gives a 50% technology boost towards motorized, as is more common in our focus trees.

Furthermore, two new focuses in the “General Rearmament” branch expand upon some aspects of the war the British were well-known for; the Special Air Service and the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The former allows for more special forces to be recruited, and unlocks David Stirling as an advisor, who has the “Commando - Genius” trait. The latter gives army, naval, and air XP, as well as a spirit that gives bonuses to max command power, command power generation speed, and planning speed.



Finally, we intend to add more focuses to the naval path in particular, but this requires finishing up some other features first. Don’t be surprised if the end result looks a bit more fleshed-out than this, though

Next, the Empire branch of the British focus tree has gone through the fewest changes. I felt the “Service Overseas” focus was a bit lackluster, and so I added a national spirit gives an extra 10% hot acclimatization factor. In addition, the Secure Iraq/Iran and War with USSR branch was moved to an entirely different branch that I will get to a bit later…



In addition, “Reinforce the Empire” now is part of a mutually exclusive choice, the other side of which consists of revisiting the colonial policy. This branch represents the ‘what-if’ of the British government being much more amenable to total decolonization than they historically were. Some of the steps taken to achieve this goal will be quite controversial, however, and so the branch tends to reduce stability quite some, while also slightly increasing communist support.

One branch focuses on guiding the dominions to total independence, giving the option to also split India in its religion-based constituent parts. Not doing so will speed up your decolonization process, but will also result in a series of civil wars on the subcontinent that will likely prove devastating to the nation you released. If you want a powerful India in the post-colonial era, this is not an option. TFV focus tree interaction is a tough nut to crack here, but we have some ideas that we’ll be working on later in development.

The other branch involves returning all foreign territory that Britain holds (think Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Falklands). All these focuses (self-government and ‘towards independence’) give a certain amount of political power and manpower, representing placating the colonial governments and sparking immigration as certain people think they would have a better future in Britain than in their native country after decolonization has been achieved.



To differentiate between the Democratic paths (yes, plural) and the other ideologies, a new and shorter pair of mutually-exclusive focuses have been added with nautically-inspired names. From “Steady as She Goes” the player now has a choice between going down the historical path involving a focus on home defense and appeasement, trying desperately to obtain that elusive “Peace for Our Time”, and… Not doing so.

The former path has not seen too many changes. The previously-mentioned Secure Iraq/Iran and War with USSR branch that was detached from the Empire path has been moved to this branch instead, and we have added a single new focus to give players a bit more incentive to select this democratic option; “Prepare for the Inevitable”, which attempts to somewhat illustrate that Appeasement was at least partially intended to give the British time to build up their forces. This focus gives a permanent 10% military factory construction speed, and a 5% factory output. However, going down this path still means you will be locked behind World Tension limits for all focuses that currently have these limits in place.

The alternative path explores what a democratic United Kingdom could have looked like if the British had not continued with Appeasement for as long as they did. An initial focus on maintaining their imperial position rather than defending the homeland then leads into a “Motion of No Confidence”. This requires Neville Chamberlain to be the country leader, but then replaces him with Churchill, who now has a much longer time to whip the Britons in shape for what is coming. “No Further Appeasement” then provides the United Kingdom with altered game rules: being able to justifying a war on other democratic nations, being able to puppet countries, being able to send volunteer forces, and reducing World Tension limits on things like generating war goals, joining factions, and so on. It also allows the player to ignore all World Tension limits on other focuses, enabling a much faster build-up. All of this sounds nice, but is accompanied by massive hits to stability (as the people are still not fond of the prospect of another war), no increases in war support (resulting in you likely having virtually no war support when finally getting into a war), and the couple of free factories you get being generally much less powerful than the permanent construction and production speed bonus the Home Defense branch gets.

Afterwards, they are presented with a choice to either pre-emptively intervene with naval powers that flagrantly defied the 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 strength ratio stipulated in the Washington Naval Treaty or otherwise threaten British naval dominance, or pre-emptively strike at any threatening and rapidly-growing powers on the European continent. Side branches allow for some military factories, securing the oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela, as well as tying in to the “War with the USSR” branch that is shared with the Home Defense path.



“A Change in Course” leads to the trio of alternative ideologies that can be explored. The first of these, “The King’s Party”, only becomes available after the player goes through an event chain that fires around the middle of 1936. The then-King Edward VIII was enamored by the American Wallis Simpson, and intended to marry her. Unfortunately, she was not just divorced once, but actually in the process of pursuing her second divorce. This did not sit well with the British government and church, as the Church of England did not then allow the remarrying of individuals while their spouses were still alive (not to mention Edward was, as King, also Head of the Church of England…). This led to a constitutional crisis that historically resulted in the abdication of the King on December 10, 1936. The first event therefore describes the situation and offers the player a choice of which path to pursue.



Choosing abdication changes nothing compared to how the event played out before Man the Guns (where it was more of a notification event). However, choosing either to force through a royal marriage (making Wallis Simpson Queen) or a morganatic marriage (making her a consort and removing all children resulting from the marriage from the line of succession) will kick off a 200-day long event chain (and accompanying mission, for the player’s convenience).



Random events about individuals, parts of the population, and media either supporting or opposing the marriage will fire, resulting in random stability hits, boosts, political power penalties and bonuses, and Unaligned ideology increases and decreases. In addition, a ‘main’ event in the chain will fire every 50 days. This describes the growing support and opposition to the King’s intention to marry. As things get worse, this results in the cabinet resigning, leaving the United Kingdom without a government until the crisis is resolved. Eventually, even the Dominions, appalled at the King’s blatant disregard for the wishes and concerns of his subjects spread throughout the Commonwealth, see no alternative but to use this temporary political weakness to break with the Crown.



Once the marriage is out of the way, the crisis ends. With no cabinet and political turmoil, the King can direct his most potent supporters during this crisis, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Oswald Mosley, to then form a political party that is far more… amenable… to the King’s wishes… Much of the remainder of the tree then focuses on improving relations with Germany, taking out Italy to secure the Mediterranean, and reconquering the Empire with the aid of those Imperial loyalists that still remain in the old Dominions. Finally, it becomes possible to seek to unite the entire Anglosphere under one banner, and to pre-emptively strike at the USSR or Japan. Extra goodies involve increased non-core manpower and a unique National Spirit improving the speed and range of the Royal Navy, as well as a couple “become our puppet or die!” events for Iran and Afghanistan, facilitating reaching the Soviet Union from India.



Fascism in Britain is a bit of a ‘historical curiosity’, and Mosley’s name has obtained a notion of notoriety. What is certain, at least, is that the Blackshirts had some moderate successes with marching all over the country, and the British Union of Fascists peaked at around 50,000 members. Unfortunately for them, their increasing focus on pro-German and anti-semite rhetoric caused membership to drop, and opposition to these marches caused them to become increasingly violent until the infamous Battle of Cable Street sparked the government to take action. It passed the Public Order Act which outlawed the use of political uniforms and made it more difficult to hold marches.



These “Blackshirt Marches” are the key to turning Britain fascist in HOI4. After selecting the “Organize the Blackshirts” focus, a series of decisions will become available (implementation is WIP pending code support) allowing for the player to ‘secure’ Britain state-by-state. Each march will increase fascist support by a set amount depending on the state's population, while also reducing stability by a variable amount (depending on whether it was a particularly peaceful or violent march, but again depending on the state's population). Should stability go beneath 50% a civil war will start, with all ‘secured’ states on your side. This makes it possible to give yourself an advantageous position before intentionally kicking off the civil war. However, by expending extra political power to hold public speeches in which Mosley distances himself from Germany and Hitler’s rhetoric, you can soothe tensions and make fascism more palatable to the British people. These speeches increase stability, allowing you to remain above 50%. If you manage to remain above 50% stability and also obtain over 50% fascism support, you can then march on Downing Street and demand a referendum, peacefully switching to fascism. Once there, you can take your anti-German rhetoric even further, and seek an alliance with Italy to ‘take care’ of the continental menace.



Finally, for the communist path we decided to explore to what lengths a government might be willing to go to kick-start their rearmament. By opening negotiations with the Trade Unions, the player can unlock powerful temporary bonuses (or permanent ones, such as ‘free’ factories), but will then also be expected to give in to certain demands the Trade Unions have. These can range from appointing specific (rather less competent than usual) advisors, to paying a lump sum of political power, or to eating a temporary penalty to construction or production speed. Each ‘demand’ increases communist support by 6%, and once it gets high enough, they will demand a referendum, allowing the communists to take control of the government. Be careful though, for if you haven’t decolonized within 2 years of becoming Communist, your supporters may call you out as a fraud, and launch a civil war...





From there, you get rid of the upper classes and the royal family, before choosing between either creating your own Communist alliance, or going with the Soviets. Doing the former allows you to either go on a world-wide anti-colonialist crusade, or reach out across the channel (the reason why you can’t do both is that all of the countries across the channel -are- colonial powers…). Then, you can either negotiate a strike against Germany with the Soviets, or attack the Soviets yourself to determine once and for all whose version of communism is the most ‘pure’. Going with Moscow, on the other hand, allows you to focus either against fascism (once again coming down on Germany and Italy from two directions), or focus on capitalism and utterly crush the American Dream.



Finally, both the fascist and communist paths will result in the Dominions leaving you if you do not take quick and decisive action. “Move to Secure the Dominions” allows for installing Martial Law, but requires at least a number of divisions equalling 9600 manpower to be deployed in each of the dominion’s states (as well as 5 times this number in their capital). Martial Law prevents the Dominion in question from becoming independent and leaving your faction for 180 days, giving you time to seize control. From there, you can begin bombarding the population with propaganda, and, once ideological support is high enough, finally flip the government to match your own, thereby securing them for your alliance. If you do this as Communist Britain, any Dominions you have ‘secured’ in this manner will also NOT be released as an independent state once you decolonize. As fascist Britain you could also simply let them leave and reconquer them using the same focuses the Unaligned path provides for that purpose...


Small bonus portrait pic, and basically what it looks like in the office right now.

Next week I’ll be on vacation in Norway, but I’ll be setting aside some time so we can take a bit of a closer look at just what was involved in making decolonization possible...

 

As an ex-game developer I say using trees doesn't work too much, because politics is interactive unbalanced system. Trees are directed imperative system. A policy between two states should appear as interaction between two subjects. Thus what they are doing is just patching system with inherent design flaws which would need a lot of ad hoc coding to even feel right.

But they can add few troops in India rebellion. AI would be very happy to move troops reinforcing Belgium to save its influence in India. Because who cares about Belgium right?

(They are changing it into Kaiserreich, and Kaisserreich did it better in version 1.4. Version 1.5 AI changes broke Kaisserreich balance.)

 

Didn't they just pump out a whole dlc about England? What a bunch of lazy faggots.....

 

But the point of DLC is to be able to sell easy-to-make content endlessly, decision trees accomplish this expertly.