Note: This article requires a basic knowledge of the game Hearts of Iron IV, its interface and mechanics. Watch some tutorials here or here.
A few years ago, I posted playthroughs and strategy guides for minor nations in the historical game Hearts of Iron IV. I’ve been a fan of the series since its inception and even though IV came out in 2016, it’s still hugely popular. Paradox Interactive updates it often and new DLC comes out fairly regularly. Every once in a while I’ll come back to it and there’s always something new to discover.
Part of the fun is to imagine alternative histories. What if communism was overthrown in Russia? What if the Kaiser returned to Germany? What if India became independent and sided with the Axis? What if Germany annexed Austria in 1936 instead of 1938? With HOI4, you can do it.
HOI4 outlines many of these alternative histories in a branching decision tree called a Focus Tree, where you can guide your nation’s development more or less along a historical path or forge your own way. If you play as Germany, you have a whole branch devoted to territorial expansion. You need to reach certain military thresholds to unlock decisions in this branch to reflect the slow buildup and expansion of Germany from 1936 to 1939.
I normally grab the economic and research focuses first, but I thought it would be fun to figure out how fast you can gobble up territory through the focus tree alone, without going to war. I tested this on the base game v1.14.5.0917. There are several advantages to going down this path early:
- Free factories. Completing this path gives you 38 civilian factories (33 w/o Slovakia), 17 military factories (15 w/o Slovakia), and 1 naval dockyard. You also get access to the Mediterranean much earlier than you would otherwise.
- Resources. You also get access to 51 steel, 68 aluminum, 16 chromium, 4 oil, and 1 tungsten (if you include Slovakia). Of course, there is a hefty penalty for resources in non-core territory.
- Annexing Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia reduces the political power cost of MEFO Bills, so you’ll accumulate political power slightly faster.
- These focuses raise your base war support, which allows you to change your Economy Law to a War Economy much sooner than usual.
The entire runthrough takes 805 in-game days, after which you can focus on building your economy or pursuing other paths.
Here’s how it’s done:
You start the game producing Infantry Equipment I in a single production line with 10 military factories at maximum efficiency. Your production efficiency is capped at 50%. In this configuration, you’re producing 53.7 per day.
The German Army starts with 24 infantry, 3 armored, 1 motorized, 1 cavalry, and 1 mountain divisions. Each infantry division has 910 Infantry Equipment assigned. These units have a combined total of 24,900 Infantry Equipment. You need at least 40,000 Infantry Equipment in your army to select the Anschluss focus, or 15,100 more than what you start with.
At your starting level of production it will take over 281 days to make up the deficit. Obviously, this won’t work. You need to produce as much Infantry Equipment as you can as fast as possible.
Germany starts the game with 28 military factories. If you assign all 28 to the Infantry Equipment I production line, it will be producing 147.34 per day (149.43 at max efficiency). That will make up the deficit in approximately 103 days.
Note: building new military factories and adding them to this line will reduce your overall production efficiency and you won’t hit your target. I recommend creating a second line of Infantry Equipment and placing it above the first, so all new factories are added there.
Most focuses take 70 days to complete. It is impossible to go from Rhineland directly to Anschluss, because you can’t produce 15,100 Infantry Equipment in 70 days, even if you build more military factories or convert civilian factories to military. If you take the Naval Rearmament focus after Rhineland, however, which takes 35 days to complete, you will have the necessary window to produce the needed equipment.
But Anschluss also requires 500,000 manpower in divisions in the field, which is 230,400 more than what you start with. If you convert all 30 divisions to infantry, that deficit drops to 212,000, because each infantry division contains 9,600 men. Adding a single extra infantry battalion to your division template drops the deficit to 182,000 men. Completing the Rhineland focus gives you 5 Army Experience, which is all you need to add that battalion.
Since your new Infantry Division template requires 10,600 manpower, you will need to produce and train 18 new divisions to exceed the minimum requirement for Anschluss. These divisions will require more infantry equipment than you’ll produce, but don’t worry about that because you can deploy them before they have all the equipment they need. A unit has to be at least 20% trained before you can deploy it.
Make sure you toggle this line to “high equipment priority”, which makes sure all equipment produced will go to these divisions first.
By the time you achieve Naval Rearmament on April 15, 1936, all you have to do is deploy the whole line of 18 infantry divisions and Anschluss will be unlocked. After 70 days, shortly after August 1, 1936, Austria will be annexed to Germany and you will gain control over all its resources, factories, and units.
After Anschluss, the amount of Infantry Equipment in your army no longer matters, and the target is simply putting men in the field. Of course, you want them to be equipped but you can start diverting production elsewhere. The highest manpower requirement for unlocking any of these focuses is 750,000, so that is your target number for men in the field.
Immediately upon selecting the Anschluss focus, start training 21 infantry divisions. That will make up the deficit of 216,200 needed to unlock Demand Sudetenland. Even if you’re unable to fully deploy all 21 divisions due to lack of equipment, the units you gain from annexing Austria more than make up for it. Annexing Austria gives you an assortment of divisions depending on when the annexation takes place. In this case, I received nine. These plus the units you already produced puts you above the 750,000 threshold required to unlock the remaining territorial focuses. You can now turn your attention to producing tanks, planes, or whatever else your military needs.
Using this method, I was able to annex Yugoslavia by October 27, 1937. Optionally, you can continue with the two Greek focuses, but in my experience, Greece rarely folds and it’s a waste of time you could use more effectively elsewhere.
M.A. Kleen 