Space Satan
Arcane
Sweet jeesus...
As you can see, a few things have changed:
Initial War Support has been significantly reduced, aiming at making it a bit harder to get to War Economy super early on, something that the Soviet Union was not really ready to do in 1936.
Stalin has finally got a trait (and as you’ll see, this is not the only trait he’ll be getting).
There are far more starting National Spirits than before, we will take a look at them later, but the first two of them you might recognize: Home of the Revolution and Trotskyite Plot?
03B Trotskyite Plot.png
04A Yagoda.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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04B Yezhov.png
04C Beriya.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The advisor roster has been greatly expanded, these are the advisors available to Stalin in the early stages (unless he goes too wild with the purges).
05 Stalin Advisors.png
06A Marshals.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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06B Primakov and Kulik.png
07 FULL HISTORICAL.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Kinda wide and populated, yes? Well, our main goal with this rework was to offer a more flavorful and historically-accurate experience, while presenting the player with an ample variety of options (both historical and not-so-historical-but-still-plausible) to go for in every different area, just as the largest country in the world deserves!
In terms of gameplay, there are lots of short focuses in this tree, however you will never be able to complete all the focuses in all branches (unless you play until very, very late in-game). You will have to choose your strategy and pick the focuses and branches that will be key for your success in the campaign.
Let’s start talking about the industrial branch.
During the first years of Soviet rule, the economic and industrial development basically consisted of recovering the formerly rural-agricultural Russian economy from the devastation of the Civil War. From 1921 to 1928, the USSR pursued the New Economic Policy (replacing the policy of War Communism, which had led to the decline of the national economy). During the time of the NEP parts of the means of production (light industry, food industry, etc.) was largely in private hands, while the state controlled the heavy industry, transport, banks and international trade.
However, during the Stalinist era, the primary goal was the establishment of an industrial base in the country, and during the late 1920s measures were taken again against the kulaks, initiating the collapse of the NEP. In 1928 the implementation of the First Five Year Plan began, followed by a forced industrialization and collectivization.
As you might guess, the main feature of the Soviet industrial branch is the Five Year Plans:
You start with a National Spirit representing the Second Five Year Plan (1933-1937), this plan was characterized by a harsh collectivization and a major advance in industrialization and infrastructure. However, the hectic pace of this industrialization and the lack of qualified personnel often resulted in high accident rates (meaning frequent losses in lives and expensive material) and, overall, low efficiency.
As you complete focuses on the Five Year Plan branch, your National Spirit will evolve, representing the Third Five Year Plan (1938-”1942”, the plan was of course ruined in 1941 after Barbarossa). This plan initially emphasized the need of increasing quality in production and resource extraction. However, with tensions in Europe growing at an alarming rate, the plan soon started to gradually focus on defense and military production.
This is represented in game by the possibility of specializing your Third Five Year Plan, you can focus on increasing the efficiency of your factories in the long term, or you can shift the focus to start boosting armament production as soon as possible. As you might have noticed, the focuses in the centre are all resource-related.
10B FYP Civilian.png
10C FYP Military.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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As I’ve mentioned, the Third Five Year Plan was ruined after Barbarossa, so how is that represented in HOI?
Well, all the focuses related to the Third Five Year Plan (the ones inside the red boxes below) will get locked forever once the Soviet Union gets dragged into a war against a major country, meaning that once the Great Patriotic War starts, the Third Five Year Plan goes to hell, forever. You will keep your current national spirit with all its bonuses, but you won’t be able to progress any further in this part of the branch.
11A Third FYP Focuses.png
But fear not, that’s not the end of the Five Year Plans. If you manage to survive and defeat your enemies, and right after the peace conference against the enemy that ruined your five year plan, Restoration and Development will be automatically completed for you, not only granting temporary bonuses for repairing and rebuilding your (potentially) devastated industry and infrastructure, with a cost in consumer goods, but also unlocking access to the Fourth Five Year Plan and the final focuses in the industrial branch. The Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-1950) was focused around the reconstruction and economic development of the country.
12B Fourth FYP.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The focuses below the Fourth Five Year Plan are late-game focuses aiming to provide interesting things to do and goals to achieve if you decide to continue playing after the main war (or if you manage to have an independent war against another major while world war 2 is raging elsewhere).
The COMECON was an economic organization, founded in 1949 by countries from the Eastern Bloc, and led by the Soviet Union. Once you complete the focus Found the COMECON (presumably earlier than 1949), a small decision system will be unlocked, aimed at aiding your allies (usually at your expense) in order to boost their military and industry so that they keep the pace in the potential wars to come.
13A COMECON Focus.png
13B COMECON Decisions.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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To the right of the Five Year Plan focuses, we have a choice to make: train National Specialists or rely on Foreign Experts. The first will significantly improve the national designers, which are now slightly weaker at game start. The latter will unlock the Gosproyektstroy.
14A National vs Foreign.png
14B Gosproyektstroy.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The Gosproyektstroy was a State Design and Construction Bureau set up in 1930 following an agreement with the "Architect of Detroit" (Albert Kahn), by which American architects became consultors for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union in the early 30s. This is one of many cases in which the USSR concluded agreements with foreign companies, mainly American (Ford, General Electric...) and German (Krupp, Borsig...) to carry out industrialization during the years of the first five-year plan.
In HOI, you can bring back the project, represented by a construction designer that will provide no research bonus (you’re relying on foreigners, after all) but that can, however, be improved by bringing foreign experts, boosting your production in the long term. Each country will grant different bonuses, Germany will give a bonus to efficiency growth, the USA will grant an efficiency cap bonus and Japan will boost your starting efficiency, for example. All of them will also grant a License Production Cost bonus (atm it’s shown as that amazing “None: +0.75” in the pic below ).
15 Gosproyektstroy Decisions.png
16 Academy of Sciences Soviet.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The first focus (The USSR Academy of Sciences) will grant you a research slot and a small bonus (1%) to research speed.The second focus will allow you to build more academies of sciences in the Soviet republics, both in integrated (not-released) republics and in puppeted republics, for an extra 1% research speed each and, if built on a puppeted republic, then it will also boost your puppet’s research, now that’s a win-win if I’ve ever seen one.
17A Academy of Sciences Puppet.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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17B Academy of Sciences Integrated.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Moving on to the Airforce branch.
18 Airforce Branch.png
Throughout the Airforce branch, you will be able to fix most of these penalties and get some bonuses too. You will not be able to remove all of those penalties though, since you will eventually have to choose between production or pilot training: the left part of the branch aims at improving aircraft production (more planes, better planes), while the right is focused on getting skilled aviators from among flying clubs, and training men and women alike to become competent army pilots, culminating with the three all-female aviation regiments formed by Marina Raskova (they come with aces and everything!).
20 Female Aces.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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And it’s time to talk about the Soviet Navy!
21 Navy Branch.png
22 Naval Bases.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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You can then Expand Shipbuilding Plants to get a significant amount of dockyards, based on the naval bases you previously reinforced.
23 Shipbuilding.png
24 Red Fleet NS.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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This national spirit will be further improved in the focuses below, based on your choice between surface or submarine warfare. Most of them will provide some navy experience, tech research bonus and production cost reduction for the appropriate type of ship.
25 Surface Warfare.png
26 Cruiser Submarines.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Similarly, Expand the Morskaya Aviatsiya will grant you bonuses for carriers and navy aircraft, while also adding a carrier to your production line.
27 Carriers.png
28 Army Branch.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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There are three branches here really, one for Military Industry, one for Defense, and one for the Army. Let’s start with the Military Industry, to the left.
29 Military Industry.png
30 SU 122.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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31 SU 100.png
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32 T 34.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Development of Tankograd will make it cheaper for you to edit tank templates, while also building military factories in heavily industrialized states in the Urals and to the East.
33 Tankograd.png
34 Merge Tank.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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35 Merge Naval.png
36 Merge Aircraft.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Well, during my research for Soviet designers, I was amazed by the sheer complexity of just keeping track of a single designer candidate during HOI’s timeline, since many plants were repeatedly renamed (or re-designated), merged or split into different bureaus (which were also frequently renamed, merged and split themselves). Sometimes plants or entire bureaus were merged into even bigger agencies, and other times a plant would just be merged into a nearby, bigger plant to focus on the R&D aspects of it, for example.
Last but not least, we have the evacuation of entire plants from West to East carried out by the Soviets shortly before Barbarossa and of course during the war, which often resulted in more merging, renaming, and repurposing of plants.
So, in the face of all this industry reassignment frenzy and plant renaming festival I thought: why not just embrace this chaos and make something out of it for HOI?
These focuses will unlock decisions to merge different plants into your active designers, providing them with many different small bonuses. All these plants are real, although not all of them were actually merged into a bureau or into another plant.
37 Merge Plant Decisions.png
38C Aircraft Plant.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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38D Naval Plant.png
38D Tank Designers.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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38E Naval Designers.png
39 Batteries.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Further down the tree, we have Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, which will grant you your 5th research slot, The Road of life and the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project.
40 Final Defense Focuses.png
41A Atomic Bomb Focus.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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41B Atomic Bomb Success.png
Now let’s talk about the army branch.
42 Army Branch.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The Army Branch is one of the most important ones in the tree, and it has a lot of content related to it, so let’s focus on the key aspects of it, starting with the initial National Spirits.
The Military was highly politicized, making it dangerously inefficient, even though political discussions (and indoctrination) among the troops also had its benefits for the Party. Politicized Military can be improved further down the branch.
As you can see below, The Red Army has a lot of red modifiers, how fitting, right?
Well, no worries, most of the focuses in this branch will deal with those red modifiers, gradually putting your unreliable army in very good shape.
Once you Strengthen the Mobilization Plan for some manpower and mobilization speed, you will be faced with a decision to make: Restore Cossack Units or opt for Cohesion First.
After the Russian Civil War, Cossack troops were disbanded, since many of them sided with the white movement. However, in 1936, the restrictions on conscription of Cossacks for the Red Army were lifted and some cavalry divisions received the status of Cossack Divisions. The wearing of the previously prohibited Cossack uniform was also restored (although it would only last for a few years), and in this uniform walked the Cossack units in their first military parade as part of the Red Army in 1937, and later on at the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945.
In-game, Restore Cossack Units will grant you small bonuses to cavalry, a new general and a few divisions, including a new Cossack cavalry template. To be fair, this template is inspired by the composition of cavalry divisions (not necessarily Cossacks) later on, around 1941, but I really wanted to offer the player an interesting cavalry template from which to work on.
45B Cossack General.png
45A Cossack Template.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Cohesion First will instead boost your division organization, in exchange for some extra training time.
46 Cohesion First.png
47A Rehabilitated Military.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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47B Military Reorganization.png
48A Desperate Measures.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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48B Desperate Measures Decisions.png
49A Lessons of War.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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49B Lessons of War Decisions.png
50 Penal Battalions.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Partisan activity in occupied Soviet territory (especially Ukraine and Belarus) was impressively high and played a role perhaps not very decisive but definitely important to the overall war effort. Organization of the Partisans will give you a set of tools to increase partisan activity, disrupt enemy supply and hinder enemy offensives, including a related historical operative and an extra operative slot for him. It will also come with a couple of partisan Generals that can prove to be very useful.
51A Partisan Focus.png
51B Partisan People.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Once you have carried out the military reorganization and learned your lessons of war, you may choose what to do with your Political Commissars:
Keep Commissars Organization means that political commissars will continue playing the role of “second commander” within the military units.
You can instead Swap to Political Advisors, and try to increase efficiency by subordinating political officers to commanding officers, allowing for more freedom in the military command chain while the new role of political advisor focuses more on morale-related functions.
52A Keep Commissars.png
52B Political Advisors.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The Glory of the Red Army will make it easier for you to unlock those last doctrines remaining and field more special forces divisions. It will also unlock a Soviet-specific improved version of the Blitz Tactic, as well as a new General: I read a lot about General Rybalko in various different sources during my research, and I feel that he deserves a place in the Soviet Generals roster.
53B Rybalko.png
54 Internal Affairs Branch.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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In this branch you will be introduced to the new Propaganda Campaigns system, unlocked by the focus Expand the Agitprop. As you probably know, propaganda was a very important tool that the Soviet Union used extensively through media, books, films, theatre, etc. The use of propaganda was far from being Soviet-specific but, truth be told, Soviet propaganda was very characteristic.
Propaganda Campaigns are a decision-driven system, full of new and, imho, very cool art coming from real Soviet propaganda posters. The system has three slots that will allow you to activate up to three different propaganda campaigns at a time, from among a total of 24 campaigns.
Each campaign will grant certain bonuses for a duration of 6 months upon activation, after which the campaign will finish and the slot will become available again. Every time you activate a specific campaign, its cost will increase. There is also a cooldown for the propaganda campaign to be available again, so that you cannot activate the same campaign twice in a row.
However you will not start with all these slots and campaigns available at once, Expand the Agitprop will unlock the system with a limited number of campaigns (both military and non-military) and only one poster slot. You will get extra slots in the focuses right below Expand the Agitprop, and different campaigns will be gradually unlocked by certain focuses scattered throughout different branches (Industrial, Military, Political…). In the image below you can see, from left to right, an active propaganda campaign, an available poster slot that is still empty, and a locked poster slot still to be unlocked.
There are many different campaigns, there are military campaigns that will grant bonuses to MP, breakthrough or core defense, there are industry-related campaigns that will boost production or repair speed, there are campaigns related to prosperity (stability, research speed), campaigns to glorify and support the partisans, etc. Also, a small (yet very cool) detail is that all these posters will actually age when they near the end of the campaign duration.
Back to the Internal Affairs branch, both Positive Heroism and Collectivist Propaganda will still lead towards mutually exclusive sub-branches, however there have been some changes in them. First of all, both focuses will grant an extra poster slot for your campaigns, and each will unlock a different propaganda campaign.
Further down the Positive Heroism branch, you will get some production and military bonuses, and some of your generals will get promoted to Marshalls (prioritizing Konev, Rokossovsky and Zhukov, if possible).
In the Collectivist Propaganda branch, you will find bonuses to research speed, consumer goods and production efficiency growth.
58A Positive Heroism.png
58B Collectivist Propaganda.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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In 1941, after having learned about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Metropolitan Sergy wrote an epistle to the pastors and believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, blessing those who decided to go to the front. Relations between the Church and the Soviet government gradually improved and, in 1943, Metropolitan Sergy was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
The focus will unlock Patriarch Sergy as an advisor. He will boost your stability and division recovery rate, while also reducing the Compliance growth in your lost states.
59 Patriarch Sergy.png
60 Foreign Politics Branch.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The Eastern Development sub-branch is focused mainly on preparing your minor allies in Asia for war. You will be able to build some factories and help them field some more troops, as well as increasing their efficiency defending their own borders. You will also be able, of course, to annex everyone’s favorite, Tannu Tuva.
61 Eastern Development.png
62 Foreign Policies.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Additionally, in the Policy of Collective Security branch, we can try to form a defensive alliance with France.
63A Collective Security.png
63B Collective Security Event.png
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63C Collective Secuirty Successful.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The branches in the middle are basically a slightly expanded version of the choices the Soviet Union had before the rework.
64 Foreign Basics.png
65A Influence.png
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65B Cooperation Decisions.png
65C Ultimatums.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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65D Foreign Event.png
66 Far East Branch.png
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If you decide to work against Japan, you can then pick your favorite Chinese tag and make it your protégé. Note that the Soviet Union will no longer be able to send volunteers to every single Chinese tag, but only to their chosen Chinese best friend. If you choose to aid the People’s Republic of China or the Kuomintang, you will grant them some bonuses to licenses and you will also unlock a (currently) beautifully unlocalized decision to send them equipment.
67 Mainstream Chinas.png
68A Sinkiang Focus.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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68B Sinkiang Decisions.png
69 Political Branch.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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As you may know, the 30s and 40s were quite turbulent times in terms of social stability in the Soviet Union. After having secured power, Stalin was (at least, officially) quite worried about potential saboteurs, wreckers, counter-revolutionaries, spies, and so on. After several incidents (probably the most important one being the assassination of Kirov in late 1934), and with the desire of protecting and perpetuating his authoritarian regime, in order to lead the country in the direction he envisioned, Stalin gave green light to a period of extremely harsh political repression among civilians, the military and even among the Communist party: The Great Purge had commenced.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals and entire groups were oppressed during this period (mainly 1936-1938), in which everyone could be suspected of being an enemy of the people, and be treated as such, with potentially lethal consequences.
So, before going through the focuses, let’s talk about how this instability, political oppression and the process of the Great Purge is represented in-game through the new Stalin’s Paranoia system.
70 Paranoia UI.png
71A Paranoia Focus.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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71B Paranoia Stalin.png
And how does this Paranoia affect you? Well, once the system is activated, random purge events might happen if your Paranoia gets over 25. The higher the Paranoia and the more days it’s been that high, the more likely it is for a purge to happen. If Paranoia goes over 75 (note that it is capped at 100), then really nasty things can happen, and you might get what I call “great purge” events, instead of “regular purge” ones.
There are a lot of different purge events, and they can be sorted based on the “area” they’re targeting: the administration (civilian), the army, the navy and the airforce. Additionally, as I mentioned above, each “area” has its own “regular” and “great” purge events.
Regular purge events will usually purge a single character (be it a political advisor, a navy chief, a field marshal, etc.), or give some penalties in the form of national spirits.
Great Purges are significantly worse, their effects varying from granting nastier national spirits than their regular counterparts, to purging a number of characters at once while cowing some of the survivors, to even dissolving your aircraft designer!
72 GP Aircraft.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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As you can see, the loc, and also the system's UI are still WIP, but I thought I’d tease you with an event and maybe a few of the National Spirits you can get. Some of these National Spirits will be temporary, others will need to be removed via decisions.
73A Purge NS Airforce.png
73B Purge NS Civilian.png
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73C Purge NS Naval.png
Now, how do we get rid of Stalin’s Paranoia and the purges (when going Stalinist)? That’s when the focus tree comes into play. The Stalinist tree can be split into two parts: The upper half before the Purges end, and the bottom half, after you have removed the Paranoia system. Let’s start talking about the first half.
75 Purge Branch.png
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The focus The Centre will grant you some stability, PP and will add a fairly weak national spirit, The Politburo, which will be improved by the focuses in this branch (just like in almost every other branch in this tree).
The focuses featuring a bloodied sickle will trigger the historical purges in the form of unavoidable Great Purge events such as the Moscow Trials and the Trial of the Generals. These purges will always attempt to target people that were historically purged and, if some of them have already been removed from the game, then some random candidates will be picked to fill in the slots.
As a side note, keep in mind that, even though we are trying to keep it as historical as possible with these focus-triggered events, we need to take some licenses and group people to be purged let’s say in the First Moscow trial even if some of them were actually purged a few months later, for example.
These purge-related focuses have a cooldown requirement which will prevent the player from rushing that part of the tree. But once you complete The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites the Third Moscow Trial event will be triggered and the Paranoia system will be removed forever: the Purges have finally ended.
Worth noting that some focuses in different branches (such as part of the foreign politics branch and some military and industrial focuses) will be locked until you get rid of the Paranoia system.
In case you were wondering, Behead the Snake will unlock two different operations to attempt to kill Trotsky while he is in Mexico. One is a raid on its villa, as happened in May 1940, the other one is a more subtle operation representing the one that actually killed Trotsky three months after the raid. Succeeding at killing Trotsky will not remove entirely your Trotskyite Plot national spirit (you never know how many Trotskyites may have escaped the purges and be still plotting against you), but it will drastically reduce its penalties.
76 Trotsky Operations.png
This part of the Stalinist branch is mainly focused on developing a strong cult of personality around Stalin, starting with a new unlocked propaganda campaign, but you will also find focuses granting some bonuses to the Politburo, building some railways and unlocking a tank design template, can you guess which one?
78 IS2.png
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Back to the cult of personality, all these focuses are titles that were at some point applied to Stalin in real life, and as such, they will grant Stalin new traits or improve existing ones. In order to emphasize the character of propaganda and manipulation of the masses of these focuses, they all require a certain number of propaganda campaigns to have been activated, the further down the branch, the more they require.
79A Inheritor.png
79B Great Cmmander.png
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Finally, the focus Father of Nations will replace Stalin’s starting trait, culminating the branch with a “fully-traited” Stalin (WIP values), ready to carry out a world conquest!
80 Father of Nations.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Aaaaand that was all from me! It was a long diary but I hope that you guys enjoyed all the new stuff we’ve been working on! (I definitely enjoyed working on it!)
Make sure to stay tuned for the next dev diary, where we will talk about the opposition against Stalin!
Be seeing you, comrades!
P.S. By the time this diary goes live I will be on vacation. I will do my best to try and answer any questions or concerns you guys might have, but I might not be able to answer right away, so please be patient
Initial War Support has been significantly reduced, aiming at making it a bit harder to get to War Economy super early on, something that the Soviet Union was not really ready to do in 1936.
Stalin has finally got a trait (and as you’ll see, this is not the only trait he’ll be getting).
There are far more starting National Spirits than before, we will take a look at them later, but the first two of them you might recognize: Home of the Revolution and Trotskyite Plot?
03B Trotskyite Plot.png
04A Yagoda.png
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04B Yezhov.png
04C Beriya.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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The advisor roster has been greatly expanded, these are the advisors available to Stalin in the early stages (unless he goes too wild with the purges).
05 Stalin Advisors.png
06A Marshals.png
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06B Primakov and Kulik.png
07 FULL HISTORICAL.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Kinda wide and populated, yes? Well, our main goal with this rework was to offer a more flavorful and historically-accurate experience, while presenting the player with an ample variety of options (both historical and not-so-historical-but-still-plausible) to go for in every different area, just as the largest country in the world deserves!
In terms of gameplay, there are lots of short focuses in this tree, however you will never be able to complete all the focuses in all branches (unless you play until very, very late in-game). You will have to choose your strategy and pick the focuses and branches that will be key for your success in the campaign.
Let’s start talking about the industrial branch.
During the first years of Soviet rule, the economic and industrial development basically consisted of recovering the formerly rural-agricultural Russian economy from the devastation of the Civil War. From 1921 to 1928, the USSR pursued the New Economic Policy (replacing the policy of War Communism, which had led to the decline of the national economy). During the time of the NEP parts of the means of production (light industry, food industry, etc.) was largely in private hands, while the state controlled the heavy industry, transport, banks and international trade.
However, during the Stalinist era, the primary goal was the establishment of an industrial base in the country, and during the late 1920s measures were taken again against the kulaks, initiating the collapse of the NEP. In 1928 the implementation of the First Five Year Plan began, followed by a forced industrialization and collectivization.
As you might guess, the main feature of the Soviet industrial branch is the Five Year Plans:
You start with a National Spirit representing the Second Five Year Plan (1933-1937), this plan was characterized by a harsh collectivization and a major advance in industrialization and infrastructure. However, the hectic pace of this industrialization and the lack of qualified personnel often resulted in high accident rates (meaning frequent losses in lives and expensive material) and, overall, low efficiency.
As you complete focuses on the Five Year Plan branch, your National Spirit will evolve, representing the Third Five Year Plan (1938-”1942”, the plan was of course ruined in 1941 after Barbarossa). This plan initially emphasized the need of increasing quality in production and resource extraction. However, with tensions in Europe growing at an alarming rate, the plan soon started to gradually focus on defense and military production.
This is represented in game by the possibility of specializing your Third Five Year Plan, you can focus on increasing the efficiency of your factories in the long term, or you can shift the focus to start boosting armament production as soon as possible. As you might have noticed, the focuses in the centre are all resource-related.
10B FYP Civilian.png
10C FYP Military.png
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As I’ve mentioned, the Third Five Year Plan was ruined after Barbarossa, so how is that represented in HOI?
Well, all the focuses related to the Third Five Year Plan (the ones inside the red boxes below) will get locked forever once the Soviet Union gets dragged into a war against a major country, meaning that once the Great Patriotic War starts, the Third Five Year Plan goes to hell, forever. You will keep your current national spirit with all its bonuses, but you won’t be able to progress any further in this part of the branch.
11A Third FYP Focuses.png
But fear not, that’s not the end of the Five Year Plans. If you manage to survive and defeat your enemies, and right after the peace conference against the enemy that ruined your five year plan, Restoration and Development will be automatically completed for you, not only granting temporary bonuses for repairing and rebuilding your (potentially) devastated industry and infrastructure, with a cost in consumer goods, but also unlocking access to the Fourth Five Year Plan and the final focuses in the industrial branch. The Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-1950) was focused around the reconstruction and economic development of the country.
12B Fourth FYP.png
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The focuses below the Fourth Five Year Plan are late-game focuses aiming to provide interesting things to do and goals to achieve if you decide to continue playing after the main war (or if you manage to have an independent war against another major while world war 2 is raging elsewhere).
The COMECON was an economic organization, founded in 1949 by countries from the Eastern Bloc, and led by the Soviet Union. Once you complete the focus Found the COMECON (presumably earlier than 1949), a small decision system will be unlocked, aimed at aiding your allies (usually at your expense) in order to boost their military and industry so that they keep the pace in the potential wars to come.
13A COMECON Focus.png
13B COMECON Decisions.png
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To the right of the Five Year Plan focuses, we have a choice to make: train National Specialists or rely on Foreign Experts. The first will significantly improve the national designers, which are now slightly weaker at game start. The latter will unlock the Gosproyektstroy.
14A National vs Foreign.png
14B Gosproyektstroy.png
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The Gosproyektstroy was a State Design and Construction Bureau set up in 1930 following an agreement with the "Architect of Detroit" (Albert Kahn), by which American architects became consultors for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union in the early 30s. This is one of many cases in which the USSR concluded agreements with foreign companies, mainly American (Ford, General Electric...) and German (Krupp, Borsig...) to carry out industrialization during the years of the first five-year plan.
In HOI, you can bring back the project, represented by a construction designer that will provide no research bonus (you’re relying on foreigners, after all) but that can, however, be improved by bringing foreign experts, boosting your production in the long term. Each country will grant different bonuses, Germany will give a bonus to efficiency growth, the USA will grant an efficiency cap bonus and Japan will boost your starting efficiency, for example. All of them will also grant a License Production Cost bonus (atm it’s shown as that amazing “None: +0.75” in the pic below ).
15 Gosproyektstroy Decisions.png
16 Academy of Sciences Soviet.png
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The first focus (The USSR Academy of Sciences) will grant you a research slot and a small bonus (1%) to research speed.The second focus will allow you to build more academies of sciences in the Soviet republics, both in integrated (not-released) republics and in puppeted republics, for an extra 1% research speed each and, if built on a puppeted republic, then it will also boost your puppet’s research, now that’s a win-win if I’ve ever seen one.
17A Academy of Sciences Puppet.png
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Moving on to the Airforce branch.
18 Airforce Branch.png
Throughout the Airforce branch, you will be able to fix most of these penalties and get some bonuses too. You will not be able to remove all of those penalties though, since you will eventually have to choose between production or pilot training: the left part of the branch aims at improving aircraft production (more planes, better planes), while the right is focused on getting skilled aviators from among flying clubs, and training men and women alike to become competent army pilots, culminating with the three all-female aviation regiments formed by Marina Raskova (they come with aces and everything!).
20 Female Aces.png
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And it’s time to talk about the Soviet Navy!
21 Navy Branch.png
22 Naval Bases.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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You can then Expand Shipbuilding Plants to get a significant amount of dockyards, based on the naval bases you previously reinforced.
23 Shipbuilding.png
24 Red Fleet NS.png
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This national spirit will be further improved in the focuses below, based on your choice between surface or submarine warfare. Most of them will provide some navy experience, tech research bonus and production cost reduction for the appropriate type of ship.
25 Surface Warfare.png
26 Cruiser Submarines.png
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Similarly, Expand the Morskaya Aviatsiya will grant you bonuses for carriers and navy aircraft, while also adding a carrier to your production line.
27 Carriers.png
28 Army Branch.png
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There are three branches here really, one for Military Industry, one for Defense, and one for the Army. Let’s start with the Military Industry, to the left.
29 Military Industry.png
30 SU 122.png
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Development of Tankograd will make it cheaper for you to edit tank templates, while also building military factories in heavily industrialized states in the Urals and to the East.
33 Tankograd.png
34 Merge Tank.png
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35 Merge Naval.png
36 Merge Aircraft.png
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Well, during my research for Soviet designers, I was amazed by the sheer complexity of just keeping track of a single designer candidate during HOI’s timeline, since many plants were repeatedly renamed (or re-designated), merged or split into different bureaus (which were also frequently renamed, merged and split themselves). Sometimes plants or entire bureaus were merged into even bigger agencies, and other times a plant would just be merged into a nearby, bigger plant to focus on the R&D aspects of it, for example.
Last but not least, we have the evacuation of entire plants from West to East carried out by the Soviets shortly before Barbarossa and of course during the war, which often resulted in more merging, renaming, and repurposing of plants.
So, in the face of all this industry reassignment frenzy and plant renaming festival I thought: why not just embrace this chaos and make something out of it for HOI?
These focuses will unlock decisions to merge different plants into your active designers, providing them with many different small bonuses. All these plants are real, although not all of them were actually merged into a bureau or into another plant.
37 Merge Plant Decisions.png
38C Aircraft Plant.png
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38D Naval Plant.png
38D Tank Designers.png
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38E Naval Designers.png
39 Batteries.png
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Further down the tree, we have Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, which will grant you your 5th research slot, The Road of life and the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project.
40 Final Defense Focuses.png
41A Atomic Bomb Focus.png
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41B Atomic Bomb Success.png
Now let’s talk about the army branch.
42 Army Branch.png
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The Army Branch is one of the most important ones in the tree, and it has a lot of content related to it, so let’s focus on the key aspects of it, starting with the initial National Spirits.
The Military was highly politicized, making it dangerously inefficient, even though political discussions (and indoctrination) among the troops also had its benefits for the Party. Politicized Military can be improved further down the branch.
As you can see below, The Red Army has a lot of red modifiers, how fitting, right?
Well, no worries, most of the focuses in this branch will deal with those red modifiers, gradually putting your unreliable army in very good shape.
Once you Strengthen the Mobilization Plan for some manpower and mobilization speed, you will be faced with a decision to make: Restore Cossack Units or opt for Cohesion First.
After the Russian Civil War, Cossack troops were disbanded, since many of them sided with the white movement. However, in 1936, the restrictions on conscription of Cossacks for the Red Army were lifted and some cavalry divisions received the status of Cossack Divisions. The wearing of the previously prohibited Cossack uniform was also restored (although it would only last for a few years), and in this uniform walked the Cossack units in their first military parade as part of the Red Army in 1937, and later on at the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945.
In-game, Restore Cossack Units will grant you small bonuses to cavalry, a new general and a few divisions, including a new Cossack cavalry template. To be fair, this template is inspired by the composition of cavalry divisions (not necessarily Cossacks) later on, around 1941, but I really wanted to offer the player an interesting cavalry template from which to work on.
45B Cossack General.png
45A Cossack Template.png
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Cohesion First will instead boost your division organization, in exchange for some extra training time.
46 Cohesion First.png
47A Rehabilitated Military.png
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47B Military Reorganization.png
48A Desperate Measures.png
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48B Desperate Measures Decisions.png
49A Lessons of War.png
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49B Lessons of War Decisions.png
50 Penal Battalions.png
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Partisan activity in occupied Soviet territory (especially Ukraine and Belarus) was impressively high and played a role perhaps not very decisive but definitely important to the overall war effort. Organization of the Partisans will give you a set of tools to increase partisan activity, disrupt enemy supply and hinder enemy offensives, including a related historical operative and an extra operative slot for him. It will also come with a couple of partisan Generals that can prove to be very useful.
51A Partisan Focus.png
51B Partisan People.png
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Once you have carried out the military reorganization and learned your lessons of war, you may choose what to do with your Political Commissars:
Keep Commissars Organization means that political commissars will continue playing the role of “second commander” within the military units.
You can instead Swap to Political Advisors, and try to increase efficiency by subordinating political officers to commanding officers, allowing for more freedom in the military command chain while the new role of political advisor focuses more on morale-related functions.
52A Keep Commissars.png
52B Political Advisors.png
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The Glory of the Red Army will make it easier for you to unlock those last doctrines remaining and field more special forces divisions. It will also unlock a Soviet-specific improved version of the Blitz Tactic, as well as a new General: I read a lot about General Rybalko in various different sources during my research, and I feel that he deserves a place in the Soviet Generals roster.
53B Rybalko.png
54 Internal Affairs Branch.png
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In this branch you will be introduced to the new Propaganda Campaigns system, unlocked by the focus Expand the Agitprop. As you probably know, propaganda was a very important tool that the Soviet Union used extensively through media, books, films, theatre, etc. The use of propaganda was far from being Soviet-specific but, truth be told, Soviet propaganda was very characteristic.
Propaganda Campaigns are a decision-driven system, full of new and, imho, very cool art coming from real Soviet propaganda posters. The system has three slots that will allow you to activate up to three different propaganda campaigns at a time, from among a total of 24 campaigns.
Each campaign will grant certain bonuses for a duration of 6 months upon activation, after which the campaign will finish and the slot will become available again. Every time you activate a specific campaign, its cost will increase. There is also a cooldown for the propaganda campaign to be available again, so that you cannot activate the same campaign twice in a row.
However you will not start with all these slots and campaigns available at once, Expand the Agitprop will unlock the system with a limited number of campaigns (both military and non-military) and only one poster slot. You will get extra slots in the focuses right below Expand the Agitprop, and different campaigns will be gradually unlocked by certain focuses scattered throughout different branches (Industrial, Military, Political…). In the image below you can see, from left to right, an active propaganda campaign, an available poster slot that is still empty, and a locked poster slot still to be unlocked.
There are many different campaigns, there are military campaigns that will grant bonuses to MP, breakthrough or core defense, there are industry-related campaigns that will boost production or repair speed, there are campaigns related to prosperity (stability, research speed), campaigns to glorify and support the partisans, etc. Also, a small (yet very cool) detail is that all these posters will actually age when they near the end of the campaign duration.
Back to the Internal Affairs branch, both Positive Heroism and Collectivist Propaganda will still lead towards mutually exclusive sub-branches, however there have been some changes in them. First of all, both focuses will grant an extra poster slot for your campaigns, and each will unlock a different propaganda campaign.
Further down the Positive Heroism branch, you will get some production and military bonuses, and some of your generals will get promoted to Marshalls (prioritizing Konev, Rokossovsky and Zhukov, if possible).
In the Collectivist Propaganda branch, you will find bonuses to research speed, consumer goods and production efficiency growth.
58A Positive Heroism.png
58B Collectivist Propaganda.png
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In 1941, after having learned about the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Metropolitan Sergy wrote an epistle to the pastors and believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, blessing those who decided to go to the front. Relations between the Church and the Soviet government gradually improved and, in 1943, Metropolitan Sergy was elected Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
The focus will unlock Patriarch Sergy as an advisor. He will boost your stability and division recovery rate, while also reducing the Compliance growth in your lost states.
59 Patriarch Sergy.png
60 Foreign Politics Branch.png
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The Eastern Development sub-branch is focused mainly on preparing your minor allies in Asia for war. You will be able to build some factories and help them field some more troops, as well as increasing their efficiency defending their own borders. You will also be able, of course, to annex everyone’s favorite, Tannu Tuva.
61 Eastern Development.png
62 Foreign Policies.png
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Additionally, in the Policy of Collective Security branch, we can try to form a defensive alliance with France.
63A Collective Security.png
63B Collective Security Event.png
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The branches in the middle are basically a slightly expanded version of the choices the Soviet Union had before the rework.
64 Foreign Basics.png
65A Influence.png
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65B Cooperation Decisions.png
65C Ultimatums.png
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65D Foreign Event.png
66 Far East Branch.png
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If you decide to work against Japan, you can then pick your favorite Chinese tag and make it your protégé. Note that the Soviet Union will no longer be able to send volunteers to every single Chinese tag, but only to their chosen Chinese best friend. If you choose to aid the People’s Republic of China or the Kuomintang, you will grant them some bonuses to licenses and you will also unlock a (currently) beautifully unlocalized decision to send them equipment.
67 Mainstream Chinas.png
68A Sinkiang Focus.png
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68B Sinkiang Decisions.png
69 Political Branch.png
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As you may know, the 30s and 40s were quite turbulent times in terms of social stability in the Soviet Union. After having secured power, Stalin was (at least, officially) quite worried about potential saboteurs, wreckers, counter-revolutionaries, spies, and so on. After several incidents (probably the most important one being the assassination of Kirov in late 1934), and with the desire of protecting and perpetuating his authoritarian regime, in order to lead the country in the direction he envisioned, Stalin gave green light to a period of extremely harsh political repression among civilians, the military and even among the Communist party: The Great Purge had commenced.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals and entire groups were oppressed during this period (mainly 1936-1938), in which everyone could be suspected of being an enemy of the people, and be treated as such, with potentially lethal consequences.
So, before going through the focuses, let’s talk about how this instability, political oppression and the process of the Great Purge is represented in-game through the new Stalin’s Paranoia system.
70 Paranoia UI.png
71A Paranoia Focus.png
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71B Paranoia Stalin.png
And how does this Paranoia affect you? Well, once the system is activated, random purge events might happen if your Paranoia gets over 25. The higher the Paranoia and the more days it’s been that high, the more likely it is for a purge to happen. If Paranoia goes over 75 (note that it is capped at 100), then really nasty things can happen, and you might get what I call “great purge” events, instead of “regular purge” ones.
There are a lot of different purge events, and they can be sorted based on the “area” they’re targeting: the administration (civilian), the army, the navy and the airforce. Additionally, as I mentioned above, each “area” has its own “regular” and “great” purge events.
Regular purge events will usually purge a single character (be it a political advisor, a navy chief, a field marshal, etc.), or give some penalties in the form of national spirits.
Great Purges are significantly worse, their effects varying from granting nastier national spirits than their regular counterparts, to purging a number of characters at once while cowing some of the survivors, to even dissolving your aircraft designer!
72 GP Aircraft.png
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As you can see, the loc, and also the system's UI are still WIP, but I thought I’d tease you with an event and maybe a few of the National Spirits you can get. Some of these National Spirits will be temporary, others will need to be removed via decisions.
73A Purge NS Airforce.png
73B Purge NS Civilian.png
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73C Purge NS Naval.png
Now, how do we get rid of Stalin’s Paranoia and the purges (when going Stalinist)? That’s when the focus tree comes into play. The Stalinist tree can be split into two parts: The upper half before the Purges end, and the bottom half, after you have removed the Paranoia system. Let’s start talking about the first half.
75 Purge Branch.png
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The focus The Centre will grant you some stability, PP and will add a fairly weak national spirit, The Politburo, which will be improved by the focuses in this branch (just like in almost every other branch in this tree).
The focuses featuring a bloodied sickle will trigger the historical purges in the form of unavoidable Great Purge events such as the Moscow Trials and the Trial of the Generals. These purges will always attempt to target people that were historically purged and, if some of them have already been removed from the game, then some random candidates will be picked to fill in the slots.
As a side note, keep in mind that, even though we are trying to keep it as historical as possible with these focus-triggered events, we need to take some licenses and group people to be purged let’s say in the First Moscow trial even if some of them were actually purged a few months later, for example.
These purge-related focuses have a cooldown requirement which will prevent the player from rushing that part of the tree. But once you complete The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites the Third Moscow Trial event will be triggered and the Paranoia system will be removed forever: the Purges have finally ended.
Worth noting that some focuses in different branches (such as part of the foreign politics branch and some military and industrial focuses) will be locked until you get rid of the Paranoia system.
In case you were wondering, Behead the Snake will unlock two different operations to attempt to kill Trotsky while he is in Mexico. One is a raid on its villa, as happened in May 1940, the other one is a more subtle operation representing the one that actually killed Trotsky three months after the raid. Succeeding at killing Trotsky will not remove entirely your Trotskyite Plot national spirit (you never know how many Trotskyites may have escaped the purges and be still plotting against you), but it will drastically reduce its penalties.
76 Trotsky Operations.png
This part of the Stalinist branch is mainly focused on developing a strong cult of personality around Stalin, starting with a new unlocked propaganda campaign, but you will also find focuses granting some bonuses to the Politburo, building some railways and unlocking a tank design template, can you guess which one?
78 IS2.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Back to the cult of personality, all these focuses are titles that were at some point applied to Stalin in real life, and as such, they will grant Stalin new traits or improve existing ones. In order to emphasize the character of propaganda and manipulation of the masses of these focuses, they all require a certain number of propaganda campaigns to have been activated, the further down the branch, the more they require.
79A Inheritor.png
79B Great Cmmander.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Finally, the focus Father of Nations will replace Stalin’s starting trait, culminating the branch with a “fully-traited” Stalin (WIP values), ready to carry out a world conquest!
80 Father of Nations.png
ManoDeZombi · Aug 4, 2021 at 15:00
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Aaaaand that was all from me! It was a long diary but I hope that you guys enjoyed all the new stuff we’ve been working on! (I definitely enjoyed working on it!)
Make sure to stay tuned for the next dev diary, where we will talk about the opposition against Stalin!
Be seeing you, comrades!
P.S. By the time this diary goes live I will be on vacation. I will do my best to try and answer any questions or concerns you guys might have, but I might not be able to answer right away, so please be patient
