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HoI 4 Dev Diary - Manchukuo

Hello and welcome back to another Dev Diary. This week we will look at the last unrevealed focus tree for Waking the Tiger: Manchukuo.


Manchukuo is perhaps one of the weirdest players in the Chinese Civil War. Formally an Empire led by an Emperor, it was also a puppet. Despite owning a large chunk of China, it was never able to field the numbers the other Chinese factions brought to the fight. Despite being ruled by the last legitimate Son of Heaven, no one particularly liked this government.


Capture_intro.JPG



As such, your position at the start of the game is precarious at best. You have practically no support from the population, your industry base is mostly working for the Japanese, your army is somewhat less than befitting your station and to start with, there are bandits running around the country causing havoc.


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So your first step has to be the pacification of the countryside. You can do this by either maintaining a military presence in the relevant areas or spending some manpower and infantry equipment in a more aggressive campaign to hunt them down. You should hurry, though, as the bandit raids will damage your infrastructure and industry if you let them proceed too long.


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Once the country is reasonably pacified, you face a more difficult choice: Either you decide to be an obedient little puppet or you start down on your path to independence and restoring the Empire that has always been yours by birth.


We developers, of course, withhold any judgment about which path you take.


Should you choose to remain a mere pathetic lapdog of the Japanese, you sell your dignity and freedom very dear indeed, as that branch gives you a much more powerful economy. Five year plans allow you to shape the direction of your industry for the next, well, five years, giving you the option to focus on industrial growth, military production or aircraft development. You will gain more infrastructure and factories along the way.


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Finally, by allying with the Kwantung Army, you can position yourself as the natural leader of China from the Japanese perspective and get all captured Chinese territories turned over to you. Only then can you gain some autonomy and finally arrive at an equal standing with your supposed “Brother-Emperor”.


Should you, however, decide to take a stand for your freedom and independence and assert yourself, you will have a much harder job ahead of you as your imperial masters will not invest nearly as heavily into your state.



hoi4_120.jpg


More than that, in order to gain your independence, you will have to be patient and gain some small concessions here and there. The next fundamental choice for you is whether you want to turn your country into a society dominated by Manchus, or if you will make good on the propaganda of five equal races under one banner. Each will give you different advantages.

Afterwards, you will at last prepare for the war of independence against Japan (we actually had to rewrite our war system to allow you to be at war with both Japan and China, while they are also at war with each other). However, this branch will allow you to eventually get rid of the penalties from low legitimacy as you climb the ladder to restore your Imperial rule all across China. Once you break free from your Japanese overlords, you will once again be known as Qing China. Conquering the rest of China allows you to claim the Mandate of Heaven and announce yourself to the world as The Chinese Empire (2.0)


hoi4_121.jpg



Much like the other main Chinese factions (Nationalists and Communists), Manchukuo has access to the shared focus tree that allows them to build up their industry and develop new technologies. Owing to its position in the world, the only viable paths at game start are Germany and Japan, but breaking free will give you the opportunity to reach out to new partners.


That is all for this week. There will be a dev diary next week, but we won't tell you what it is just yet (we are working on a number of things that may or may not be done in time for the dev diary). At World War Wednesday today, our intrepid team of Daniel and Gabriel will continue to try and conquer China while making some of the worst jokes known to humanity. Tune in at 16:00 CET and ask your questions about the focus tree: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


Rejected Titles for this Dev Diary:

China - under new MANagement

This Focus tree sponsored by Burger Qing

MAN-spreading all over China

Henry Puyi and the Dragon Throne

This focus tree will make a MAN out of you

This DLC is basically MAN-datory

Hail to the Qing

Coming up with rejected titles took longer than writing the rest of this diary
 
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Anything's fine for me, really, but Chiang was a dictator clearly not interested in democracy. There needs to be an authoritarian path as a historical option much like Manchuria is getting a path that has it as a complaint Japanese puppet. I do want a democratic option and some of your ideas are nice, but there needs to be that historical branch there as well.

He was a military dictator, and had certainly no wish to give people actual democracy. However, he was willing to make concessions in some way. So I think if we want to remain non-aligned (I do), we can settle for a compromise by allowing elections while making Chiang president for life as he did historically.

To me, the democratic branch actually seems to be leaning towards allowing elections as non-aligned, while keeping the KMT as top dog. The People's Tutelage was still a temporary thing, after all. If China was undergoing a full transition to democracy, the Democratic focus would be the final capstone. Here it seems they're just gonna implement the KMT's planned features to ease the system into democracy, but not make it straight away.

I suspect that we'll still have the Democratic Advisor, so if we want full elections we can elect Zhang Lan and the CDL will do so.
 
He was a military dictator, and had certainly no wish to give people actual democracy. However, he was willing to make concessions in some way. So I think if we want to remain non-aligned (I do), we can settle for a compromise by allowing elections while making Chiang president for life as he did historically.

To me, the democratic branch actually seems to be leaning towards allowing elections as non-aligned, while keeping the KMT as top dog. The People's Tutelage was still a temporary thing, after all. If China was undergoing a full transition to democracy, the Democratic focus would be the final capstone. Here it seems they're just gonna implement the KMT's planned features to ease the system into democracy, but not make it straight away.

I suspect that we'll still have the Democratic Advisor, so if we want full elections we can elect Zhang Lan and the CDL will do so.
I do understand that it's "democracy with Chinese characteristics", as someone cleverly put it in the other thread, but I do think it's still too democratic for someone who reigned as President for Life and instituted a system of brutal political oppression that continued until after his death. His concessions were in order to get support, and while I'm not saying he wouldn't have kept his word, we'll never really know if he planned to for certain.

I do not see China becoming democratic realistically within Chiang's lifetime, even if he did win the Civil War, and definitely not within the game's time span. At least not for a historical path.

If you have TfW I guess the road to independence is by gaining autonomy points, and staying puppet would be autonomy penalties. How will it work if you don't have TfW?
Don't hold me to it, but I saw someone mention that they're planing to implement the autonomy system into the base game.
 
I do understand that it's "Democracy with Chinese characteristics", as someone cleverly put it in the other thread, but I do think it's still too democratic for someone who reigned as President for Life and instituted a system of brutal political oppression that continued until after his death. His concessions were in order to get support, and while I'm not saying he wouldn't have kept his word, we'll never really know if he planned to for certain.

I do not see China becoming democratic realistically within Chiang's lifetime, even if he did win the Civil War, and definitely not within the game's time span. At least not for a historical path.


Don't hold me to it, but I saw someone mention that they're planing to implement the autonomy system into the base game.

The political decisions for China may hold some special features. I suspect that they'll be a continual decision that helps the KMT centralize power, and of course there's gonna be a decision to ban all actual communist parties.

Also you can found and set up the BIS in one of the focuses, which is probably going to focus on brutal political repression along with increasing PP gain, suppressing communist partisans, etc. So that aspect of Chiang's dictatorship might be in there.

Regarding Chiang being sincere - Mitter has been mulling over that in his book in the war. He believes that the KMT did intend to introduce their own system of democracy, but it was sharply different from most Western democratic governments. He notes that Chiang was certainly a dictator, but he was still vastly devoted to Dr. Sun's ideas.

There's also a quote from Chiang in his later years on Taiwan:

"If when I die, I am still a dictator, I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a truly stable foundation for a democratic government, I will live forever in every home in China."

We know he didn't establish the foundation, instead became more brutal, and went down in Taiwanese history as a dictator they want to forget. Chiang Ching-Kuo did, but isn't going to have his picture placed up in Taiwanese homes because he didn't cultivate a cult of personality like his dad tried too.
 
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The political decisions for China may hold some special features. I suspect that they'll be a continual decision that helps the KMT centralize power, and of course there's gonna be a decision to ban all actual communist parties.
Don't you agree that a democratic path for the Republic of China as its only path is very ahistoric though? Even if it is authoritarian democracy. You said yourself that the Republic of China was a military dictatorship and, really, how likely is it that it would be any different if the ROC came out on top following the war with Japan? Assuming that they even do come out on top. With the tree the way it is, the ROC will democratize before the war is even over. Which is fine for alternate history, but for the historical path? I don't think so.

Also, wouldn't it be correct to have all communist parties banned right off the bat in 1936 for the ROC? I think they will do this since there's no communist path for them.
 
Don't you agree that a democratic path for the Republic of China as its only path is very ahistoric though? Even if it is authoritarian democracy. You said yourself that the Republic of China was a military dictatorship and, really, how likely is it that it would be any different if the ROC came out on top following the war with Japan? Assuming that they even do come out on top. With the tree the way it is, the ROC will democratize before the war is even over. Which is fine for alternate history, but for the historical path? I don't think so.

Also, wouldn't it be correct to have all communist parties banned right off the bat in 1936 for the ROC? I think they will do this since there's no communist path for them.

I do agree. It is odd for them to have a democratic path. I'm just floating around ideas that it doesn't mean turning democratic, and how the KMT can remain the non-aligned military dictatorship they truly were. I know it's ahistoric in a way, but we can't do much about that. They were one historically, and Chiang would certainly suppress any calls for true democracy.

The best way to solve this issue is to lock the Democratic branch until you reach a certain level of stability or war support, which will usually happen by the war's end. Or if you have done enough reforms in the decisions branch.
 
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I do agree. It is odd for them to have a democratic path. I'm just floating around ideas that it doesn't mean turning democratic, and how the KMT can remain the non-aligned military dictatorship they truly were. I know it's ahistoric in a way, but we can't do much about that.

The best way to solve this issue is to lock the Democratic branch until you reach a certain level of stability or war support, which will usually happen by the war's end. Or if you have done enough reforms in the decisions branch.
I just really hope they go back to it and make another path before they release the DLC. They mentioned that DLC focus trees won't get more than minor updates after they're released, so this might be the only chance at a historic option for the ROC.
 
I just really hope they go back to it and make another path before they release the DLC. They mentioned that DLC focus trees won't get more than minor updates after they're released, so this might be the only chance at a historic option for the ROC.

Tell you what, perhaps we could put this in the suggestions thread?
 
If you have TfW I guess the road to independence is by gaining autonomy points, and staying puppet would be autonomy penalties. How will it work if you don't have TfW?
well the Japanese get their own puppet system, same goes for DoD where you had the German puppet system. Given that is a paid feature I presume they will include it in each and every DLC where it is relevant.
 
Probably a good idea, but I did already mention it in the ROC dev diary. Would it really make much more of a difference?

It could. I suggest you outline your ideas for the alternate path in the post, as I can't think of anything else at the moment than a focus for centralizing power and increasing repression.
 
It could. I suggest you outline your ideas for the alternate path in the post, as I can't think of anything else at the moment than a focus for centralizing power and increasing repression.
I'll post something later today. Unfortunately, I don't think I can think of anything for the content of that branch so quickly. It's taken me a month to work on one tree for my mod and it isn't even half way done.
 
Definitely: Art-Dev, Dev Diary on the reworked wars system, final dev diary/patchnotes
Maybe: a Dev diary about AI improvements/bug fixes, Japanese Puppet system

Well at least February maybe even early march before release.....
 
Great. No release date yet and the AI seems to be so bad that the player will be able to invade and conquer Japan.
That picture is fake, look at the date. Otherwise Manchuria conquered Japan/China in days. They just triggered all the achievements and gave all the land to Manchuria via console command.
 
Definitely: Art-Dev, Dev Diary on the reworked wars system, final dev diary/patchnotes
Maybe: a Dev diary about AI improvements/bug fixes, Japanese Puppet system

Well at least February maybe even early march before release.....
I highly doubt it goes into March, they are running out of stuff to talk about.
 
I just really hope they go back to it and make another path before they release the DLC. They mentioned that DLC focus trees won't get more than minor updates after they're released, so this might be the only chance at a historic option for the ROC.

Well, it is the kind of politic that may change over time. Especially for China, which is a major.