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Developer Diary | Joint Focus Tree

Hej hei folks! Carlo here, and I’m super excited to present this new feature, probably the first to be made with multiplayer in mind. Just remember that this is all work in progress so you’ll definitely see stuff that will change for release.

Let me start with a hypothetical scenario:

You and your friends decide to play a co-op campaign of Hearts of Iron. You get your healthy snacks and drinks, jump into a voice chat and load the game, hoping to play as Monarchist Poland. There’s one problem though, one of your friends wants to play as monarchist Lithuania, and hopes to annex Poland and the other Baltic nations. If this has happened to you, then you’ll love the Joint Focus Tree. Actually I’m sure you’ll love it even if it hasn’t.

As nations that start the game disadvantaged against the big majors, a lot of minors rely on absorbing the countries around them to be able to compete. This happens with the Baltics, China, South America and importantly for us, the Nordic countries. We’re hoping the Joint Focus Tree will solve this by giving you and your friends the opportunity to collaborate with your neighbors and make your faction be more powerful than the sum of its parts, so you can take the fight to the Majors and win, TOGETHER!
1. Joint Focus Trees Combined.jpg

But what is it? Well it’s a shared focus tree that Nordics will have in addition to the country’s normal focus tree, but when you start it you create a special faction where anyone can complete focuses in it, and they will complete in every relevant country, giving effects to all Nordic members of the faction.
2. Form Alliance Tooltip.jpg

Let’s take “Joint Military Exercises" as a very basic example. If Norway completes it, it’ll get 80 Army Experience and 2 75% Land Doctrine bonuses, but because it’s a Joint Focus, it will give 60 Army Experience and 2 50% Land Doctrine bonuses to every other Nordic in the faction.
3. Joint Military Exercises.jpg

The best part is that then another country, say, Denmark, can complete any focus that requires it while Norway does another focus, Joint or otherwise. You’re all working together and strengthening each other.
20. Multiple focuses.jpg

Other focuses give the Originator (The player that completed the focus) a special National Spirit that makes it the leader in that certain area, and because the requirements are pretty high, you will have to coordinate with your friends so each country specializes in one area to continue spreading the benefits around.
4. Northern Navies.jpg

Now that I’ve explained the basic concept, let me describe how Arms Against Tyranny’s Joint Focus Tree will work:

If you’re playing as any of the Nordic countries and you’re not a puppet, you’ll eventually have the option of forming one of the three factions planned for this:

The Nordic Council: The Nordic democracies have joined forces to defend their political systems and to eradicate autocracy and oppression abroad (There’s currently an actual Nordic Council in real life, though with a different aim). They will use their resources and expertise to focus on quality over quantity, and manufacturing technologically advanced equipment, while still providing for their people.
5. Nordic Council Tree.png



The Northern People’s Union: The peoples of the North united against fascism and capitalism in Europe and beyond. Every worker that’s not making the tools of communism at home must take up arms and fight abroad. Expect superior numbers in both personnel and materiel
6. Northern People’s Union.png

And finally, the Kalmar League: A mirror of the historical Kalmar Union, the monarchies and dictatorships of Scandinavia and Finland call upon their shared past to bring forth their common goal of domination, through armed conflict and conquest. By any means necessary.
7. Kalmar League.png

As you can see, many of the icons, names and effects will change depending on which one fits your country’s current politics. Credit goes to Marie for her excellent art, there was a lot of back and forth to establish a unique visual identity for each faction, and they are some of my favorite focus icons in Hearts of Iron. Here’s some highlights
8. Some focus icons.jpg

And you probably noticed the title background for these is different from normal ones, so stay tuned and we’ll talk about them and how you can change them yourself through modding.
9. TItle.jpg

Let us continue then. The JFT has 7 different branches: Airforce, Navy, Army, Civilian Production, Research, Military Production and, right in the middle, a political branch that will let you unlock institutions that improve and further customize your faction.
10. Political Branch.jpg
For example, in the Communist faction, after establishing the Northern Federation, the faction’s National Spirit improves, and then you get something I call Capstone Selectors.

11. Capstone Selector.jpg

When someone completes it, it will unlock 4 extra focuses at the end of the relevant branch. The first choice in the NPU is between the Army and Civilian Industry, and if we choose the Army one, 4 new focuses will appear at the end of the army branch, giving you an extra advantage on that area, and letting you adapt to the situation.
12. Army Capstone.jpg

After that you can upgrade your faction again, and then you get another capstone choice, this time between Research and military production. Every one of these factions has 4 different configurations, depending on what you need, and how involved you want to be with it.
13. Research Capstone.jpg

Before we finish, I want to show you what are those focuses before the one that lets you form the Joint Alliance. These are simple old shared focuses that all Nordics will have access to. They are meant to represent how they all helped each other in the period, while avoiding all out war with their neighbor’s aggressors. The best examples are Sweden, Norway and Denmark secretly sending volunteers and equipment to Finland to fend off the Soviet Union, and Sweden’s surreptitious support for Norwegian and Danish liberation against Germany. Of course with these focuses and decisions you’ll be able to go further than that and join them in their struggle, or even join their enemies and gain territory yourself.
14. shared tree.jpg

Let’s dive in.

Reaching Out to Our Neighbors starts the decision category, and from the get go gives the option to promote Nordic Unity, letting you improve their opinion of you, especially handy if you want to form the Joint Faction with the AI.
15. Promote Nordic Unity.jpg

Then you can go for Industrial Cooperation, which unlocks decisions to improve your economy and the economy of a neighbor in equal terms, if you go the other route, Leverage Nordic Investments, you can invest in other Nordics and ask them to invest in your, always with better terms for the initiator, but they’ll still get something out of it.

16. Invest Decision.jpg

Mutual Guarantees is… Well… Mutual Guarantees. But Strengthen Ties is another useful one if you want to do the Joint Focus Tree, it not only makes your countries like each other more, but you’ll trade some party popularity, so if you’re communist, and they’re democratic, they will get some communism, and you’ll get some democracy, as a treat.
17. Strengthen Ties.jpg

It concludes in the focus to form the alliance, but I want to draw your attention to the focuses on the sides. One has the name of the expansion (Mostly) and the other one is the Nordic March. They both let you send volunteers more easily and give you bonuses for combat but their goals are very different.
18. support focuses.jpg

The TAAT focus unlocks several decisions that let you expand volunteer capacity, make it easier to send lend lease and even join the war, provided you’ve been involved in it enough participation in it. Every time you or any other Nordic helps them, the conflict scale increases, and the higher it is, the more likely your participation will go up, until your neighbor’s enemy sees you as a threat and attacks you too! It will be a balancing act for you to help your neighbors and not get invaded in the process.
19. support decisions.jpg

And that’s it! This is how we plan to make the nations in this expansion work together more than ever, and introduce a new vessel for cool alt history. Obviously there’s tons more details that I didn’t include, but you can always ask me and I’ll try to answer where and when possible. Don’t forget to stay tuned for the next one of these, where Arheo will show you some diverse cool things!
 
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Interesting.
Can't see myself ever using this mechanic personally but I'm sure many will be very happy with it and definitely opens doors for mods.
 
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Unfortunately no, we're only making this one for now. We'll see what else we can do with this format in the future though!
As much as I like the updates you guys do, feels like a real shame how so much is not backwards compatible (although implementing this mechanic for Balkan countries would require a fair bit of work).

The much bigger gripe for me is that we still have naval bomber/tactical bomber/carrier fighter/heavy fighter bonuses throughout focus trees.

Something something custodian team I guess..
 
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As much as I like the updates you guys do, feels like a real shame how so much is not backwards compatible (although implementing this mechanic for Balkan countries would require a fair bit of work).

The much bigger gripe for me is that we still have naval bomber/tactical bomber/carrier fighter/heavy fighter bonuses throughout focus trees.

Something something custodian team I guess..
it is backwards compatible, they just aren't implementing.
 
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Can the focus tree icons change dynamically with the new update?

And if so, are these focus trees from the diary technically one with a dynamic change of icons and localization, or are they 3 similar, but technically different trees (as in the USSR in the NSB)?
 
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Can the focus tree icons change dynamically with the new update?

And if so, are these focus trees from the diary technically one with a dynamic change of icons and localization, or are they 3 similar, but technically different trees (as in the USSR in the NSB)?
They are the same focuses with dynamic text, and dynamic icons, which is a new feature we didn't have at the time
 
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Historically in Sweden, Norway and Denmark there was major political resistance and institutional inertia against any military-political deepening of Nordic ties. It was seen as compromising neutrality and giving Russia or Germany an excuse to invade. Finland was more keen on deepening those ties, particularly with Sweden, but Sweden repeatedly thwarted the Finns' advances on account of the aforementioned fears. Will there be any domestic hurdles for the players to overcome or backlash to deal with when pursuing this joint focus tree, or will its cost simply be measured in the opportunity cost in relation to what focus from their national part of the focus tree they could be doing instead? Given that there was no mention of the former in the dev diary, I fear the latter is the case.

EDIT: Oh and there is the political power cost. I guess that could be seen as representing overcoming at least some of the institutional inertia, but I feel like there should be some harsher penalties as well, like hits to stability and the like.
 
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Historically in Sweden, Norway and Denmark there was major political resistance and institutional inertia against any military-political deepening of Nordic ties. It was seen as compromising neutrality and giving Russia or Germany an excuse to invade. Finland was more keen on deepening those ties, particularly with Sweden, but Sweden repeatedly thwarted the Finns' advances on account of the aforementioned fears. Will there be any domestic hurdles for the players to overcome or backlash to deal with when pursuing this joint focus tree, or will its cost simply be measured in the opportunity cost in relation to what focus from their national part of the focus tree they could be doing instead? Given that there was no mention of the former in the dev diary, I fear the latter is the case.
It is the latter. In HoI you kinda sorta play as "the spirit of the nation", and as such, it decides to seek closer ties
 
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I feel like a lot of the features of the new dlc are going to be difficult to understand until I actually get to see them work.
 
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There should be an achievement for completing the communist JFT called "Erik the Red".
 
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Are there going to be multiple Joint Focus Trees included in the next DLC or only one for the Nordic nations?

For example, would we see a Joint Focus Tree for the Balkans or Austria-Hungary or China or Latin America?
 
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could this feature be tweaked such that 2 competing nations shared a joint focus tree, but when one side completes 1 focus, it gives bonus to itself, but debuffs to competitor? I am thinking of Communist vs. Nationalist China. Each side will have different conditions in order to start the joint focus, and gives different buffs/debuffs to other side depending on who completes it first. so you will have a 'race' to see who get to the joint focus first. This could be interesting via mod or future update to WtT content
 
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This is interesting. Unfortunately, this did not work out for Scandinavia historically.

I like the concept, and I could see that something similar could be implemented, once the Axis and Allies are formed. Would you think that it is possible to do and play cooperatively as Axis or Allies in a more co-joint way?
 
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Just want to say. I´ve been following you guys for quite a while now. I've been always interested in how WW2 events unfolded, but also had the thought with the "what if" scenario. Something like "the man in the high castle"

Gotta say you truly got me hooked in to these events and love how much passion you put in to this game. :)
 
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