This is the first half of the third part (I<\/a>, II<\/a>) of our long-delayed series looking at Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>, Paradox Interactive\u2019s World War II grand strategy game, easily one of the most popular historical games on the market today and thus tremendously influential in both the popular history and gaming spaces.<\/p>\n Over the last two parts, we took a look at the military simulation that sits at the heart of Hearts of Iron<\/em>, a division-level operational simulation of World War II, along with the doctrinal framework that contextualizes what is actually happening as divisions collide along the game\u2019s front lines. While the doctrinal system struggles to really accurately represent the different ways that armies attempted to fight in the Second World War, the overall operational simulator is a remarkable achievement. Alas, the discussion is going to turn somewhat more critical from here as we move from the operational focus of the game \u2013 where the bulk of developer time and attention have gone \u2013 to the \u2018everything else\u2019 of the game, where simplifications and streamlining often go awry.<\/p>\n In this part, we\u2019re going to move upwards to the strategic level, beginning with the question of politics<\/em>, particularly domestic politics. Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> has an understandably more simplified approach to politics than games like Victoria II<\/em> <\/a>or III<\/em> <\/a>or even Europa Universalis V<\/em><\/a> which are substantially focused on questions of how changing conditions alter the political and economic balance of a polity. Simplified, however, does not mean absent: Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> does have a \u2018theory of history\u2019 when it comes to the politics of the period.<\/p>\n Unfortunately \u2013 and I will not bury the lede here \u2013 Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>\u2018s simplified politics serve to present an essentially authoritarian vision of politics in which the opinion of the people matters essentially not at all, where state power can easily and effortlessly shape outcomes and where authoritarian central direction is easy, frictionless and never produces unintended results and where democracy comes effectively only with drawbacks. It is a vision of politics that begs the question in favor of empire and autocracy, where the only way to achieve social, cultural or political change is to first have control of the state. Governments in Hearts of Iron<\/em> do not fall, they cannot be overthrown, they can only decide to abolish themselves<\/em>, so absolute is authoritarian state power.<\/p>\n It is thus not inaccurate to say that Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>\u2018s political model, as a result of careless simplification is fascist<\/strong><\/em>, in that it assumes that all politics flows down from the state, dictated by the leader and merely accepted by the people who do not exist as individuals, but merely units of state power. I do not think that the developers set out to build a fascist model of politics (indeed, I know they didn\u2019t), but alas, despite themselves, in an effort to get the player \u2018to the action\u2019 with as little friction as possible, they have done so.<\/p>\n But first, if you like what you are reading here, please share it, as I rely on word of mouth to replenish my manpower pool after poorly considered post topics. If you really like it, you can support me, my academic work and my public writing, including this project on Patreon<\/a>! I can\u2019t promise to use your support to buy a division worth of tanks, but I also will not promise not to do that. If you want updates whenever a new post appears or want to hear my more bite-sized musings on history, security affairs and current events, you can follow me on Bluesky (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social). I am also active on Threads (bretdevereaux) and maintain a de minimis<\/em> presence on Twitter (@bretdevereaux).<\/p>\n On the surface, Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> appears to have the components of an interesting political simulation: each country has a governing ideology<\/strong> along with a pie-chart of what ideologies are popular<\/strong> with the populace, along with stability<\/strong> (representing how stable the government is) and war support<\/strong> (reflecting how committed the populace is to the war). The problem is two-fold: none of these mechanics are very developed<\/strong> and none of these mechanics interact meaningfully with each other<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The system, such as it is, begins with ideology<\/strong> and here we run into immediate problems in representing the actual political conditions inside of most countries in the period. There are just four ideologies: democratic, communist, fascist and non-aligned. While the game does have \u2018sub-ideologies\u2019 (for instance, \u2018liberalism,\u2019 \u2018conservatism,\u2019 \u2018socialism\u2019 and \u2018populism\u2019 for democracy) these have functionally no influence on gameplay \u2013 their sum effect is to determine if your \u2018same ideology\u2019 diplomatic opinion bonus is +20 or merely +10, both numbers which in actual gameplay are either indistinguishable from zero or indistinguishable from 100, depending on what you are trying to do. So in practice, there are just the four ideologies<\/strong>.<\/p>\n These ideologies do matter, because the governing ideology of a country determines what actions it can take, although in practice this is just an exciting set of disabilities applied to democracies<\/strong>. Democracies are heavily limited in the actions they can take, particularly not being able to declare war without meeting specific conditions, with requirements that \u2018world tension\u2019 (the amount of conflict in the game) reach certain levels before they can take actions. Democracies that guarantee the independent of other countries lower<\/em> world tension, which in the game mechanically is bad<\/em> for them, because democracies have a lot more things (like conscription and mobilization laws) gated behind world tension. Communist, non-aligned and fascist governments largely lack these limitations and thus have much greater freedom of action to mobilize earlier (which, as we\u2019ll see in a later post, is simply better<\/em> rather than being a truly strategic choice) and attack more freely.<\/p>\n The idea<\/em> here is to model the challenge of bringing the United States and United Kingdom onto a war footing before the war began but in practice, mechanically, democracy is simply a weaker form of government in Hearts of Iron<\/em><\/strong>. It is striking that no effort is made to simulate the strengths that democratic governments displayed in this period, particularly in adaptability and economic mobilization. Historically, the United Kingdom, a fraction of the size of Hitler\u2019s continental European empire after 1940, nevertheless outproduced it<\/em> in key categories like aircraft.<\/p>\n The game tracks the popularity of specific ideologies in a given country with a pie-chart, but the insufficiency of this model becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly. While each country often has a unique name for each ideology, representing actual political parties in the period, divisions within<\/em> an ideology are not represented. So, for instance, the United States is represented as having 99% popular \u2018Democratic\u2019 ideology. The idea here is that in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>\u2018s really simplified politics, the Republican and Democratic parties of 1936 are indistinguishable \u2013 both \u2018Democratic\u2019 ideology parties \u2013 and so are combined (though this is still too high \u2013 Socialist third-party candidates generally got ~2-3% in the federal elections of this period). It also strikes me as wrong<\/em> \u2013 the fact that Strom Thurmond leading a \u2018State\u2019s Rights\u2019 party (a segregationist party that probably ought to be classified at least as non-aligned given its intent to restrict the franchise) would go on to win four states in 1948 (within the game\u2019s timeframe!) suggests that there was a meaningful constituency for a less democratic United States even in the 1940s.<\/p>\n Other countries suffer the same \u2018party compression.\u2019 The game has no way to distinguish in the UK between the Tories and Labour, so it doesn\u2019t: they\u2019re merged into a Tory (Democracy Ideology) mega-party with an unshakeable lock on politics. Pre-war Germany\u2019s situation in 1936 are likewise simplified: the Nazi party starts with 50% popular support, while there is a chunk of Democratic ideological support (marked as Zentrum, despite the fact that the party had dissolved itself under Nazi pressure in July of 1933), communist support (the KPD) and some non-aligned. The SPD\/Sopade isn\u2019t represented at all.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, there is the absolute mess of the \u2018non-aligned\u2019 ideology, which encompasses non-fascist despotism, traditional absolute monarchy, quasi-democratic oligarchies, colonial dependencies and even the fractured, military-dominated political structure of the Japanese Empire. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the \u2018non-aligned\u2019 category functions as effectively a \u2018grab bag\u2019 for every country that doesn\u2019t fit into the first three categories. In practice, the game thus largely treats \u2018non-aligned\u2019 as thus an absence<\/em> of ideology: there is no way to start a global \u2018non-aligned\u2019 movement<\/em> the way that democracies, fascists and communists can all create (or start with) factions aimed at promoting their ideology.<\/p>\n The result is a political system that simply lacks the granularity to represent politics as they existed in many countries in the period<\/strong>, which as we\u2019ll see, mostly doesn\u2019t matter for the game because this system barely matters for political change compared to the much greater influence of the focus system and political advisors. The game does have mechanics<\/em> for elections, but in most of the major democracies, with all of the pro-democracy parties fused, that doesn\u2019t mean much.<\/p>\n Popular ideology can change<\/strong> over the course of the game, but this too is extremely simplified. In practice, most countries have access to advisors they can hire (at the cost of 150 political power) who will cause popular opinion to trend towards one ideology at a rate of 0.10% per day. For some countries, getting this advisor requires completing a few national focuses (see below) to get on the right track for an ideology switch. But I want to stress how big<\/strong><\/em> that rate is: at +0.1 per day (the standard rate for the \u2018Communist Revolutionary, Fascist Demagogue, Democratic Reformer and Staunch Monarchist advisors) a country could go from having no support at all<\/strong><\/em> for a given kind of government to having enough support (50%) to transition to that entirely new kind of government<\/strong><\/em> with little to no issues at all in less than a year and a half<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You just have to hire the right one guy<\/strong><\/em>. Also, this requires a government to decide to hire an advisor whose entire purpose is to undermine the government, overthrow it and in many cases presumably murder every other<\/em> member of the government, but we\u2019ll come back to that.<\/p>\n A similar lack of consequence assails stability<\/strong> and war-support<\/strong> as mechanics. Both stats offer bonuses when above 50% and penalties below 50% and in theory<\/em> low war support can feed back into low stability which can in theory<\/em> feed back into creating a political crisis. In practice, this almost never happens. War support acts as a more-or-less fixed value (it isn\u2019t meaningfully responsive to casualties) which can be raised through war propaganda (costing political power, see below), while stability is likewise generally a fairly static value. Generally, the internal politics of states in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> are extremely stable such that the player needs to actively intervene to force<\/em> political crises (sometimes a tool to intentionally change governing ideology early).<\/p>\n Our United Kingdom campaign comes with several examples of this sort of a-historical stability. The game requires, for instance, a bespoke event to transition from Neville Chamberlain\u2019s government to that of Winston Churchill because the political system is both not granular enough to model the Norway Debate <\/a>and subsequent vote of confidence happening as a debate within<\/em> a political ideology as a result of serious policy setbacks.<\/p>\n Likewise, somewhat famously, support in the Wehrmacht for the invasion of France in 1940 was tepid and a number of high ranking officers were on the verge of attempting a coup if the invasion of France had failed. Of course, historically it succeeded, cementing Hitler\u2019s power through to the end of the war. But Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> has no way to model the failure<\/em> of Fall Gelb<\/em> (the invasion of the Low Countries) as a political event which might imperil the Nazi regime. Instead, unless the player is actively and aggressively attempting to intervene in internal German politics in ahistorical ways, Germany remains fully committed to Hitler\u2019s vision down to the end of the war.<\/p>\n Instead, the political system serves as an essentially minimal<\/em> scaffolding necessary to produce what Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> actually cares about: the operational simulation<\/strong>. This is perhaps most obvious in the choice of political advisors and military staff, representing essentially key figures in something like a cabinet and a general staff respectively. But while these advisors are named after historical figures (with portraits), they are for the most part just a set of standard bonuses the player is choosing between in preparation for the operational simulator. Any sense that these choices might be dictated by domestic politics is removed by the fact that these slots always (I am unaware of any exceptions) begin empty<\/em>, so that assembling a collection of advisors \u2013 really a collection of advisor-themed bonuses \u2013 is a key expenditure of political power in getting ready for the war during the 1930s.<\/p>\n But apart from advisors whose only specific purpose<\/em> is to promote a specific ideology (which you only choose if you intend to ideology switch to that ideology, there isn\u2019t any need to \u2018defend\u2019 the popularity of your current governing ideology because of how static the political model is here), these \u2018advisors\u2019 do not interact with your domestic political situation at all.<\/p>\n This is, however, in stark contrast to the thing that does matter quite a lot.<\/p>\n Part of the reason the political mechanics remain largely skeletal is that for the most part core player political decision-making doesn\u2019t take place there: it takes place in the focus tree<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Every country in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> has a focus tree and nearly all of them are unique. This is a significant change from HoI4<\/em>\u2018s structure on release, where only a handful of countries (the major powers) had unique focus trees, while every other country has a \u2018default\u2019 focus tree. However, years of updates and DLCs have added bespoke focus trees to nearly<\/em> every country on the map, with the result that only a handful of small countries use that \u2018default\u2019 focus tree. Some countries, however, still have far more developed focus trees than others, which gives a good sense of where the developers expect most players to spend their time (unsurprisingly, major players like the USSR, Germany, Japan all have very expensive trees; the trees for the USA and the UK are more developed than for most minors but also very obviously not at the same level as those for the other major powers \u2013 an implication we\u2019ll come back to when we discussing modding).<\/p>\n Each node on the focus tree (a \u2018national focus\u2019) represents a specific political decision meant to represent a choice to focus the government on a specific aim for a short period (generally 70 days). These are arranged in a series of \u2018trees\u2019 where earlier foci unlock the ability to choose later ones and where branches are frequently mutually exclusive, forcing the player to choose a political direction which may then last over several foci. Most foci are fairly direct, offering some sort of bonus (easier research in a field, some new factories, a small permanent bonus called a \u2018national spirit\u2019) once completed, but most countries have a part of their focus tree designed to allow them to switch governing ideology through a series of foci that empower a specific different ideology, and many countries also have foci that unlock casus bellorum<\/em> enabling them to go to war where they might not otherwise be able to do so.<\/p>\n So in practice, each country begins the game by selecting a focus of the few available at the top of tree. This triggers a timer (typically 70 days, but many shorter 35-day foci exist, particularly in recently updated trees) after which the focus is completed, the country gets the bonus and a new focus is selected, with a few new choices opened up in the tree by the completion of the first focus and so on.<\/p>\n Enacting a focus is not entirely<\/em> free. The game attempts to simulate the \u2018political capital\u2019 that a government has through a political power<\/strong> currency, which most countries generate at a rate of 2 per day. This currency is used to hire new advisors and to change a country\u2019s laws (most notably conscription and economic mobilization laws) and is usually in short supply, particularly in the early game. Enacting a focus costs 1 political power per day<\/strong> (representing the governments efforts to get the job done), so most foci<\/em> cost 70 political power, which is about half of what most advisors or law changes cost.<\/p>\n That said<\/em>, national foci are powerful enough that it is fairly rare that any player would want to ignore them for the political power cost (except, rarely, right before a war is about to start, where a player wants to stockpile political power to be able to rapidly shift to stronger mobilization and conscription laws). Instead, the tendency is to have a focus running continuously well into the mid-game, making the key decisions here what focuses to take<\/strong> and in what order<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The range of what national focuses can do is unsurprisingly vast, but there is a common structure, generally. Most countries have a branch of the tree devoted to developing industry, which offers bonus civilian and military factories, extra building slots and research bonuses for that sort of thing, alongside a branch that instead focuses on military development, often unlocking research bonuses for specific kinds of units and national spirits that offer country-specific bonuses to production or combat. For countries that historically had active air or naval arms, this part of the tree is often split into non-mutually exclusive branches between the services, forcing the player to prioritize what part of their military to focus on first<\/em>.<\/p>\n Then there is generally a series of \u2018political paths,\u2019 which often encompass together both domestic and foreign policy. Typically at the top of these trees is the crucial decision to either remain the ideology the country starts as or to attempt to shift ideology, with various ideology shifts having a series of foci which often empower that ideology. Indeed, and this seems worth noting, in a lot of cases, these foci exert a substantially stronger ideological push on a country\u2019s population than most other options the player has, either by unlocking specific ticking modifiers or by unlocking specific decisions (often culminating in a civil war in which the player can, by winning, force the ideology switch). Generally tucked into the political path are also a set of foreign policy choices, usually to include focuses that result in allying with countries of similar ideologies or \u2013 for more expansionist ideologies (which is to say not the democratic ones) \u2013 foci that offer war goals against various countries to enable military expansion.<\/p>\n The result of all of this is that the key big picture decisions are not made in the political system itself, but rather in the focus system<\/strong>. If the player wants to, say, take Britain non-aligned they do so not by really engaging deeply with the political system, but by selecting the non-aligned focus path, which actually has a focus that starts popular opinion moving non-aligned. This creates something of an oddity because under normal circumstances, the player is clearly positioned as the government<\/em>, but a player who intends to ideology shift is plotting against<\/em> their government. In essence, Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> imagines that the way a county shifts ideologies is that the existing government opts to spend precious political capital undermining itself<\/em> in order to prepare the war for a civil war it intends to lose<\/em>.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen this problem before, where Paradox titles struggle to decide if the player plays as a government<\/em> or as the disembodied \u2018spirit\u2019 of a state, but of course the idea that nations have spirits<\/em> at all is a loaded, contested one<\/strong>, bound up with nationalist notions of \u2018national destiny.\u2019 Notably, however, the player is very clearly<\/em> not<\/em> an expression of the actual public will: at no point is the player actually constrained to follow the popular<\/em> ideology: it is only the ruling<\/em> ideology that constrains them. The people and their ideology are, in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em> for the most part just clay, eager and ready to be molded by the player\u2019s simple decision to click this<\/em> button and not that <\/em>one<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And to be clear I think it isn\u2019t too hard to understand why<\/em> the game has been designed this way: if the core of the Hearts of Iron<\/em> experience is the operational simulation, then everything else is simply a frame to get the player to that simulation<\/strong>. But of course for the most popular grand strategy game<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 which is the genre label Paradox prefers for its games \u2013 that is a troubling framework because it greatly simplifies the strategic and political layer.<\/p>\n To explain how, I am going to borrow a term from Samantha Hancox-Li<\/a>, who called Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>\u2018s approach meme politics<\/strong>. Hancox-Li defines the idea of \u2018meme politics\u2019 as consisting of three conjoined political assumptions:<\/p>\n And I think that is a relatively fair description of the focus tree system\u2019s approach to politics. Each focus declares, right on the tin, exactly what it will do and these choices never go awry \u2013 even the foci that can cause a civil war<\/em> will have that clearly declared in their descriptions in advance. I find this particularly striking when it comes to industrial policy: just about every country has an industrial policy section of the focus tree, where in most cases they are merely selecting the \u201cI would like more civilian and\/or military factories 35 or 70 days from now\u201d focus and letting it run. <\/p>\n But of course in practice<\/em> in the real world, industrial policy is remarkably difficult and very frequently goes wrong: government interventions often lead to reduplicated efforts, sectors bloated beyond requirements, or they simply fail. Even a casual read of something like Adam Tooze\u2019s The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy<\/em><\/a> (2006) reveals how much of a confused muddle Nazi industrial policy was. Allied armaments and economic efforts fared better, but were still often chaotic and impromptu at the time \u2013 initial US estimates of the military production possible in 1942, for instance, were wildly over-optimistic \u2013 akin to a situation where the \u2018build military factory\u2019 focus says<\/em> it will add ten military factories but only adds five (or none!). But that simply cannot happen<\/em> in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>.<\/p>\n Likewise, there is rarely much meaningful pushback<\/em> for these focuses: they do what they say they do and only very few carry the possibility of blowback (which is \u2013 again, perfect information \u2013 clearly marked). An industrial plan never unexpectedly runs up against resistance from industrialists or workers or farmers or foreign financial interests. If you are playing as Communist China, you just trigger the \u2018Agricultural Reform\u2019 focus and \u2018The Great Production Movement\u2019 which just directly give you bonuses to construction speed and production because no industrial modernization movement led by Mao Zedong ever went wrong<\/a> due to incomplete information, faulty implementation or any problem of unfounded ideological assumptions.<\/p>\n This lack of blowback is, of course, most obvious in the domestic political branches of the trees. While in many cases switching governing ideology does require a civil war or comes with penalties to stability, in practice making the decision for the government to abolish itself<\/em> is as simple as clicking on the focus button, at which point the whole machinery of government \u2013 represented by the political power you are spending \u2013 gets to work on the job of becoming a different kind of government and unless that effort triggers an explicit civil war, no one tries to stop you<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Likewise, so long as you do not<\/em> trigger one of those ideology-shifting trees, government control is extremely stable. In practice, throughout the war, leaders were abundantly aware that their power might be fragile \u2013 that battlefield setbacks or other problems might compromise their ability to lead. Not so in Hearts of Iron IV<\/em>: governments are only fragile when they choose to be.<\/p>\n It is equally striking that in a game simulating an era of mass politics<\/strong>, the people matter very little<\/em> to this system<\/strong>. As noted above, radically changing the population\u2019s political beliefs in HoI4<\/em> is not hard \u2013 it is, in fact, very easy: it costs 150 political power to hire the single advisor who on their own<\/strong> will change a majority of the minds in the country in less than two years. 150 political power is, again, just about twice the cost of a single national focus or the same cost as moving a country\u2019s conscription or mobilization law by a single step. This is a model of politics where once a political faction gets into government, mass-converting the entire populace and country to their ideology is presented as easy<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>a process of simply hitting the right button.<\/p>\n When I was planning this series, I knew I\u2019d want an example of just how absurd<\/em> the outcomes that the focus tree can almost effortlessly give you are. Since we\u2019re doing a United Kingdom run in the background, I thought I would use the Imperial Federation decision-chain as an example.<\/p>\n Now the concept of something like an Imperial Federation is not entirely a-historic \u2013 like many of these \u2018alternate history\u2019 paths, it is based on an idea that was talked about in the period \u2013 although as equally frequent the case, an idea that never got very far. From 1887 to 1937, the British Empire held somewhat regular \u2018Imperial Conferences<\/a>,\u2019 where representatives of the constituent elements of the British Empire, including the Dominions, would meet. One of the ideas floated in the late 1880s and very early in the 1900s was the idea of creating a federal superstate encompassing the United Kingdom and the Dominions, an Imperial Federation; the idea never had tremendous support and was basically dead by 1926. But the United Kingdom focus tree lets you revive the concept and \u2013 solely as the United Kingdom, by pure force of political will (by which we mean pressing the button<\/strong>) force it through.<\/p>\n The entire sequence requires 12 national focuses, involving investments (fairly modest in scope and which come at no cost except the 70 day delay and political power cost of a focus) in the industry of India and the Dominions and then holding an Imperial Conference.<\/p>\n That then fires an event, the \u2018Imperial Conference,\u2019 at which the player can propose various common economic, military and political policies, at which point they can then propose an Imperial Federation. If all of the Dominions (potentially and the British Raj) accept, all of them get massive negative ticking autonomy, causing them to drift inexorably deeper under British control until the final Imperial Federation focus becomes available, annexing Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the British Raj into a single mega-state, the Commonwealth of Nations, which contrary to its name does not in any way function as a federal state, but rather as a single, unitary state of enormous size.<\/p>\n Now it is possible<\/em> for the Dominions to refuse \u2013 as they absolutely would have<\/strong><\/em> if this had been proposed in this period \u2013 but by raising their diplomatic opinion to +100, the player can guarantee a 100% acceptance rate. And \u2013 more meme politics \u2013 raising diplomatic opinion to 100 is simply a matter of clicking the \u2018improve relations\u2019 button, which will cost 10 political power to start (so almost nothing) and a ticking cost of 0.2 per day will raise relations to +100 in just a couple of months. Want to get the Canadians to like you so much they\u2019d give up self-government for you? Just hit the button<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The result is that in practice it takes a player-run United Kingdom just about two years to achieve something that in practice in the 1930s and 1940s was probably impossible at any level of effort<\/em>. The popular consciousness of entire countries is effortlessly molded, are a perfectly linear rate of x% per day, into whatever form is required.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2088DD1-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
The Dutch still managed to lose Java, but control of this area let me steadily work with a modest army to take Siam out of the war, then reclaim Dutch Indonesia and Borneo. Meanwhile, mounting IJN losses meant that the USA was actually able to support the Philippines, so by January of 1942, the war in the Pacific had already decisively shifted away from Japan.
I made the decision to remain focused on Europe, because the AI United States would have no problem defeating Japan at this point, so I kept my fleet operating in Indonesia to keep that area secure while the IJN was steadily dismantled by the USN.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nPolitics<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Untitled-drawing3.png?resize=960%2C489&ssl=1\")
On Focus<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image.png?resize=1024%2C180&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Britain-Political-Focus.png?resize=1024%2C483&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Germany-Political-Paths.png?resize=1024%2C578&ssl=1\")
You may notice that Germany\u2019s focus tree is so vast<\/strong> that it requires a handy navigation aid in the lower left to allow the player to quickly jump to each branch, something not present for the much smaller focus trees for Britain, France, the USSR or the United States (Japan, China and oddly, the British Raj, also have extremely large focus trees with navigator panels). This might suggest something<\/strong> about where the Hearts of Iron team is spending its resources and what they understand about their playerbase.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nMeme Politics<\/h2>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/20174B1.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
That said, by May, 1942 I had assembled a mobile force of 10 armored divisions and 10 supporting motorized divisions to attempt to \u2018punch outwards\u2019 and launched that offensive in June. The initial goal was to push out eastward from Utrecht and then use the relatively flat ground to run to the Weser before turning north to trap any Germany forces left in the northern Netherlands.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nImperialism by Focus<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Untitled-drawing2-1.png?resize=983%2C700&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/207D481.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")