One-time research bonuses from focus tree won't be consumed by already active research.ĭotted line means that you need either of the prerequisite unlocks. Those two events are enough to unlock most of the focuses, but World Tension will continue to rise pretty fast after them anyway.įascist focus for nations using generic focus tree grants up to 7% of recruitable population. Japan invades China around August 1937 and increases World Tension by about 22%. Spanish Civil War starts sometime between January and June 1936 and usually lasts anywhere between 3 and 12 months.Įnd of Spanish Civil War will increase World Tension by 8% (Republican win) or 18% (Fascists win). If you are using “Historical AI Focuses option” early World Tension increases are easy to predict and are linked to the end of Spanish Civil war and the Japanese invasion of China. Unlocks that allow you to peacefully annex a country are even better - usually provide much more factories of both types.ĭemocracies such as UK or USA have some focuses gated behind the World Tension requirements. Use that to plan a 'build' for a few years forward.Īt the beginning try to get ones that give you extra research slots as well as free civilian and military factories.Ĭivilian factory focuses are more important early on, unless you plan on going to war VERY early (like Japan).Ĭivilian and Military Factory focuses are extremely important for minor nations. If you are totally new to it simply play tutorial, or, if you feel so inclined, check out my instructional Italian playthrough or other Youtube videos of that kind.Īlmost all focus unlocks take 70 days. Italy is the best nation to learn the game with in my opinion.

Here you can find and easily install ones I’ve been using for last few months (as of “More NATO counters” one will crush your game. Quite a few of them greatly improve the clarity of the map. Graphical mods can be installed without affecting the checksum/achievements. You can change those ugly, silly division icons to NATO counters by going Menu -> Options -> Game -> “Use NATO symbols”.

Wiki is now a decent-ish and up-to-date-ish source of information on specific game mechanics. Those bonuses can be pretty massive so use with caution. You can either make your game very easy, much harder, or simply change the power balance between different AIs towards the one you prefer. You can go back to a previous version of Hoi4 (since saves from 1.0-1.2.1 period are no longer valid) by r-clicking on Hearts of Iron 4 in your Steam library, going to Preferences -> Betas and then selecting a proper version from the drop down menu.Ĭustom difficulty settings located just above difficulty option on the game creation screen will allow you to adjust your game by buffing any number of chosen Major nations (and China).

Hearts of iron tips