It is absolute nonsense that I can't release puppets or give back territory.

[Rognvaldr19]

So I'm playing Nazi Germany for the New World Order achievement and I'm in the middle of an invasion with the USA that requires the majority of my troops to fight. I decided early on to go through Scandinavia and I puppeted Finland which turned out to be a huge mistake when I realised the Soviet Union had either used a focus or justified on them, now I thought "no sweat I'll just release Finland somehow, and I'll go back for it later after the USA is done", nope, apparently you can't do that and I ended up in a war with the Soviet Union who just bulldozed through me. I honestly believe that if I had the ability to release my puppet, the Soviet Union never would have attacked me.

Second problem that I had in that game was with Hungary and Bulgaria, I decided to attack them and release them as puppets because I needed their allegiance and they weren't giving it but they ended up with less states than what they originally had. I thought "surely I can just give them their former territories back" but nope, so I ended up with two near useless rump states as puppets who's war contribution was holding off the soviets for less than a day. If I could have given Bulgaria it's territory back plus half of Greece, and Hungary all of Romania then I don't believe that would have been the case.

It is absolutely bizarre that you can release puppets and tributaries and give back territory in CK2, EU4 and Stellaris but impossible to do without cheating in HOI4. What is with that?

 

[squid_hills]

Unless they changed something with LaR and 1.9, you can still give back core territory. You just don't have control over how much territory you give back. If you are Japan and you annex the Chinese coast, you can't give just one or two provinces to Manchukuo; it's all or nothing. It is true that you can't spontaneously release a puppet; they have to go through the PP and autonomy minigame to release themselves. This is why I never puppet anyone who a potential future enemy has focus-tree derived wargoals on (like Finland, in your example).

 

[Robb92]

So I'm playing Nazi Germany for the New World Order achievement and I'm in the middle of an invasion with the USA that requires the majority of my troops to fight. I decided early on to go through Scandinavia and I puppeted Finland which turned out to be a huge mistake when I realised the Soviet Union had either used a focus or justified on them, now I thought "no sweat I'll just release Finland somehow, and I'll go back for it later after the USA is done", nope, apparently you can't do that and I ended up in a war with the Soviet Union who just bulldozed through me. I honestly believe that if I had the ability to release my puppet, the Soviet Union never would have attacked me.

Second problem that I had in that game was with Hungary and Bulgaria, I decided to attack them and release them as puppets because I needed their allegiance and they weren't giving it but they ended up with less states than what they originally had. I thought "surely I can just give them their former territories back" but nope, so I ended up with two near useless rump states as puppets who's war contribution was holding off the soviets for less than a day. If I could have given Bulgaria it's territory back plus half of Greece, and Hungary all of Romania then I don't believe that would have been the case.

It is absolutely bizarre that you can release puppets and tributaries and give back territory in CK2, EU4 and Stellaris but impossible to do without cheating in HOI4. What is with that?

Concerning hungary and bulgaria, you could have puppeted them in the peace conference directly, without the annexation-release workaround

 

[brissyger]

It would be good to be able to give territories to allies that aren't cores. For example if I conquer Italy I would be inclined to give Zara to an allied Yugoslavia but it is not a core of theirs so you can't "return territory". They never claim it in the peace deal either so you just end up with border gore. It is not a huge problem but would be a nice QOL feature. Maybe if they fix the peace treaty system countries might start claiming territories that actually border with them instead of random territories all over the place.

 

[Emperor_Napoleon]

Maybe if they fix the peace treaty system

lmao we both know that’s never gonna happen

 

[Duke_Dave]

All I want is to be able to return all cores that are not my cores and release puppets while keeping my cores.

 

[brissyger]

All I want is to be able to return all cores that are not my cores and release puppets while keeping my cores.

Yeah you have to do it at the peace conference or no dice unfortunately.