I realize that there's a faction of people on this forum who have been arguing that the Turkish focus tree is the way it is because that's how Turkey was historically. They didn't enter the war until '45 and suffered from rough sectarian issues for most of the time period.
Good points. I admit. But my response is this: where was this design philosophy for the other focus trees? Where was this philosophy in the US communist branch? The alternate history Germany branch? Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed those trees, but that was because the writing doctrine for them clearly placed a need to keep the player engaged above ridged historical accuracy. After all, if a player wants to turn the US communist, they probably aren't too concerned with that sort of thing anyway.
The best way to illustrate how the Turkish focus tree fails is to point to how another tree succeeded: Mexico. Like Turkey, Mexico starts the game in the historical situation of being pulled in multiple different directions by numerous armed factions which are fighting over the future of the country. Historically, Mexico only barely got itself together in time to offer real support to the war effort in 1945 and was only able to declare war in 1942 because of its unique geographic position.
However, the Mexican focus tree doesn't lock a player into that same path regardless of which part of the tree they choose to walk down. The fun part of the Mexico tree is that a particularly skilled player, with a few Mexico runs under their belt, would be able to quickly and efficiently consolidate and mobilize the country faster than had happened historically. It's rewarding to watch your negative focuses drop one by one and be replaced by unique bonuses at a steady rate, even if you're not fighting in the war. If you want, this can culminate in a glorious (and timely) conquest of the US or South America, giving the player a nice payoff for their hard work which they can quickly cash in by using those new cores in the north or that non-core manpower bonus in the south to send human waves to save the day for your faction of choice in Europe.
And that's the point. It's not just about a mountain of 70 day focuses, though that certainly plays a role. It's about the fact that the Turkish tree doesn't reward the player or make them feel like they're accomplishing something while they're spending the years rebuilding for the eventual intervention in the main war. In Mexico, if you play it right, you can beat all of the various timed crises before they get the chance to beat you, even if that's not what happened historically. In Turkey, you're guaranteed to take more beatings than you'll be able to counter or deal out. Even worse, many of the anti-rebel operations are left up to chance, leaving a real possibility that the player can flip a 'tails' on their attempt to control the Kurds 5 tries in a row, and leave them with a feeling of helplessness.
The devs explained in their dev diary on Turkey that Turkey was the most played country that didn't have a focus tree pre-BFTB, but now I can't imagine many of those players are looking at the Turkish tree now and saying that that's what they had in mind.
Good points. I admit. But my response is this: where was this design philosophy for the other focus trees? Where was this philosophy in the US communist branch? The alternate history Germany branch? Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed those trees, but that was because the writing doctrine for them clearly placed a need to keep the player engaged above ridged historical accuracy. After all, if a player wants to turn the US communist, they probably aren't too concerned with that sort of thing anyway.
The best way to illustrate how the Turkish focus tree fails is to point to how another tree succeeded: Mexico. Like Turkey, Mexico starts the game in the historical situation of being pulled in multiple different directions by numerous armed factions which are fighting over the future of the country. Historically, Mexico only barely got itself together in time to offer real support to the war effort in 1945 and was only able to declare war in 1942 because of its unique geographic position.
However, the Mexican focus tree doesn't lock a player into that same path regardless of which part of the tree they choose to walk down. The fun part of the Mexico tree is that a particularly skilled player, with a few Mexico runs under their belt, would be able to quickly and efficiently consolidate and mobilize the country faster than had happened historically. It's rewarding to watch your negative focuses drop one by one and be replaced by unique bonuses at a steady rate, even if you're not fighting in the war. If you want, this can culminate in a glorious (and timely) conquest of the US or South America, giving the player a nice payoff for their hard work which they can quickly cash in by using those new cores in the north or that non-core manpower bonus in the south to send human waves to save the day for your faction of choice in Europe.
And that's the point. It's not just about a mountain of 70 day focuses, though that certainly plays a role. It's about the fact that the Turkish tree doesn't reward the player or make them feel like they're accomplishing something while they're spending the years rebuilding for the eventual intervention in the main war. In Mexico, if you play it right, you can beat all of the various timed crises before they get the chance to beat you, even if that's not what happened historically. In Turkey, you're guaranteed to take more beatings than you'll be able to counter or deal out. Even worse, many of the anti-rebel operations are left up to chance, leaving a real possibility that the player can flip a 'tails' on their attempt to control the Kurds 5 tries in a row, and leave them with a feeling of helplessness.
The devs explained in their dev diary on Turkey that Turkey was the most played country that didn't have a focus tree pre-BFTB, but now I can't imagine many of those players are looking at the Turkish tree now and saying that that's what they had in mind.
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