General information | National forces Hearts of Iron IV Guide

National focus is without a doubt the most important aspect of the gameplay. With a good selection of national focuses you can quickly gain a tremendous advantage over your adversaries on the battlefield. Additionally, with them you can develop your own strategy concerning the development of your country. Appropriate management in this field depends on finding the right balance between the available branches (all of them will be described in this chapter). With the proper usage of this indicator you can achieve economic objectives significantly faster and without the need to spend time on developing the infrastructure of your country via conventional means. Additionally, the steps you take can influence the current ideology, or cause it to change. An important aspect of this mechanic is to devote some attention to the creation of a strong army, aircraft and navy.

You have to remember that during the work on a national focus the daily income of the political power is reduced by 1 point. Whenever a national focus is "in production" this value will be decreased. In case you haven't selected a national focus and several days have passed in the game, you don't have to worry. During that time you've received additional points of political power. If you haven't used them on the development of the government, you can use the surplus points to decrease the time needed to complete a national focus. This mechanic can and sometimes should be used. It all depends on what you need at the moment. A detailed commentary about each and every national focus can be found in the next subsection. Personally I think that some of the political goals are more and some are less useful, but the decision to whether use them or not is left to the player. It all depends on the current political situation and the state of your country.

This symbol represents national focuses that exclude each other.

Each national focus requires 70 in-game days to complete, which is why we can say that the cost of a national focus is equal to 70 points of political power. As it was mentioned earlier, for each surplus point of national power gained when there was no national focus selected the time needed to complete it will be decreased by a day.

In the further part of this chapter we discuss universal goals that go beyond the countries favored by the developers of the game. "Interesting nations" are characterized by different national focuses, but in each case that characteristic is centered around strong industry, ideology and/or military. You need to arrange a separate course of action for each country. Additionally, a lot depends on whether you have chosen to fulfill historical goals by specific nations.

Note that you can learn about the full spectrum of national focuses only when you decide on the scenario starting in the 1936. If you decide to conduct military actions from the very beginning remember that none of the national focuses will be completed because of the fact that 3 years have already passed.

While looking for the perfect balance you can opt for a balanced development of each of the aspects of your country, given the versatility of actions that can be taken. It is especially effective if we take into consideration the initial goals of each branch. However, if you want to succeed, you must decide on two or three areas which you want to focus on the most. Thanks to that you will receive modifiers shortening research time, or you will be given bonuses to various areas associated with militaries and politics. What's important is that you must be consistent in following the taken path. If you've decided to develop the industry of your country make sure that you use the advantages given to you from it, so that it will be reflected in the economic prosperity of the country. To do so you can either produce more raw materials, or develop technologies associated with the industry. The biggest mistake in this manner can be too big division between the national focus and the actual direction in which your country goes. The time of the campaign is organized in such a manner that you won't have any problems to implement all of the national focuses.

You also have to take into consideration the fact that choosing a specific national focus will exclude all the others. For instance, you can't simultaneously cultivate the liberal ideology of the country while trying to draw it nearer to fascism. Some choices will determine specific consequences - you will be able to tell which ones by a simple glance on the national focus tree. By deciding to play a specific country you must pause the game at the beginning of your journey with it and decide about the course of development of your country. Remember that the one who is good at everything isn't very good at anything.