National Focus Trees - General Design

[Xerberous]

If I've counted correctly there are 17 choices in the new Greek focus tree, while for example there are only seven in the German tree, basically 4 of them being rather irrelevant. Other new trees e.g. Mexico or the Netherlands show the same picture as the Greek tree, there are large and wide with a plenty of options.

My question is why are these trees looking so different? Was it a shift in the development choice, so if Germany would get a new tree in 2020 in would look like the Greek one with lots of options and choices or is it design choice to give the majors very focused trees while the minors have some sort of playground?

 

[Dryhad]

I think it's a simple matter of as time goes by, the developers learn more about what works and what doesn't, and what kinds of things players like in focus trees.

When the game was shipped, there were very different approaches in the majors' focus trees to what we might consider to be standard today. Consider for instance the pre-MtG US tree: it had alt-history paths in the shape of the war plans, but they functioned very differently to the alt-history paths that are now considered obligatory (they wouldn't count as "choices" in your reckoning, for instance). Of the original trees, only France had that kind of choice to begin with. When Poland got its free expansion, it almost seemed like Paradox were afraid that removing any feature of the generic tree might weaken Poland, and as a result its tree is heavily based on the generic tree. The Together for Victory trees are a next step in this process, not leaning on the generic tree so heavily but codifying the subsequent structure of a tree that guides ideology as the root of the alternate history options.

Skipping ahead a bit, the two wholly new Man the Guns trees (Mexico and the Netherlands) have a less formulaic structure but still one that builds upon this notion of choices between ideological paths (the revised MtG trees less so, in particular the revised UK tree is not at all shy with its Steady As She Goes/A Change in Course split).

The Greece tree we've seen looks a bit like the Portugal tree in terms of matching the formula: a political branch, an industrial branch, and a military branch, all largely separate unlike say Mexico. But there's a lot more nuance in there than we saw in structurally similar trees from the days of Death or Dishonor, taking advantage of new mechanical tools like decisions but also just learning from experience.

 

[Nelfe]

I assume that the evolution of the gameplay, with more stuff added (like decisions, espionage, etc) allows the dev to expand the new focus trees with more unique focus.

 

[brantodb01]

It's because different people design different trees with different things in mind. The Spanish and Japanese tree have essentially 1 choice and breaks the trend you're talking about

 

[Hoi Neuling]

That´s because not only all Countrys gone straight like USA, Germany, Italy, UdSSR, Commonwealth with Democracy, Fashist or Komintern. There are many others like Greece, France, Mexico, Spain and so on which were more complex.

That´s why the Countrys have different Focus Trees. Not everything is Black or White like the complex Situation after WW1, the Interwartime and 2nd WW shows historically.