Choosing a focus provides shortcuts, often avoiding the need to accumulate and spend masses of political power in order to create a wargoal, but it doesn't preclude seemingly contrary behaviour. It'd be entirely possible to focus on northern expansion and then invade China, or jump into an alliance with the Soviets. While the focus creates a binary choice, nothing is locked down. As Japan, I found myself directed toward either the North or the South, the latter eventually leading to a Pacific War and conflict with America while the former (which I chose) militarises the mainland border with the Soviet Union. Digging deep is dangerous.Īll of the major nations have a unique National Focus tree (minor nations have generic trees), leading them through key military and political events of the time, helping them to avoid the glass.
This is a sandbox but there are broken bottles hidden just beneath the surface. As we found, on both occasions, the German player can be punished severely for stepping out of line and the National Focus feature helps to guide them along that line, a historical bellwether that is instructive and potentially restrictive. There is a distinct tension between the careful scripting of the central events, the fine balance of the Axis-Allies division and the free-form sandbox of Paradox grand strategy. Playing Hearts of Iron IV in its current state is a curious experience. When that world tore itself apart, I picked Japan in a draft and set about taming the Russian Bear with a little help from my friends. The first time around, I was outside the main theater, attempting to transform Brazil into a major trading power. Two games in a world populated by around twenty human players, controlling all of the major powers and some minor players.
France, like every other nation, had been controlled by the AI. The first time I moved to the unsteady beat of Hearts of Iron IV, I played as Germany and managed to avoid the catastrophe of World War II by fudging my initial invasion plans so badly that the French were preparing to march on Berlin by 1938.
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