THE WORST Focus Trees In Hearts of Iron 4

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#hoi4 #heartsofiron4 #tierlist

[clementdeformosa]

I feel each Chinese warlord should have their own focus tree, not totally copy from Nationalists and Communists focus tree

[sylvananas]

The problem with most focus trees are the 70 days only, 70 days spent for a simple bonus or something non major feels wasted

[CosyGrave]

0:30 Germany
1:34 US
2:40 UK
3:37 France
5:08 Italy
6:23 Japan
8:07 China
9:23 USSR
10:54 Poland
12:02 Turkey
13:27 Ethiopia
15:18 Bulgaria
16:25 Canada
17:17 Czechoslovakia
17:51 Greece
18:22 Yugoslavia
19:02 Mexico
19:45 Netherlands
20:26 Switzerland
20:53 (S)pain
21:30 Portugal
22:07 Hungary
22:39 Romania
23:09 The Baltic countries
23:30 British Raj
24:10 Chinese warlords
24:52 PRC
25:22 Manchukuo
25:41 Australia
26:21 New Zeland
26:52 Sultanate of Aussa
27:16 South Africa
28:11 Nepal (Generic)

[berkayylmaz]

i think the purpose of soviet's focus tree is to create an ultimate role play game. you can go agressive/neutral/defensive stance, you can fulfill stalins socialism in one country policy or export communism to the world, or you can go bukharins planned economy, so many advisors, commanders, options etc.
its really fun to do a world conquest when playing soviet union espically on higher difficulties

edit: i started to comment and now a wanna go play soviet union. srsly its really addictive :D

[Mini]

"I don't like the purge mechanic, I feel like people just die randomly, you don't really have a lot of control over it."

Yup, sounds like a Soviet purge to me. Working as intended.

[saopro]

The fact that USSR isn't S tier is a war crime. The purge mechanics are interesting and take genuine skill to maneuver around. You have to take into account purge cooldown times, paranoia lowering focuses as well as decisions in order to get the least amount of non-focus purge event ppl killed (i.e., zero army generals/advisors and political advisors, because no one gives a shit about the soviet navy). Historical is really good, especially the race against time of getting your industry focuses (and using the research bonuses meaningfully) before barb. Even alt-history paths are good because of the pre-civil war buildup (choosing your capital, taking states, blaming ppl, swaying ppl, etc.) makes it interesting. The judgement you gave, to me, indicates someone who hasn't played with the country enough.

[berkayylmaz]

i also think turkey's focus tree completion times need to be halved again. i mean even on 35 days it takes forever because there are so many focuses to complete to actually join war. 21 and 14 days for some focuses should be ideal

[zaph]

I think the Soviet focus tree is S+, absolute banger focus tree. It forces you to make conscious choices about how you want to build up and what areas you focus on. Like if I want to build a fat industry I aim for completing the 5 year plan ASAP. I could focus on the navy and do the reinforce bases focuses, and get tons of dockyards early, or I could focus on early expansion by going down the Comintern part of the tree and getting my subjugation decisions and war goals. There are so many unique runs you can do with it even when sticking to Stalin's path and I love that. Italy's new focus tree is amazing in this regard too.

With some of the older countries it's very linear. Germany - Rhineland, Anschluss, Sudetenland, Poland, Soviets. Same thing each run I feel, not much variation. Japan suffers from the same issue, as well as China. At least with countries like France you get the cool option to reform the Entente if you want, or as the UK you can go interventionist and muck about in Scandinavia and the Benelux.

Personally what I'd do to improve the focus trees is add (as mentioned before) more choices. Give me options to boost my industry in one area or another. Give me a choice to focus on a particular branch of the military. Give me unique national spirits, decisions and events where picking a particular option matters somehow. Just things to add flavour so I can look at the game in retrospect and go "yeah, that was a cool campaign".

[stefanburkhard]

As a swiss and a history nerd, I'm really conflicted when it comes to the swiss focus tree. On one side, the "look and feel" is really cool, they really managed to capture the style and attitude of the time in Switzerland. I generally like how they tried to reflect the specialities of the swiss political system in game and I think they did a good job at. Gameplay-wise however, the tree is pretty underwhelming, confusing and weird to interact with. Really sad overall...

[afass.]

in my opinion the soviet tree is really great, if you are on historical and rush the purges you can avoid people randomly beeing purged fairly easy, at least if you have some pp for the purge decisions sved up. the propaganda mechanic is great and something really important to understand is, that you have to make decisions. Just ignore the red airforce if you want to focus on your industry, or dont do the propaganda if you want to rush your army improvements. And while the civil wars for the alt hist paths are tidious, the Right opposition communist path allows you to have a peacful coup if you chose so.

as a side not i think all polish paths, historical or not are great

[TexanNative]

I love Spains focus tree, I can’t believe he said Raj’s is better 😢

[jba]

One thing that I think PDX should do is bring those older style trees up to par with the brand new ones. Currently it's possible to see "four eras" of focus trees within the game (1-first launch; 2-TfV and DoD; 3-WtT, LaR, BftB, and MtG; and 4-NSB and BBA). The generic tree is the only "era 1" tree left I think, but it's painfully obvious at times that some of the era 2 and 3 trees need some work to get up to the era 4 current standard.
Edit: Forgot BftB and LaR

[archer]

still sucks they didn't make Finland focus tree in NSB. I get they might wanna include them in future DLC around Scandinavian nations, but it feels it belongs more in NSB which is focused on German-Soviet war and it took direct part in it. in game playing as Soviet Union you can have a very easy winter war (or even skip it outright) and then forget about Finland altogether which is pretty ahistorical, because no Continuation war.

[れいい-qm]

Still major issue I have with Japan is that once you start your big war you’re stuck in it. Like ok so you expect me to go all the way to England to knock them out?

[Rudron]

I feel a little bit sad for Czechoslovakia focus tree, even more after trying The Road to 56. We were one of the most industrial countries at that time, with massive industry, a professional army with around 280k people and after mobilization 1, 25 million people and more importantly advanced for that time, sadly history showed what happened, and after literally getting backstabbed by mainly France, just surrended.

[strikestehl]

On the subject of nations changing paths if your major nation does, I had an extremely bizarre incident that happened on historical when I went for some German Empire achievements. When I won my civil war as Germany, Britain went Fascist. All of a sudden things went drastically different as I spent my time setting up against the British Empire. Things went even weirder when Italy lost the war in Ethiopia because of course they would, starting a communist uprising. I restored the Central Powers and consumed France, then defended against the Allies consisting of Fascist Britain, Communist Italy, and Ethiopia once they went in on the war. It was an absolutely fascinating game to play resulting in all of Europe and Africa allied together as the Soviets declared war on a Central Powers-aligned Poland.

So having a neighbor change ideologies in response to you is a great way to spice things up.

[AK-bmyl]

Spain has the worst gameplay. The Civil War that if you don't cheese will take a year at least, and then you don't have cores on your own territory, so you have to spend more resources and PP to get them back as a core. You don't play the game until 1943

[ikeamaistr]

I feel Spain is very good. Unlike in every other Focus trees Spain has military, political, economical and research put into this one big tree and that feels fairly unique. Anarchists are super fun, having the ability to effectively core any territory you conquer is interesting, the rest is pretty okay too, gives you all sorts of flavours... I'd give it at least solid A. Sure it can feel "linear" since its just "going down through the tree" but you have all options right at the start of the game and it is up to you which path you'll take.

I agree with the rest. I'd very love to see Asian nations Focus tree tweaked. Japan needs proper alt. paths, Chinese warlords could use their own small focus trees and complete overhaul of the "All-Chinas focus tree" part. Also Australia and New Zealand could use a bit more love too.

[seangallagher]

Any tree with a unification path (that isn’t asinine to get like the byzantines) is a great path. Poland Estonia and Lithuania are all my favorite trees because you have so many options.

Also I kind of like the older ones. Romania is a fairly strong country with some good manpower, similar to turkey, but you can just start going almost immediately. If they redid Romania i can bet you they would have so much bloat with changing nationality, balancing fascism, give them massive army debuffs that would make Romania a chore for the first 4 years of the game.

[CoffeeSuccubus]

Italy went from F tier to S tier for me.

That's hilarious. The worst tree, meme tree, becomes swole doge