Trade trumps colonialism / France advice

[CantGetNoSleep]

France starts with a serious empire, but it is of very little use. Most of the territories have zero building slots and give you almost no manpower. Releasing most/all of sub-saharan Africa, and some of Asia means:
- Vastly more manpower as puppet templates
- You don't have to defend those territories - just don't call them into the war
- TRADE. They'll get their own focus trees, and build stuff with them. For that, they'll need steel and they'll get that steel from you.

You should only keep only North Africa, Indochina and Tahiti/New Caledonia for building slots and resources, possibly Madagascar and if you're going to go down Develop the Colonies, the territories the factories will be put in (it's randomised at the start of the game).

Here's a screenshot where I'm getting 15 civs for steel from puppets and 1 for tungsten, so 16 total. That's a lot more than I could ever hope to build by keeping them.

 

[blue_yonder]

Releasing colonies makes sense objectively, but having them pester you forever-after to please let them join the war every five minutes is a gamekiller for me. You must be made of sterner stuff.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Lol. Right click to dismiss is very useful.

 

[blue_yonder]

The first two thousand right-clicks were the worst, but then I rage-quit and everything got better.

 

[Dlin369]

I think the forces of decolonization should be represented, but more gradual/better in the future (maybe after Italy and USSR expansions are done and they have free time).

The generic focus trees should mean local control is more efficient, but not by adding more factories for every little state. I think it should be more granular.

especially the industry branch. It should be like
- +10% factory efficiency (military I)
- +10% construction speed (construction I)
- -5% consumer goods (construction II)
- +10% factory efficiency gain (military 2)
- +15% infrastructure construction (infrastructure 1)
- 3 infrastructure (infrastructure 2)
- 1-2 military factories + slots (military 3) depending on current factor
- 1-2 civilian factories + slots (civilian 3) depending on current factory count

That way the impact of focuses scales appropriately for bigger and smaller nations without a special focus tree - and small nations like Bhutan can’t have as many factories from focus as say Brazil

 

[Spelaren]

I think the forces of decolonization should be represented, but more gradual/better in the future (maybe after Italy and USSR expansions are done and they have free time).

The generic focus trees should mean local control is more efficient, but not by adding more factories for every little state. I think it should be more granular.

especially the industry branch. It should be like
- +10% factory efficiency (military I)
- +10% construction speed (construction I)
- -5% consumer goods (construction II)
- +10% factory efficiency gain (military 2)
- +15% infrastructure construction (infrastructure 1)
- 3 infrastructure (infrastructure 2)
- 1-2 military factories + slots (military 3) depending on current factor
- 1-2 civilian factories + slots (civilian 3) depending on current factory count

That way the impact of focuses scales appropriately for bigger and smaller nations without a special focus tree - and small nations like Bhutan can’t have as many factories from focus as say Brazil

That'd make it even harder for minor nations to conquer anything

 

[Col.Klink]

France starts with a serious empire, but it is of very little use. Most of the territories have zero building slots and give you almost no manpower. Releasing most/all of sub-saharan Africa, and some of Asia means:
- Vastly more manpower as puppet templates
- You don't have to defend those territories - just don't call them into the war
- TRADE. They'll get their own focus trees, and build stuff with them. For that, they'll need steel and they'll get that steel from you.

You should only keep only North Africa, Indochina and Tahiti/New Caledonia for building slots and resources, possibly Madagascar and if you're going to go down Develop the Colonies, the territories the factories will be put in (it's randomised at the start of the game).

Here's a screenshot where I'm getting 15 civs for steel from puppets and 1 for tungsten, so 16 total. That's a lot more than I could ever hope to build by keeping them.

The interesting thing is that this is the way that the French would eventually go post war. Not quite actually relinquishing control of Africa at least, but keeping them publicly as independent states. By being the backer of the African currencies the French managed to keep a huge amount of control, essentially getting former French African colonies to pay France interest on their own tax money. Geopolitically it's brilliant, it doesn't even have the expense and "heat" of a foreign people directly imposing their will on the locals. But the truth is via financial control France still securely maintained access to the resources that the empire had afforded them essentially operating them as puppet states you'd see in Hoi4.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Quite amusing, but the presenter in that video seems confused. He goes from saying "the countries can't devalue, which hurts their economy" to a short while later "the CFA franc was devalued by France to help the countries, but it actually harmed them". So France is bad for not allowing devaluation and bad for allowing it. Hmmm. Still, yes, France definitely retains more control over its former empire than the UK, and those mechanics are realistic.

From a HOI4 perspective, my puppets are far too independent! They don't start building any equipment (and importing steel from me!) and instead have their factories lying idle until quite late in the game (1939)... No other puppet fails to produce stuff, so this feels like another behind the scenes debuff of France by Paradox.