Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[sser]

I don't mind the naval combat. You win by properly organizing all your shit correctly at an operational level -- you don't have any of the "click division to this hex" type stuff like with ground combat. Iterating on that further is not going to be easy, but I'm sure there's good ideas bouncing out there somewhere. The problem for me is that wins/losses tend to be more catastrophic than they should be. Navies seem very earnest to fight out battles of annihilation which, when pitted against the enormous economic investments, makes these fights pretty gruesome. It does make playing the U.S. fun in the sense that you basically just throw material at the Axis powers until they fade away, exchanging expensive submarines for cheap convoys, until the enemy is simply out of convoys -- because your replacement stream for subs is the same as theirs for convoys. Brutal.

 

[Sergiu64]

Historically ships had 50% survival ratio for battles involving them from what I remember. So catastrophic does sound right.

 

[XenomorphII]

Honestly the only time you really have to even use a navy is if you are trying to invade US without a friendly nearby. All other times it is faster and easier to just build bombers and hammer their ports and immediate sea zones.

 

[Raghar]

It's another one of those things that ends up being a huge dumb problem, since if they go with simulationism then every Battleship technology and Battleship built is pure waste. Everything is down just to carriers and destroyers, and who can make the most of them. And as usual, just made worse by the time scales of production.

I have absolutely no idea how they could fix the naval system. Even with gun accuracy and ranges it was only marginally less fucked.

I looked at old naval combat, and created few algorithms for easy calculation real world naval combat. But frankly it's not difficult to simulate, the only problem is rules changed during WWII. From ships vulnerable to air they changed to ships full of AA weapons efficient to 10 km altitude, and then it no longer was about attacking ship vulnerable to air attack, nearly unprotected against torpedo hits.

Torpedo bombers basically evaporated during WWII, because 40 mm is effective to 4000 m, and Japanese airdropped torpedo had range 1000 m. And both Japan and US knew they must develop guided anti-ship missiles otherwise theirs aircrafts would face even more improved AA, and they would be dead meat. Improvements on Japanese torpedoes were about increasing damage.

Only country that wanted gun battle was UK and if they didn't tried actual gunnery test to see how they would preform in real condition, they would find German fleet, show UK ships can't hit shit, and German fleet would report, we somehow won, proceeding to bombard London. At least it would solve UK fuel and maintenance costs.

Frankly Japanese didn't want to build Yamato, but they mostly made it before they changed tactics and started to concentrate on carriers only. But they didn't wanted to cancel production, and decided to finish it. From what I heard it had pretty power efficient powerplant, thus when they would use it instead of older battleships, they would probably get more per fuel spend. But they kept it mostly in reserves.

The main problem is Paradox has no clue how moder naval operation actually works, and naval interface is weird/idiotic. HoI2 style of having home port and moving into area of search worked decently, at least it forced player to base it somewhere with support facilities. Nowadays a random fishing village in Malaysia is enough.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well as long as they never actually go into the fishing village in Malaysia for repairs or to wait, if they just theoretically supply there no problemo.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's pretty hard to make reasonably realistic naval system when the player has advanced knowledge of which naval technology is worth pursuing.

 

[Sinilevä]

So Finlandia doesn't have national focus yet? wtf

In the WW2 game one of the main participants of the war in the east still doesn't have a focus tree... Anyway it's a shitty game. Why play it if there is Darkest Hour?

 

[thesheeep]

The problem for me is that wins/losses tend to be more catastrophic than they should be

No, the problem is that nothing is explained in the game - including catastrophic losses.

Your patrol fleets never spot anything despite extremely high coverage? Why? No idea! The game sure won't tell you - looking for advice online ends up with a thousand different advises.
Your patrol fleets never gain coverage even if you put a hundred ships in an area? Why? Who knows! The game sure won't tell you...
Your patrol fleets actually work, but no engagement ever happens because your strike force just idles around until the enemy disappears? Why? *shrug* The game sure won't tell you...
Which of the endless amount of upgrades and layouts is actually good for what? Beats me. The game just throws a bunch of unexplained numbers at your face - and online advice is as I wrote above, too many disagreeing pieces of advice to make any sense of.
Why did a naval battle actually end up the way it did? Is there a sensible combat log maybe? Hahaha, no, git gud!
How about just offering a bunch of decent default layouts for those who don't want to invest that much time into the naval stuff? No? Oh, well, too bad, I guess.

In the end, you just put endless amounts of mines everywhere as that somehow seems to work while not requiring any micro-management at all - until some patch changes that again, I guess.

Just makes me want to play as Tibet again. Or Austria, or...

 

[sser]

You're right that not much of it is explained, but I slowly came to understand some key points and I'll join the random internet advice mob:

Fleet detection isn't guaranteed, but it's very likely if that enemy fleet is big and slow. Make sure your detection fleets are told to not engage anything so they'll spot but run from it.

Strike fleets should be 4-screens to a capital ship. Do not put more than 3 CVs in a fleet for best efficiency -- or just jam a ton in there if you got a bunch (hi America).

Never put a submarine in a strike fleet. Every fleet moves at the tempo of it's slowest ship, and subs move the slowest. My subs only go into fleets entirely made up of subs.

As America, you pretty much have to build a bunch of ports in the Pacific for your ships to go repair.

Mines are pretty badly simulated in the game. I don't know use them as a sort of house rule myself.

Battle log is sorta there but its more results-based. I wish alerts were based upon sizes of engaging fleets. Whenever I play America/Japan your fleets are engaging shit 24/7 so it's hard to click through every single alert to be sure it's not some ultra battle going on.

 

[Raghar]

because your strike force

What's that?

Which of the endless amount of upgrades and layouts is actually good for what? Beats me.

These are actually quite simple, put gun, sonar, torpedoes, depth charges on a destroyer, and you have a decent destroyer.
Carriers are even more simple.

Why did a naval battle actually end up the way it did? Is there a sensible combat log maybe?

Click on combat when it's happening and observe what's happening, you can see even what caused each damage. Torpedo, heavy guns, nav or light guns. But of course they removed ranges and now the stuff is happening weirdly.

How about just offering a bunch of decent default layouts for those who don't want to invest that much time into the naval stuff? No? Oh, well, too bad, I guess.

Last time I checked there was an autogenerated layout.

 

[thesheeep]

because your strike force

What's that?

https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_missions#Strike_force
Patrol searches for ships, strike force then moves out to attack them - except when it doesn't because "reasons".

Last time I checked there was an autogenerated layout.

True, but if that is on the level of the default layouts of ground armies, which I expect it to be, that's not decent at all.
Most importantly, I don't think it is role specific (mining, patrolling, raiding, protecting, protecting naval invasion, strike force).

These are actually quite simple, put gun, sonar, torpedoes, depth charges on a destroyer, and you have a decent destroyer.
Carriers are even more simple.

Says you.
Not saying you are wrong, but the sheer amount of different advises on this (all from veteran players) makes it clear that it is not actually simple - or made so opaque in the game that it is simply not that clear to decide.
Or - which is somewhat my theory - the systems are so interconnected and "fluid" that you can do literally anything and will come out on top as long as you got the higher number of units and tech regardless of layout.

Click on combat when it's happening and observe what's happening, you can see even what caused each damage. Torpedo, heavy guns, nav or light guns. But of course they removed ranges and now the stuff is happening weirdly.

I don't generally have the time in the middle of a war to inspect a bunch of battles while they are happening - there's usually more important things going on that require your attention.
What would be needed would be a proper log laying out the turns (I assume the combat happens turn-based?).

 

[Raghar]

because your strike force

What's that?

https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_missions#Strike_force
Patrol searches for ships, strike force then moves out to attack them - except when it doesn't because "reasons".

Well, I tend to use patrol for killing ships, or convoy raiding. Carrier battlegroup is moving around and killing stuff.

I occasionally use strike force when I have not many engagements per month with carrier force, to catch US fleet running by. Patrols sometimes don't care even when other patrols locate US MASSIVE CARRIER GROUP YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANNA ENGAGE.

HoI4 implementation of strike force that is sitting in the port and you can't start naval invasion is kinda bad however. If they improve AI to abuse this mechanic. Japan fleet would sit on some island in the middle of nowhere... Actually I wonder, can US fleet behind Panama canal and create naval supremacy on the other side?

True, but if that is on the level of the default layouts of ground armies, which I expect it to be, that's not decent at all.
Most importantly, I don't think it is role specific (mining, patrolling, raiding, protecting, protecting naval invasion, strike force).

Autogenerated is created for people who don't wanna bother with naval aspect. US can create hordes of ships, throw them into fry and possibly win.

In fact reinforcement system feels like they seen RTS and they added an important feature. In some cases like losing few destroyers in middle of nowhere in high risk mission, you don't want new ships to likely lose in raiding in less important area, you wanna get out remaining ships.
Reinforcement system would make more sense when HoI4 would have specific fleet screen where a fleet would be described with tasks and command structure. Current version is put few ships to task force, then click click regions... And when you have a fleet that has carriers in regions A, B, and patrols in regions A, B, C, and minesweeping in region D. You need to make 3 fleets. One for patrols in ABC, one for carriers in AB, and one for minesweeping in D. (Separate minesweeping fleet is fine, but separate fleets for patrols and main force are absurd for WWII fleets.)

I don't generally have the time in the middle of a war to inspect a bunch of battles while they are happening - there's usually more important things going on that require your attention.
What would be needed would be a proper log laying out the turns (I assume the combat happens turn-based?).

That's problem. Because one large battle where Japan kills 6 US carriers and lose 1 decides Pacific theater for at least half year. If US had 8 carriers and Japan still has 3-5, Japan has superiority. And player is typically extremely invested into one smart battle where he's massacring US fleet. But, naval invasion of US is quite hard because Hawaii is still LONG WAY to the US coast.

But of course real world Japan had STRONG PROBLEMS with enemy submarines, mines, and land based naval bombers.
When I look at it, Japan which was island state with STRONG navy, had problem with basically everything a normal navy should be able to deal with...

I'd really want to be able to view this battle when it happened, for example as recording, or ability to pause HoI4 at start of important naval battles just as I had to pause HoI2.

But it's an example how how a powerful fleet with old version of 2 CV defeats fleet with two more BC, horde of DD, and 3 CV.

 

[Raghar]

Shitty Paradox for theirs idiotic design of Leadership in HoI3.

 

[Fedora Master]

Not a meme game though.

E: Also TemplarGR

 

[Raghar]

HACKERS ARE ABLE TO JOIN GAMES AND BAN USERS, SWITCH COUNTRIES, AND DELETE FACTORIES. NO LOBBIES ARE FUNCTIONAL. PATCH ASAP.

Ahh finally something new newsworthy from Paradox.
MP oriented game obliterated by MP hack.

 

[karoliner]

The real monocled shit: One Year War

 

[Fedora Master]

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/r-tnomod-and-the-reddit-hoi4-modding-community.80516/

 

[Space Satan]

Hi everyone and welcome back to regular weekly dev diaries (if you don't count the april fools one last week). I know you are all super excited to hear what we have been up to since Battle for the Bosporus. The answers to that are going to take a few dev diaries to cover, so I figured I would start with a timeline for you:

• We recently released 1.10.4 to fix various multiplayer exploits going on, but seems an important case was not detected at the time so we are working on a 1.10.5 to address that soon.
• Pdxcon is coming up in May so expect to hear some more details there.
• The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.
• We are however spending most of our time on the 1.11 Barbarossa update as well as the unannounced expansion that will be released together with it. That's what we will spend most of our diaries on, as well as today!

‘Barbarossa’ and the unannounced DLC will focus on the Eastern Front and the core of Hearts of Iron, which is warfare - particularly land warfare. Historically the Eastern Front was without doubt the most important front for World War II. It was the largest confrontation in history and
is where Hitler’s expansion was first stopped and pushed back signaling the eventual doom of the axis powers. There are several areas we want to improve here. Weather does not feel impactful enough, while historically it had a massive impact. Logistics currently doesn’t have much player interaction and is mostly something you have to deal with only when problems appear, and finally the combat and division meta has been stable (with an emphasis on large divisions) for a long time - something we hope we can shake up. As you can imagine, these are all things that affect the game on a deeper level and take a lot of work to get right.

Today, I’ll give you guys a bit of an overview on the supply aspect, but fair warning: it’s early days and stuff may still change here before we’re done. I’ll probably spend 3+ diaries on supply over the course of the development to cover everything, but I figured it would be nice to hear about the overarching ideas.

The old system worked by having discrete supply areas pathing back to the players capital and keeping track of the bottlenecks. To simplify a bit - those bottlenecks then decided how many units could fit into areas near the front without penalties. The areas themselves were unintuitive to players and required you to check multiple mapmodes to see if you stepped over an edge etc. I do like bottleneck systems though, because feedback is usually immediate, but it suffered from not having much scaling cost as distances increased, so it was hard to use it to limit snowballing. As I mentioned it was also a system you didn't care too much about until you had problems, while historically, logistics was a vital part of planning a campaign. This led to combining the issue with another gripe of ours - that the way fronts moved in WW2 often followed important railroads, but don't really in HOI4. We came to the conclusion that we should try and make a system focused on railways and with a truck based component as a way to get more out of it when away from the rails.

1617799554638.png

1617798271066.png
podcat · Apr 7, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

1617799689604.png
1617798407335.png
podcat · Apr 7, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Supply is drawn from what we call Supply Hubs now, which are either cities, naval bases, or manually constructed stations along the rails, which have to be linked into the network. Air supply works a bit differently but we will talk about this in the future along with some other supply additions...

The flow of supply from a Hub to a division depends on the terrain/weather etc, and ideally you want to have available trucks here (which is to say, motorized equipment) to increase the amount of supply you get as well as range. Cost of trucks and trains and losses to attrition and bad weather will be a limiting factor on your logistics.

1617798787102.png
podcat · Apr 7, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Overall, this creates a system where it's strategically sound to fight over railways, prepare for large offensives, to try and bleed each other's logistics capability and to force care when advancing in bad terrain and weather. The result is a much more fun, historical and immersive Eastern Front as well as adding a new layer of invasion planning in the rest of the world.

See you all next week for the next diary!

 

[Average Manatee]

Shitty Paradox for theirs idiotic design of Leadership in HoI3.

Leadership was a great system. Having a tradeoff between having your intellectuals work on research, training officers, or espionage/diplomacy (not that the latter ever costed much) was meaningful and realistic. It was also a resource on the map that you could conquer but uncored leadership obviously would only work under you at a vastly reduced rate.

"tech slots" are fucking stupid. Any minor OPM shithole nation gets 4 slots and can research at 80% the rate of a 5 slot major. Sometimes even quicker depending on when their focus tree unlocks more tech slots (focus trees also being fucking stupid and unlocking tech slots with such a fucking stupid thing being fucking stupid^2). It's altogether completely ridiculous and leads to crap like minors focusing 100% planes or 100% tanks to be 5 years ahead of time.

 

[razvedchiki]

Fucking finally.

 

[Malakal]

Fucking finally.

Ye this could be good, really good. Or really bad.

Wonder if they will split infra now into rail and road and mb adjust the costs so its not easy to max out.

And add rail stock? And trains?

Looking forward to mods too.

 

[jebsmoker]

logistics overhaul.... eastern front focus...

nani

 

[razvedchiki]

well gary gisbys war in the east 2 just released so i dont care if paradox drops the ball yet again.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Fucking finally.

Ye this could be good, really good. Or really bad.

Wonder if they will split infra now into rail and road and mb adjust the costs so its not easy to max out.

And add rail stock? And trains?

Looking forward to mods too.

I'd imagine the good solutions might be to either have railways preset and immutable, or have railways have preset connections between major victory points on state level with infrastructure acting more as a requirement for additional railways between states. The former would allow for the railways to fully function in the role of creating supply chain bottlenecks and affect theaters of war, while the latter would allow for the flexibility needed when the player is up to wacky shit.

 

[Space Satan]

Euroniggers DD

Spoiler

Hello everybody and welcome to another dev diary for the upcoming Barbarossa patch and yet to be announced DLC. Today I’m going to be talking about the first focus tree which is a rework of Poland.

Poland was first added as a free DLC on release for everyone titled "United and Ready" so as such what you see in this diary will be free for everyone once Barbarossa drops. Next diary we will continue on to cover the DLC parts of the focus tree, because the tree is a bit too large to cover in one go. Enjoy!

Poland is interesting because it is a hugely popular minor (it's roughly as popular as Spain and more popular than Greece). Yet it has a very difficult position sandwiched between Soviet and Germany, which tend to scare people off. Perhaps it's the challenge, or its critical role in WW2, or just the large amount of Polish HOI4 fans, you tell me.

Pol1.png

Pol2.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Let’s start with the industrial branch. In the old tree, the player would have to dredge through a lot of low-value research bonuses to get just a few extra factories, so many of those old focuses have been expanded with extra factories and bonuses. But, this branch is not just about getting free factories, Poland is on a tight schedule and must use her time well if she has ambitions of outlasting the Reich.

Pol3.png
Pol4.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Poland was a nation with many problems in 1936, and one such problem was that their rail networks were disparate and disconnected; largely due to the fact that Poland had only a few decades prior been part of three different nations. Among many problems this caused for Poland, it also disrupted their agricultural supply networks, which resulted in the Peasant’s Strike of 1937.

Pol5.png
Pol7.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Failing to enact reform entirely will result in a massive populist uprising, and a civil war is the last thing Poland needs. If Poland is to survive the Reich and the USSR, she must be united and ready.

Pol6.png
Pol8.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

When the Nazi party took power in the city, it strangled Polish trade, so Poland begins the game with the “Embargoed Economy” trade law, similar to Undisturbed Isolation in the US but not nearly as harsh. To remove the Embargoed Economy, Poland must either develop a new trade port in Gdynia, gain a new port through conquest, or clamp down on Danzig.

Pol9.png
Pol10.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Attempting to seize control of Danzig will cause the city to begin a resistance, and Poland can fight that resistance through decisions and the usual resistance/compliance mechanics. With enough compliance, Poland will be able to ban the Nazi party and take permanent control of the city; ending the resistance, gaining access to all of Danzig’s resources, manpower, and industry, and finally being able to remove the embargoed economy.

Pol11.png
Pol26.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

When either Gdynia or Danzig has become Poland’s major port, they gain access to the rest of their naval branch, granting dockyards, factories, and research bonuses.

Next up we have the old Prepare for the Next War branch, which has been expanded quite considerably since its original implementation. Poland now has access to Plan East and Plan West, military plans to fight the USSR and the Reich.

Pol12.png
Pol13.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

However, until Plan West has been completed, Plan East cannot be begun and vice versa, but when complete, no further focuses from the branch may be taken.

Pol14.png
Pol15.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

The dictatorship was divided between the Castle lead by Ignacy Mościcki, the Sanation Right lead by Edward Rydz-Śmigły, and the Sanation Left led by Walery Sławek.

Pol16.png

Historical Poland will also have access to the April Constitution, the binding document of the Dictatorship. Though it begins weak, through collaboration with Sanations Left and Right, the Constitution will become a powerful bonus to Poland's politics. With all power consolidated in the President, you'll be able to change your laws and your cabinet with ease.

Pol17.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Time isn’t your only opponent here though, each of the two factions will expect Mościcki to appease them by enacting their policies and giving them power. Every focus of the Left you complete will make the Right more irritated and vice versa. On top of that, both factions will passively gain irritation over time so spend too long without taking a side and you risk losing both to civil wars.

Pol18.png
Pol25.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Available to all three factions of the dictatorship is the Align With the West branch, which allows Poland to join the Allies as they were able to in their old tree.

Pol19.png
Pol20.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Lastly, the Romanian Bridgehead Strategy has now been moved to the diplomatic branch and allows Poland to bring Romania into the allies. Historically, Poland and Lithuania had an alliance prior to the war, and Poland can pursue this alliance closer, bringing Romanian guns to the Polish front.

Pol21.png
Pol22.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

Lastly, the Sanation Left has access to an expanded Baltic Alliance path, allowing them to gain alliances with the Baltic states, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, and unlocking the newly expanded Between the Seas branch!

Pol23.png
Pol24.png
Meka66 · Apr 14, 2021 at 15:00

" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; color: rgb(216, 216, 216); font-family: "Source Sans Pro", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(29, 64, 88); cursor: pointer;">

The old Between Seas focus was not really “between seas” so much as it was just a Baltic alliance, but now the first nation to be invited to the faction is Romania. After Romania has made their decision, the alliance can spread any direction; north into Scandinavia and the Baltics, and south into the Balkans. Though unlikely, an Italian alliance is not out of the question for Poland here, but some significant change in policy for either nation would be necessary to tempt the Italians away from the Axis.

That’s all for this one, next week we’ll be talking about Poland’s DLC-locked alternate history branches!