Are huge focus trees (Turkey and Bulgaria) an overkill?

[Zeprion]

Let me start with: I enjoy an unique focus tree, like 99,8% of players.

But a huge focus tree can change from fun to confusing, especially when some of those focuses are rather restrictive, and you also have a lot of decisions.

In LaR, Spain has the hugest focus tree in the game, but that is understandable because Spain is basically 6 nations merged into one.

The only thing I truly disliked in LaR was that you get to have a communist revolution in France if your stability drops below 25%, even if France has 0% communist popularity.

But in the new DLC... the focuses of Bulgaria and Turkey are too big and for the most part too boring. It's an overkill, many of their focuses are just fillers until you get to the good ones.

And there are some dumb restriction too, such as Bulgaria's "Fate of the Balkans" focus. After you do that, you cannot join any other faction, ever. Why even make such a restriction? If a player wants to join a faction fine, if a player doesn't want to, also fine.

Or Romania's new Yugoslav annexation mechanic. A great improvement in my opinion, but they should have kept the old option to just make 3 puppets if the player desires to go that way, and they should have allowed Romania to invite Bulgaria, Greece and Albania as well. They can invite Hungary but not Bulgaria? And to keep it realistic, a democracy like Greece or country with good relations towards Yugoslavia can just refuse the invitation.

The new game mechanics of Turkey's "putting your country back together" and Bulgaria's "see how you please all parties" are just boring at best and annoying at worst in my opinion. Something to keep you occupied while you wait for the focuses to complete. This is a game about war. When playing Germany, I want to focus on the war machine, not paying taxes in Bavaria. I understand that all that was added was historically accurate, but too much micromanagement can make a country annoying to play, rather than fun.

At least it's not a major with such micromanagement decisions, I hope they don't add such a system in a future USSR or Italy DLC.

Greece's focus tree was fine. It was short and intuitive to understand. It didn't feel like it had fillers. The only thing I find weird was that Byzantium is on the democratic path. Shouldn't it be fascist or at the very least non-aligned?

I just hope this was an exeption, because the devs said this DLC wasn't made by the core team, and they go back to making focuses like the Portuguese, Dutch, Mexican, Chinese, etc. Focuses that are very flexible and adaptable to what is going on in the world (not all games are historical, not to mention multiplayer or coop games), not restrictive for not good reasons, intuitive to understand, without tons of micromanagement via decisions, without dozens of filler focuses. In short, I hope they go back to making focuses focused on quality rather than quantity.

 

[PeterX7]

I agree with you, sadly i lost interest playing as bulgaria/turkey due to this, I feared that the US had already enough "micro" but I fear what the soviet union dlc hold... I mean I like to have more depth but it is just a "clickfest at the right time" and without context I bet any new player will have trouble playing too.

 

[BeauNiddle]

I think it's a good thing there are a range of countries and a range of paths for the countries.

They did "just the war" paths with TfV & DoD and they weren't well received (and it was still early in the design knowledge).

I'm glad minors having interesting problems to face and suitable challenges for MINORs. I wouldn't want the majors to be limited in the same way.

The USA NF is set the way it is because the only nation that can challenge the USA is .. the USA. So it either goes historical, fights itself or fights the whole world.
Germany goes the Kaiser or historical which works as choices.
UK, France have a few big choices for replayability but little outside that.

I would guess Italy & Soviets will be similar to UK or France - big starting choice then simple trees to achieve it.

The generic tree they had on release was too powerful. It perfectly fit their plan of allowing any nation to be playable but it was too powerful to be realistic. Therefore ANY NF tree they release for minors must be WEAKER than before. So there only solution is to make the nation more immersive and interesting to make up for the loss of power [until said nation has jumped through enough hoops to make it clear the player has chosen to be OP]

That is a good design philosophy from my point of view. It also makes playing other countries more interesting as you get news reports about internal goings on in other countries without having to do the same for your country.


All the above applies as long as they can keep the trees from breaking each other. NFs which spontaneously annex other countries without care for whats going on in the world are dangerous.

 

[Askorti]

personally I dont mind the size of the trees, but the fact that Greece has to go fascist to reform the Byzantine Empire makes absoluitely no sense to me.
Why not allow to reform it in all the various tree ends, just in a different spirit?

 

[Iskulya]

I think your points are very inconsistent.

The Chinese focus tree is crap, what are you talking about? It has essentially zero alternate history choices, no long term goals after uniting China, and is filled with exactly the kind of filler you claim to hate. A lot of focuses do nothing other than add a few points of stability or war support, and add inflation, requiring you to take multiple other focuses just to decrease inflation.

Ok, it's a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese focus tree isn't horrible. It's just that it's pretty inflexible, doesn't offer a lot of options, and does have a lot of filler.

It's also wild that you cite the Dutch focus tree as an example of a good one in contradistinction to the new ones. The Dutch focus tree is actually very much like the Greek one in many ways. You have a myriad of problems, none of which can be tackled quickly or easily, that are handled via decision like the crippling shell-shocked spectators of the great war.

These new focus trees are their best yet, by a long shot, to the point that they outshine *almost* anything offered by mods. Again, you guys complaining need to get your story straight. Were the old trees that were shallow, short, and boring and just fast tracked you to war goals. I certainly do hope that they make Italy and the Soviet Union more like these new ones.

I think you can look at the French rework to see some of the problems with the old approach. You basically just hit a button and your country begins flirting with monarchism. Then you just make an arbitrary choice between three monarchs. There's no real flavor. Why is the country deciding on this monarch, and not that one? No reason. Why, if the communists are empowered, do they go towards revolution, or towards reform? No reason. Why, if when you try to integrate the colonies into the metropole do some accept and some refuse? No reason. Why can America have a civil war in the US rework? No fucking reason. (If you get this reference, you have my sympathy)

These new trees handle the context issues of these radical changes extremely well. They all have kind of a narrative to them that lets you credibly suspend disbelief.

I also think that the limitations of each of the new country feels appropriate to their historical situation. There's no reason that any of the three countries in the DLC would have been raring to go for a war in 1936 already. In practice you seem to be demanding a return to the pre-focus tree status quo where with any country you could just hire an advisor, flip to communist/fascist in 37, and immediately begin declaring war on neighbors and snowballing. This is very boring and cookie cutter. This is basically just reducing the game to being a Risk clone.

These threads are kind of disappointing to me. For years, we have criticized the focus trees as being lackluster and uninteresting. Now that we have something truly good, some people are already demanding a return back to the crappy old status quo. Fortunately, I think such people are in a very small minority. If you look at other hearts of iron communities, whether on discord or reddit, the reception to the new content has been overwhelmingly positive. I think there were some criticisms especially leveled at the length of time needed for the Ottoman stuff, but the new beta patch fixed those issues.

 

[Simone87]

I have mixed feelings about this issue. I agree with you that too much micro kills the game but I love historical accuracy at the same time.

And there are some dumb restriction too, such as Bulgaria's "Fate of the Balkans" focus. After you do that, you cannot join any other faction, ever

they should have allowed Romania to invite Bulgaria, Greece and Albania as well. They can invite Hungary but not Bulgaria? And to keep it realistic, a democracy like Greece or country with good relations towards Yugoslavia can just refuse the invitation

From what I see here and from my experience, the problem is above all the diplomacy management, that is too rigid and binds the player to the focus trees (even those of other countries: in my last run I tried the french Napoleonic path, even though we were both at war with Great Britain, Germany declared war on me through the "around Maginot" focus, ending my game). This issue affects even the old short trees (for example the dutch one https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/changes-for-oranje-boven.1434208/).

The only thing I find weird was that Byzantium is on the democratic path. Shouldn't it be fascist or at the very least non-aligned?

If I'm not mistaken, Byzantium can be restored after making an agreement with the EEE fascists, if you go down the democratic path you achieve the Megali Idea and got Greater Greece.

 

[LiberiusX]

The problem isn’t so much the growth of spaghetti trees. The problem is that up until this update, older focus trees weren’t being kept up with to respond to the growth of the new focus trees. This is particularly evident in foreign policy focuses that relied on certain countries staying x ideology for them to work or to make sense.

I will give credit where it is due though as the new DLC updated ROM and YUG to stay in context with the new trees...not sure why HUN wasn’t included...as almost everyone goes Habsburg...but I can see it being the least pressing.

 

[TalyonUngol]

I think the new trees are fantastic. I think it's a good amount of micromanagement that doesn't get too frustrating. Thst being said. Rng mechanics are horrible to deal with and focuses should be more clear about what it does.

 

[GSP Jr]

If you consider that after one or two initial choices 2/3 of the tree cannot be used then no, they (in general) aren't 'too big'.

If you look closely and see how many Foci are pretty lame (as many in this thread have) or just time-wasters then yes, waay too large.

What bothers me about the trees (and decisions too) is how obscure some are in the description & tool tips of the actual effects.

 

[Harin]

Let me start with: I enjoy an unique focus tree, like 99,8% of players.

But a huge focus tree can change from fun to confusing, especially when some of those focuses are rather restrictive, and you also have a lot of decisions.

In LaR, Spain has the hugest focus tree in the game, but that is understandable because Spain is basically 6 nations merged into one.

The only thing I truly disliked in LaR was that you get to have a communist revolution in France if your stability drops below 25%, even if France has 0% communist popularity.

But in the new DLC... the focuses of Bulgaria and Turkey are too big and for the most part too boring. It's an overkill, many of their focuses are just fillers until you get to the good ones.

And there are some dumb restriction too, such as Bulgaria's "Fate of the Balkans" focus. After you do that, you cannot join any other faction, ever. Why even make such a restriction? If a player wants to join a faction fine, if a player doesn't want to, also fine.

Or Romania's new Yugoslav annexation mechanic. A great improvement in my opinion, but they should have kept the old option to just make 3 puppets if the player desires to go that way, and they should have allowed Romania to invite Bulgaria, Greece and Albania as well. They can invite Hungary but not Bulgaria? And to keep it realistic, a democracy like Greece or country with good relations towards Yugoslavia can just refuse the invitation.

The new game mechanics of Turkey's "putting your country back together" and Bulgaria's "see how you please all parties" are just boring at best and annoying at worst in my opinion. Something to keep you occupied while you wait for the focuses to complete. This is a game about war. When playing Germany, I want to focus on the war machine, not paying taxes in Bavaria. I understand that all that was added was historically accurate, but too much micromanagement can make a country annoying to play, rather than fun.

At least it's not a major with such micromanagement decisions, I hope they don't add such a system in a future USSR or Italy DLC.

Greece's focus tree was fine. It was short and intuitive to understand. It didn't feel like it had fillers. The only thing I find weird was that Byzantium is on the democratic path. Shouldn't it be fascist or at the very least non-aligned?

I just hope this was an exeption, because the devs said this DLC wasn't made by the core team, and they go back to making focuses like the Portuguese, Dutch, Mexican, Chinese, etc. Focuses that are very flexible and adaptable to what is going on in the world (not all games are historical, not to mention multiplayer or coop games), not restrictive for not good reasons, intuitive to understand, without tons of micromanagement via decisions, without dozens of filler focuses. In short, I hope they go back to making focuses focused on quality rather than quantity.

Personally, I like the new focus trees, but you do make good points about the pace between action and building. I believe the pacing could be helped by the rest of the game world adjusting with focuses and decisions the player is successfully completing.

Currently, the game quickly escalates to war with major powers over regional conflicts. That may be slightly understandable if a minor nation attacks a neighbor without any diplomatic ground work to hold off the major powers. A successful minor nation, one led by the player, would first launch major diplomatic and internal efforts to create a space that allows some regional conflict. The time before WW2 made such efforts at least plausible as we now know that the major free countries were adverse to war, to the point of caving in to weaker forces for the promise of peace, or a new status quo that does not tip the scales to far in disadvantage.

Using focuses, a nation could build legitimacy, without involving major powers in a region, that weakens or removes major power military reactions to regional conflicts. These focuses cannot do it alone, though. The rest of the game world would need to adjust to show that the diplomatic efforts were successful and regional conflict is possible without drawing in major powers. This might allow the player led nation, after sufficient preparations, to take some local actions, earlier. This could make the pacing better and model a world that might have tolerated such limited conflicts under the umbrella of diplomatic cover.

 

[Spelaren]

Bulgaria and Greece are great as is, but Turkey is just confusing.

 

[kettyo]

At least it's not a major with such micromanagement decisions, I hope they don't add such a system in a future USSR or Italy DLC.

It wouldn't make sense in the USSR as it was fully totalitarian and ruled by an iron fist. But the power situation in Italy was actually very segmented so i can see something similar there.

 

[kettyo]

Why can America have a civil war in the US rework? No fucking reason.

Probably the reason is some initial cutback before you could go on steamrolling everything.

 

[blahmaster6k]

The only thing I dislike is the huge disparity between nations of detail on their focus trees. For example, even within La Resistance, Spain's tree has way more detail (information on and context for changes and things going on in the country) than France's tree. And France is the major, not Spain. Just about every minor tree released since Man the Guns has way more detail than nearly every concurrent major tree.

MtG: Netherlands and Mexico both have way more detail than the USA or UK trees . The UK tree is way more detailed than the USA tree but not as much as the Netherlands or Mexico, and the USA tree has a lot of "magic things happen for no reason" in it.

LaR: Spain and Portugal both have a ton of detail in their focus trees. France has a lot of different options but they are all very shallow and a lot of "magic" happens the focus trees just like the USA. (I particularly loathe how France doesn't tell you how to avoid civil wars and has several hidden triggers for them that the player can't possibly be aware of without looking at the game files/internet resources, stability penalties, and things like that so you can be totally surprised by an uprising coming seemingly out of nowhere).

BftB: All minor trees, all very detailed.

I think this could all boil down to one simple thing: majors are powerful enough already, you have a large army to manage from the start, and plenty of factories and research slots. Since the player has plenty to do, the focus tree/decisions tab can afford to be shallow without the player really having any downtime. Minors, on the other hand, have less to do during the buildup phase of the game so the history/lore behind what's going on in the country needs to be more detailed to pick up the slack. "Minigames" are added to give the player things to do while they don't really have much else to interact with, and details in focus trees and decision chains are added to justify the minor suddenly getting powerful or making an abrupt political shift.

I could be wrong, but it's food for thought.

 

[Fulmen]

No matter how you look at it, c. 70-90% of the focus trees are alt-history, including focuses accessible when one has chosen the "historical" path (Hungarian carrier research? Manchurian hegemony over Japanese China? Greece getting rid of massive debt stretching back to the 19th century within a year? Come on).

Then again overpowered minors in the name of sandbox gameplay at the expense of historical accuracy has always been the name of the game with HoI4.

So I guess the answer lies in: it depends on what you like. Personally I never cared much for the wildly implausible stuff. But the matter of the fact is, if you stripped it all away, there wouldn't be much left.

 

[TalyonUngol]

No matter how you look at it, c. 70-90% of the focus trees are alt-history, including focuses accessible when one has chosen the "historical" path (Hungarian carrier research? Manchurian hegemony over Japanese China? Greece getting rid of massive debt stretching back to the 19th century within a year? Come on).

Then again overpowered minors in the name of sandbox gameplay at the expense of historical accuracy has always been the name of the game with HoI4.

So I guess the answer lies in: it depends on what you like. Personally I never cared much for the wildly implausible stuff. But the matter of the fact is, if you stripped it all away, there wouldn't be much left.

Well, it's good at they gave these countries these things, otherwise, no reason to even play them. Why would anyone play Greece if they are stuck with t he debt until the year 2020 yet still have it?

 

[Fulmen]

Well, it's good at they gave these countries these things, otherwise, no reason to even play them. Why would anyone play Greece if they are stuck with t he debt until the year 2020 yet still have it?

I don't necessarily subscribe to that line of thought. There are things minors can do differently (as opposed to history) and successfully within a (semi-)realistic framework (i.e. more similar to previous HoIs, though it must be said that even there they were generally unrealistically strong), though they would be stuck in the position of "Santa's little helper" in relation to the major world powers, which I agree, would be less entertaining, particularly in singleplayer (in MP it can still be a lot of fun).

But of course this would mean far fewer players would actually play minors, which in turn would limit HoI4's clientele, which in turn is counterproductive to PDX's primary goal: making money.

In other words, for me personally, belonging to a niché of history & realism-oriented players, PDX's direction of development is bad, but for them and their shareholders, it is not.

 

[TalyonUngol]

I don't necessarily subscribe to that line of thought. There are things minors can do differently (as opposed to history) and successfully within a (semi-)realistic framework (i.e. more similar to previous HoIs, though it must be said that even there they were generally unrealistically strong), though they would be stuck in the position of "Santa's little helper" in relation to the major world powers, which I agree, would be less entertaining, particularly in singleplayer (in MP it can still be a lot of fun).

But of course this would mean far fewer players would actually play minors, which in turn would limit HoI4's clientele, which in turn is counterproductive to PDX's primary goal: making money.

In other words, for me personally, belonging to a niché of history & realism-oriented players, PDX's direction of development is bad, but for them and their shareholders, it is not.

Well, I understand that, but at the same time these alt-history things also don't really affect you in singleplayer since in g eneral, all countries have their historical sides. Sure the alt-history side has more to it, but thats because alt-history brings more options. You got communism, Facism and non aligned for a democratic nation, well of course they will have more content than the historical side which is railroaded into a set path.

You playing your historical and realism games shouldn't have any issues if other people play their alt-history and vice versa.

 

[Fulmen]

Well, I understand that, but at the same time these alt-history things also don't really affect you in singleplayer since in g eneral, all countries have their historical sides. Sure the alt-history side has more to it, but thats because alt-history brings more options. You got communism, Facism and non aligned for a democratic nation, well of course they will have more content than the historical side which is railroaded into a set path.

You playing your historical and realism games shouldn't have any issues if other people play their alt-history and vice versa.

You seem to have missed one important aspect: there is no way to play within a historical framework in HoI4. Minors in the game by default have a much stronger military-industrial complex than they did IRL. IRL most minors didn't even produce their own artillery, let alone tanks and aircraft en masse, or research cutting-edge technology years ahead of or even just on par with the major powers of the time. By default the game is ahistorical, and mods can only fix so much due to limitations created by hardcoded features. By comparison a game like HoI3 was by default far more realistic, though not on a serious scale either (e.g. a country like Panama was fully capable of producing tanks in HoI3 just as it is in HoI4, even if a lot slower).

And going back to the focuses, getting 12 oil or 2 civilian factories, almost for free in 70 days is pure nonsense from a realism-standpoint, but these kinds of things are in the "historical" branches of every focus tree. No country just magically grew its potential to industrialize by 18% in two months, or better yet 36% in 4.5 months (e.g. Romania's back-to-back CIC focuses, the second of which also gives 12 steel, increasing Romania's steel industry by 300% in two months, quite a feat!). Another example is Portugal's capacity to drill oil in Portuguese West Africa in 1936, oil that wasn't even discovered until 1955 and not drilled in the amounts the focus gives you until the 1970s. I could go on.

But you know what, you're right, I shouldn't have issues with people playing their alt-history games when I play my "historical and realism games", because HoI4 is not the platform I can play those in.

 

[TalyonUngol]

You seem to have missed one important aspect: there is no way to play within a historical framework in HoI4. Minors in the game by default have a much stronger military-industrial complex than they did IRL. IRL most minors didn't even produce their own artillery, let alone tanks and aircraft en masse, or research cutting-edge technology years ahead of or even just on par with the major powers of the time. By default the game is ahistorical, and mods can only fix so much due to limitations created by hardcoded features. By comparison a game like HoI3 was by default far more realistic, though not on a serious scale either (e.g. a country like Panama was fully capable of producing tanks in HoI3 just as it is in HoI4, even if a lot slower).

And going back to the focuses, getting 12 oil or 2 civilian factories, almost for free in 70 days is pure nonsense from a realism-standpoint, but these kinds of things are in the "historical" branches of every focus tree. No country just magically grew its potential to industrialize by 18% in two months, or better yet 36% in 4.5 months (e.g. Romania's back-to-back CIC focuses, the second of which also gives 12 steel, increasing Romania's steel industry by 300% in two months, quite a feat!). Another example is Portugal's capacity to drill oil in Portuguese West Africa in 1936, oil that wasn't even discovered until 1955 and not drilled in the amounts the focus gives you until the 1970s. I could go on.

But you know what, you're right, I shouldn't have issues with people playing their alt-history games when I play my "historical and realism games", because HoI4 is not the platform I can play those in.

Ah I see. So you actually want TOTAL realism. You're REALLY far into it more than the others who vote for more historical. okay. My apologies then.