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Ok, so I've just loaded the new DLC and... well I can't be the only one to think: it's a mess. I have no idea whatsover as to what to do, and the guidelines are poor. It's Mexico's mess on steroids, Spain on E and basically every bad tree just replicated and done worse.
Now I get the fact Turkey had a mess of things, but I'd like there to be a clear path to getting rid of the mess with the various factions, rather than a whole bunch of unclear options. It's a game folks. And I could understand taking more time to master one of the majors, but to master a minnow... it's just not worth it sorry.
Near final nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. I'd not played the game for weeks, it's going to be weeks until I bother loading it again.
I don't mind the focus tree per se, but they do need some sort of simplified, general description of what each branch does, especially now that the trees are growing as large as they are. Reading the effects of every single focus takes an eternity, and often the description is more of a flavour text than anything, which doesn't really tell you what the focus actually does.
All the decisions you have to take make little sense - there's zero explanation as to what they do (except for "more likely to cooperate" mumbo jumbo) when it comes to various factions. At least in Spain's civil wars there were tick marks. Here - no idea. And so many of the path say: "this or that country will get this or that event". What does that even mean? And what does it mean for Turkey? It's a huge mess.
Now I'm sure if you're an avid reader of the dev diaries, it'll all make sense. But I'm not.
Its Army/Navy/Air force branch is on the side, the rest is politics, and it's very easily divided in what seems to be the new trend (since we can see the same pattern in Bulgaria's tree) :
One horizontal divider, separating internal matterns (above) from extrenal ones (below).
Everything above the line deals with swapping ideology, solving problems the nation starts with and so on.
Everything below the line deals with joining or forming an alliance, strengthening said alliance and/or getting wargoals totacklethreats or strengthen your own country.
Both internal and extrenal politics are divided with practically strictly vertical lines., and most (if not all) bloc that stand at the same level are mutually exclusive.
Only 3 points make the Turkish derive from a perfectly generic form :
-A part of its external politics branch allows it to appraoch all 3 major factions of the game (Axis, Allies, and Comintern) prior to joining one. Joining one is still exclusive with joining the others tho, so it's more like a more flexible foreign policy that allows you to court everyone until you make your choice (or until never since historical Turkey isn't supposed to make a choice, hence why this exists in the first place)
-Its industrial focuses are fully merged within its political branches, and it possesses no dedicated industrial branch to speak of
-Turan is a branch of (mostly) wargoals and annexions that stands after a major alliance instead of being exclusive and on the side. It is, I imagine, an experiment meant to give the player the possibility to continue playing further into the gameby providing them with an additional goal shall they wish to aim for it.
Compare that to the Mexican tree :
Mexico's only easy to read point is its army branch.
While it has an industry branch, it being divided in two and containing on one side political focuses and on the other side focuses to deal with an internal threat that has little to do with industry throws the cliche way of analysing things out of the window (since you will most likely pick an industrial branch not for its industrial potential but for the political option it offers you). Not to mention there are several industrial focus sprinkled elsewhere in the tree.
The main confusing matter is that there doesn't seem to be a dedicated political subtree, since the choices to swap ideology or form an alliance appear to be broken and scattered everywhere, and many are not even mutually exclusive.
Mexico's tree is hard to get into, but once you study it a bit, like a fine wine, it gets better and better. It's like whoever did this saw the generic structure of a focus tree and decided that he wanted to do something new - and succeeded. It plays really differently - your internal choices on how to solve the crises such as Cedillo, the Church, and the Politicized Army will decide what kind of way you'll drift on the political scale - you can and should find yourself with a positive drift for several ideologies at once. There's a duality of choosing a way to solve an issue just for the drift it grants, or instead choosing to shoulder a drift contrary to what you're aiming for just because it comes with what you think is the better solution for said issue, and the goal is to balance it all to still get to what you want. And most choices don't lock you into other, unrelated choices, too - you can support the church and go democratic, but opposing the church won't lock you out of your democratic options.
The mexican Tree was a real kick in the generic tree structure that could have ended up in a total failure but managed to be completely unique and amazing at the same time.
Next to that masterpiece, the Turkish tree, whilst fun -the nation has plenty of unique challenges to itself - is... more normal, and far easier to read if you're used to HOI4's generic trees.
The Mexican tree is unique in that you can do stupidly contradicting things.
The Turkish tree is just too damn large. What happened to the simple stuff? I honestly prefer what BICE (or the mod they incorporated) did in just reskinning the Polish tree.
Yes, the politics at the time was complicated. But HOI4 is a game that, by design, was meant to dumb things down. Hell, look at how Czechoslovakia's political turmoil is handled. One national spirit, removed by focus. How's Quebecan separatism handled? One national spirit, removed by focus. And somehow, both Canada and Czechoslovakia manage to get just as much alt-hist into something much smaller than the Turkish tree by area (the Czech tree is less than 1/4 of the size, and the Canadian tree less than 1/5 of the size!).
It's almost like there's this disconnect between the earlier trees and the later trees, with the later trees trying to turn HOI4 into something it's not. I think OP is right.
Guys, as a Turk, I can say that it's not complicated for me. But that is, of course, because I know what happened in that actual timeline so it's not hard to understand it for me. But for you guys, you should check out this dev diary
Greetings, salutations, and merhaba - we now return to your regularly scheduled programming with the reveal of Turkey! It’s going to be a long one, so settle in with a dish of köfte and a glass of rakı and then let’s get into it! So, let’s...
forum.paradoxplaza.com
With this, you'll find answers to the majority of your questions. I understand that you need some background and the diary gives just that. I say that you should go and take a look at it. And I completely agree with LastButterfly with what he said about the Mexican tree. It's hard to understand it, everything's everywhere unlike the Turkish tree in which everything has it's place.
Apologies, but I don't think this sounds quite right. The later trees are making the game evolve. What direction it evolves in, and whether or not one likes it, that can be discussed, but the trees in the recent DLCs are undenyably what the game is now. They're not turing HoI4 into anything else. They are HoI4.
Hell, look at how Czechoslovakia's political turmoil is handled. One national spirit, removed by focus. How's Quebecan separatism handled? One national spirit, removed by focus. And somehow, both Canada and Czechoslovakia manage to get just as much alt-hist into something much smaller than the Turkish tree by area (the Czech tree is less than 1/4 of the size, and the Canadian tree less than 1/5 of the size!).
One NS, removed at once, by one focus is from a game design perspective a fairly boring thing that hardly involves the player. You only have control over two things in this case : wether the branch you pick removes the spirit, and - provided it does - how fast you go down to the focus that removes it. Recent trees have attempted to make dealing with the maluses a more complex matter, that involves decisions, ressources management - such as political power, experience, or equipment - atop of making said maluses more numerous to add the challenge of choosing which to tackle first. This greatly improves the amount of possible choices to make which is the central point of a strategy game.
Some of these implementations may be unbalanced or too complex, but they all aim at diversifying the player's option by offering them more data to play with. HoI4 being, first and foremost, a game, I feel it difficult to hear that the recent trend of focus trees, that aim at improving the gameplay, might be inferior to the far less open and varied older trees.
I am also puzzled by your claim that Canada and Czechoslovakia have as much alt-history as the newer trees in the likes of Turkey. There is hardly any variety in the Canadian tree, and it is reduced practically to the bare minimum, in particular in the alt-history branches. Can you compare that to Turkey's alt-history branches that contain a wide variety of bonuses, sometimes unique ones at that, and far more choices to make ? Perhaps I misunderstood your point.
The only problem that I have with the Turkish tree is that ideology means nothing, I mean yeah, while as a non aligned Turkey joining one of the 3 factions seems reasonable, joining the axis as a democratic nation or joining the allies as a communist nation or comintern as a fascist nation just seems weird to me.
Its Army/Navy/Air force branch is on the side, the rest is politics, and it's very easily divided in what seems to be the new trend (since we can see the same pattern in Bulgaria's tree) :
One horizontal divider, separating internal matterns (above) from extrenal ones (below).
Everything above the line deals with swapping ideology, solving problems the nation starts with and so on.
Everything below the line deals with joining or forming an alliance, strengthening said alliance and/or getting wargoals totacklethreats or strengthen your own country.
Both internal and extrenal politics are divided with practically strictly vertical lines., and most (if not all) bloc that stand at the same level are mutually exclusive.
Only 3 points make the Turkish derive from a perfectly generic form :
-A part of its external politics branch allows it to appraoch all 3 major factions of the game (Axis, Allies, and Comintern) prior to joining one. Joining one is still exclusive with joining the others tho, so it's more like a more flexible foreign policy that allows you to court everyone until you make your choice (or until never since historical Turkey isn't supposed to make a choice, hence why this exists in the first place)
-Its industrial focuses are fully merged within its political branches, and it possesses no dedicated industrial branch to speak of
-Turan is a branch of (mostly) wargoals and annexions that stands after a major alliance instead of being exclusive and on the side. It is, I imagine, an experiment meant to give the player the possibility to continue playing further into the gameby providing them with an additional goal shall they wish to aim for it.
Mexico's only easy to read point is its army branch.
While it has an industry branch, it being divided in two and containing on one side political focuses and on the other side focuses to deal with an internal threat that has little to do with industry throws the cliche way of analysing things out of the window (since you will most likely pick an industrial branch not for its industrial potential but for the political option it offers you). Not to mention there are several industrial focus sprinkled elsewhere in the tree.
The main confusing matter is that there doesn't seem to be a dedicated political subtree, since the choices to swap ideology or form an alliance appear to be broken and scattered everywhere, and many are not even mutually exclusive.
Mexico's tree is hard to get into, but once you study it a bit, like a fine wine, it gets better and better. It's like whoever did this saw the generic structure of a focus tree and decided that he wanted to do something new - and succeeded. It plays really differently - your internal choices on how to solve the crises such as Cedillo, the Church, and the Politicized Army will decide what kind of way you'll drift on the political scale - you can and should find yourself with a positive drift for several ideologies at once. There's a duality of choosing a way to solve an issue just for the drift it grants, or instead choosing to shoulder a drift contrary to what you're aiming for just because it comes with what you think is the better solution for said issue, and the goal is to balance it all to still get to what you want. And most choices don't lock you into other, unrelated choices, too - you can support the church and go democratic, but opposing the church won't lock you out of your democratic options.
The mexican Tree was a real kick in the generic tree structure that could have ended up in a total failure but managed to be completely unique and amazing at the same time.
Next to that masterpiece, the Turkish tree, whilst fun -the nation has plenty of unique challenges to itself - is... more normal, and far easier to read if you're used to HOI4's generic trees.
Thanks that’s a helpful detailed reply. I’m still not convinced - I did have/get the general idea of the subsections, but what about all the factions? Should I spend the PP suppressing or delaying Kurdish (and others) uprisings? And the tree saying it opens up XYZ decisions isn’t exactly helpful. Oh and then there’s inflation and devaluation that just appear in my decision tree from nowhere. Huh?
The dynamics of it all aren’t explained anywhere, so it feels like you have to do about 10 very frustrating play throughs to understand it. And that’s tedious.
I’ll wait for a good YouTuber to give a guide methinks. And then I might fire it off again. Or I might just not bother. And that’s a shame. The game was at its best about a year ago, before they brought it all the spy tedium and other nonsense.
The Mexican tree is unique in that you can do stupidly contradicting things.
The Turkish tree is just too damn large. What happened to the simple stuff? I honestly prefer what BICE (or the mod they incorporated) did in just reskinning the Polish tree.
Yes, the politics at the time was complicated. But HOI4 is a game that, by design, was meant to dumb things down. Hell, look at how Czechoslovakia's political turmoil is handled. One national spirit, removed by focus. How's Quebecan separatism handled? One national spirit, removed by focus. And somehow, both Canada and Czechoslovakia manage to get just as much alt-hist into something much smaller than the Turkish tree by area (the Czech tree is less than 1/4 of the size, and the Canadian tree less than 1/5 of the size!).
It's almost like there's this disconnect between the earlier trees and the later trees, with the later trees trying to turn HOI4 into something it's not. I think OP is right.
It's definitely not too large at all. There's only a fairly limited amount of stuff you can do in any given playthrough.
Canada and Czeschsolovakia also have boring and uninspired alt-history. These are widely considered among the worst focus trees with good reason. There's zero flavor, and little to nothing in the way of even short term goals let alone long term ones. Click button, join Comintern, and ???????
Recent trees have attempted to make dealing with the maluses a more complex matter, that involves decisions, ressources management - such as political power, experience, or equipment - atop of making said maluses more numerous to add the challenge of choosing which to tackle first. This greatly improves the amount of possible choices to make which is the central point of a strategy game.
There I strongly disagree. The new maluses dynamic in fact reduce the players' ability to do things differently as you have no choice but to focus everything on getting rid of them, which basically locks you into a given path (or sometimes you have a choice of two). In any case, there soon emerges an optimal way to go down the tree, which is what everyone then does, and so the whole game becomes a straightjacket that you have to fit on. The only exception to this is perhaps the Spanish anarchists, which genuinely introduce something totally new and different - but then you can't play that in MP, so meh...
Thanks that’s a helpful detailed reply. I’m still not convinced - I did have/get the general idea of the subsections, but what about all the factions? Should I spend the PP suppressing or delaying Kurdish (and others) uprisings? And the tree saying it opens up XYZ decisions isn’t exactly helpful. Oh and then there’s inflation and devaluation that just appear in my decision tree from nowhere. Huh?
The dynamics of it all aren’t explained anywhere, so it feels like you have to do about 10 very frustrating play throughs to understand it. And that’s tedious.
I’ll wait for a good YouTuber to give a guide methinks. And then I might fire it off again. Or I might just not bother. And that’s a shame. The game was at its best about a year ago, before they brought it all the spy tedium and other nonsense.
I'm kinda new to the party, but I knew La Resistance didn't add anything worthwhile for me, so I haven't bought it. Same for BotB. I'm only interested in majors.
There I strongly disagree. The new maluses dynamic in fact reduce the players' ability to do things differently as you have no choice but to focus everything on getting rid of them, which basically locks you into a given path (or sometimes you have a choice of two). In any case, there soon emerges an optimal way to go down the tree, which is what everyone then does, and so the whole game becomes a straightjacket that you have to fit on. The only exception to this is perhaps the Spanish anarchists, which genuinely introduce something totally new and different - but then you can't play that in MP, so meh...
Ah, it is possible that our difference in viewpoints come from our different playstyles, too. I hardly ever play multiplayer (and when I do, only 2-player coop) and thus I am not much of a minmaxer. I entirely agree that once the optimal solution has been found, the strategy game loses all its interest and thus becomes... well, "completed" as in you've won, there's nothing left for you. That's exactly why I don't like looking for it and I usually settle for fast-paced thinking limited in time.
Then again, rare are the strategy game which actually offer you an array of paths with no way to find one (or a small group of quasi-) optimum.
I imagine it's difficult for a game to please such a vast playerbase with widely different playstyles and needs.