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Developer Diary | Switzerland #2

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The year is 1944, the future (If you live in 1936), you may find yourself in the middle of a war against France, as the Alpine Confederation, with a beautiful flag, the sound of gunfire off in the distance​
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You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large army, composed of regular troops, marching through mountains and plains. You may tell yourself, This is not my Guisan, this is not my neutral and democratic Switzerland. And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?​
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Hey there, it’s Carlo again, to update you on the alt-history paths of the Swiss Focus Tree! Now let’s go back a bit. To the present, 1936. It all started with the focus Swiss Guiding Principles, which triggered an event for you to proclaim the overall direction of the Balance of Power for the rest of the game. Should Switzerland continue with their policy of devolved power to the Cantons? Or is the current world situation too tense to go ‘business as usual’? Picking any will not block you from going one way or the other in the BoP, but it will certainly help getting to where you want to be more easily.​
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By keeping the balance of power in the Cantons for enough time, you are able to complete some focuses in the historical path, giving you bonuses to militias and recruitable population, and allowing you to build up a large militia army. You might think it’s not worth the time considering you want to go alt-history, but you’ll see the reasoning later.

A bit afterwards you can go down the Federal Police Intelligence Department focus, which unlocks a series of focuses that give you bonuses for managing resistance in occupied states (And your own states if they are occupied, just in case), and more importantly, a military sub-branch, to develop your war capabilities further. This sub-branch is shared with the fascist path, but you don’t need to go fascist to access it.​
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Then Allied Gold, GotthardBund and where things really start to diverge; Press for Vorarlberg.

Remember the last Switzerland Dev Diary where I stopped to give historical context? Well this is one of those. In 1919 the very rural Austrian region of Vorarlberg held a referendum to decide if they would join the Swiss Confederation, and the vote actually went towards uniting with Switzerland. Unfortunately for them, neither Austria or Switzerland wanted this to happen. Austria because, well, governments tend to prefer to keep their territory and Switzerland because, among other reasons (Including World War I), they already had a majority of their population speaking German, so they didn’t want to increase that gap further. In a Switzerland that seeks to defend their democracy by projecting power and growing in military might, this is not as important, so Vorarlberg is the first stepping stone on their quest to expand.

When you complete that focus, an ultimatum is sent to Austria (Or Germany if you let the days go by), demanding that they hand over Vorarlberg, or else. Hopefully it doesn’t get to the “or else”, and if that’s the case, congratulations, you’re the proud owner of Switzerland’s newest canton!​
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After this you’re confronted with another fork in the road. You can go the fully autocratic way, and Pre-empt Anschluss, allowing you to annex the rest of Austria; or you can go slightly more democratic, with The New Eidgenossenschaft. They both allow Switzerland to expand. With the Preempt Anschluss path, you’ll be able to core all of the alps, finally becoming the Alpine Empire of your dreams, and if that’s not enough for you and you’re ready for a real challenge, you can bring the fight to Germany, Italy and France, in the name of Democracy and peace of course. After all, how dare these psychos keep fighting amongst themselves for centuries, someone ought to bring a stop to that.​
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Now it’s not all fun and empires on this side of Vorarlberg, when you go for The New Eidgenossenschaft you find a more civilized form of conquest, with Expand the Federation. It’ll unlock decisions to spread democracy in your future cantons neighboring states, and claim them afterwards. If their current owner decides to let you take them peacefully will depend on your military might and how many other states of theirs you’ve influenced. Unfortunately, this time, France wasn’t very keen on you bringing democracy to Rhone, so that’s how you find yourself with no other choice than to declare war on them.​
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Before going further let’s briefly talk about the military branch they share. The focus Switzerland on the Offense, right under GotthardBund, will surely come in handy: It’s one of the focuses that allows Switzerland to train regular troops, edit templates, and notably, it’ll turn all the militias into regular troops, including all their upgrades. Suddenly, your citizens become full time soldiers, just doing their part​
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This is why it can be beneficial to beef up your militias before going fully alt-history, you can train cheap troops, with a template you upgrade without spending Army XP, with a large manpower pool that comes with no downsides most of the time, and then they can become regular infantry. It’s mutually exclusive with The Neutral Entente focus, which allows you to invite other Neutral and Non-Aligned countries to your faction. Under those two, you get to upgrade your military and even prepare Switzerland for a real navy!

After Expand the Confederation and completing some very necessary military focuses, you go Empower the Council, putting the Balance of Power squarely on the council, and getting rid of the Cantons vs Council struggle, this gives you more War Support, Political Power among other things.​
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Now that the council has consolidated power, it’s time to use it and make the president of the council the true leader of the Swiss government, granting some bonuses but more importantly, making the president of the Council Switzerland’s Country Leader forever! (These portraits are not ready so not showing it yet)

You can continue your war as you are, in either the Eidgenossenschaft or Anschluss branch, but there’s a man that’s not happy with where Switzerland is at the moment, and that’s our guy Henri Guisan. As far as I can tell he was not that much of a radical democrat, after all he was a professional soldier, and those tend to favor rigid hierarchies, but despite that he was also a Swiss patriot who praised the Swiss tradition of Armed Neutrality and Independence, so he would definitely not be happy with a Swiss-led empire, regardless of name. This is why on this timeline, you can nudge him towards a coup, and with his popularity both in the Military and civilian populations, resistance to him is very limited. Of course, as much as he is committed to traditional Swiss values, he is a soldier, and he will finish the fight with his military bonuses as a Country Leader and General, like a Cincinnatus once in a lifetime kind of thing.

And that’s how we got where we are. The rest is up to you; you can take the war to other countries, or simply finish the war and then complete the focus Return to the Old Switzerland which allows Switzerland to neutrality and democracy. Same as it ever was.

Before giving you a taste of the other alt-history paths, I think it’s important to take a look at the full focus tree (Please note it’s a work in progress and a lot can change. Also, still waiting on some icons, as you can see).​
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Now that’s not the only alt-history path for Switzerland. You also have the option of taking a stance to help the Allies win their war against the fascist powers of Europe. After you complete Closer Democratic Ties you have 3 different ways of joining the war as an ally:​
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First one is through Join France, which makes Switzerland into a French Puppet and later, into the Second Helvetic Republic, a successor of the Napoleonic Republic I was talking about in the olden days of the first Swiss Dev Diary. The advantage of this path is that Alpine Aspirations allows you to core some alpine states, handy for the peace conference at the end of the war.

The middle one, Join the Allies, as it says in the name, allows you to join the United Kingdom as an ally. It’s a relatively pain-free way of joining the war, but it also doesn’t offer additional rewards.

The last one is through the Secret Pact with the Allies focus. You get to this one from a different part of the tree, by completing some focuses on the Buero Ha branch and three focuses directed at supporting the Allies’ espionage efforts: Support Allied Espionage unlocks a decision that allows Switzerland to give itself and their secret ally (In most cases the leader of the biggest democratic faction) a timed National Spirit with bonuses for espionage. Expand Spy Network gives Switzerland an extra Operative Slot, and increased Intel Network Gain. Share Spy Network unlocks a decision to send an event to your secret ally, and they can choose to get either a Swiss-German, Swiss-Italian or Swiss-French operative, the best part is that you get one too! Then in Secret Pact with the Allies itself, you unlock a decision to support your secret ally, giving them a percentage of your military and civilian production in exchange for Command Power, Army, Air and Navy experience.​
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After that you still have more to unlock, and eventually you can choose when to complete Jump into Action and join the war at the most opportune moment.

All of these paths have a shared industrial and military branch to get you ready, ending on Weapons of Democracy. Aaaand these are the Democratic-ish paths for Switzerland! Hope you at least enjoyed reading about them.

The left-side paths are the ones I thought plausible for Switzerland keeping their democracy (At least for a little bit) while still joining the war. They’re about Switzerland using its past and tradition to justify joining the war, either against fascism, or as a preemptive defense. While Switzerland in this period did have a fascist movement, it was always very small and on the fringes, for example, there was only one member of parliament elected under a Fascist party; Robert Tobler. This small minority quickly faded once it was obvious to them where it would lead, and especially so after Anschluss. This is why the right side of the focus mountain is not as much a story of Swiss Fascism rising to take over the government, but a scenario where Switzerland sees the power of Fascism rising in Europe and is slowly coerced into reluctantly joining it.​
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The start of the fascist side is populated by focuses about events that actually happened, but often did not end up going further, or were historically rejected. Purchase German Planes, Ban the Swiss Communist Party, Withdraw from the League Of Nations, Limited Censorship of the Press, The National Front, and The Petition of the 200 are based on real events, policies or organizations in Switzerland at the time that ended up not affecting the Democratic system of Switzerland enough to topple it, but because this is a fascist path, in this timeline they will have repercussions, and will tighten the grip of fascism over Switzerland.​
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Unlike the alt-democratic branch, this one’s not as focused on espionage, but instead, focuses on becoming closer to Germany and developing the military industry. After Abandon Neutrality, which does exactly what you think it does, you have a choice between 2 leaders: Robert Tobler and Rolf Henne.​
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They were both leaders of The National Front at different points, and while they were both Fascists, they diverged in key ways. Rolf Henne was closer to the German Nazi party and more openly wanted for Switzerland to join Germany, while Robert Tobler wanted Switzerland to have its own form of fascism, achieved by working with the government and slowly changing it, without burning down the house. Despite this, they were both directly or indirectly supported by the German Reich.​
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Tobler’s path will lead to a slower and more stable transition to fascism, until you centralize Switzerland and join the Nazis. Henne’s path on the other hand allows you to become a German Puppet almost immediately, but with the advantage that you can ask Germany for territory, including Vorarlberg and Austria, and if you’re lucky enough, the alps in France and Italy.​
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Both of them have access to the Professionalize Militias focus, which is another one of those that convert your militias into professional soldiers, very handy for the conquest of Europe. Besides this, there’s a military branch that is shared with the Federal Police Intelligence Department branch, which allows you on one side to mechanize your army, and in the other to improve special forces, planes and ultimately, give you Mountaineer Paratroopers, which give Swiss paratroopers bonuses in mountains.

Lastly, there’s an elephant in the Dev Diary I would like to address. Many countries in Hearts of Iron feature civil wars when they change political parties, and that’s a very cool mechanic because it allows you to have a combat snack before the main course. In Switzerland, that’s not the case, when the government changes, it does so progressively but peacefully. The main reasons are:​
  1. Switzerland is mostly mountains and forests, leading to a slow and grinding war.​
  2. A lot of the content centers around building fortifications, and improving defense, because that was Switzerland’s focus at the time, and even before that. It would’ve led to an even slower and grindier war.​
  3. I felt the territory was way too small to have any sort of interesting war in it.​
Those were the reasons we decided not to have government changes through civil war.

Oh, and one more thing, I felt like Brandy the St Bernard wouldn’t stay for the fascist path, after all Brandy is a good doggo, so we managed to find an evil timeline version, doubt it will make the cut, seeing as my photoshop skills are not up to par.​
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Ok I’ll end this Dev Diary now before I stop making sense. Come back next time for the Ethiopian Alt-history Dev Diary! I think you’re in for a treat.​
 

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Yes I remember HoI3. I would say it was even then mostly flavor. Take the USSR you can only have certain ministers and generals based on your ideology. HoI4 is just more inconsistent (ministers being locked behind certain ideologies depend on what DLC nation you play), and use less ministers. Even then, the actual different between i.e Leninism and Stalinism was really none as you could use ministers from both if you were a communist flavor. With the newer DLCs this is more immersive in HoI4. You get different minister rosters if you with Stalin, Left, Right, or United Opposition.
I think from political and immersion point HoI III was better, but warfare, technology, industry and puppeting are better in HoI IV. After BBA peace conferences should be really good as well
 
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This gotta be a joke :rolleyes:
Mfin Australia has a Communist path.
The Soviets can somehow restore the monarchy.
POLAND CAN LITERALLY HAVE A BEAR RUN THE COUNTRY.

I mean I understand that every country doesn't need all 4 ideology paths, but you couldn't come up with a better excuse?
I would rather have more fleshed-out paths than 1) become communist 2) join comitern/create swiss alternative that noone except mongolia will join 3) 3% recruitable population because lol workers 4)technology sharing
 
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I cant believe the devs made such fantasy history big big big Focus Trees to just forget about introducing even just one Communist alt branch among the 4 monarchist and fifty nuance of Fascism branch.

I mean, come on.
Is there absolutely no art direction, no planning anymore for HoI content ?

It feels like the alt history fantasy Focus Tree direction has gone so far it is now on auto parody mode.
 
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I think I mentioned bits of this on the responses to the previous DD, but basically, we did consider this at the start, but ended opting for states that do not match language lines (except for Ticino), since we consider Switzerland as a united country separate from those three nations a more interesting scenario.
damn, and i thought that states should also have a purpose of being used as potential post war borders. I guess my dream of not having to use mods to make nice borders won't come true any time soon (looking at you Rhineland).
 
Good Day!Please tell me, will Switzerland have its own unit models? This is a weird question and I know you work hard, I appreciate it, but it's super important to me.
Hey! Yeah they're working on those models right now. There's a winter and a normal version. Militias and mountaineers slightly different too!
 
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I will not hide that I am deeply disappointed with Switzerland as one of the three countries of this DLC. The more I am disappointed that the developers created three paths of development for democracy, one completely fantastic for the Alpine empire, only two for fascism, and none of them provides for an alliance with Italy against Germany and, most importantly, they did not create the most interesting communist path. In the 20th century, Switzerland was actually an example of a capitalist state, so when it comes to alternative history, it is precisely the nationalization of Swiss banks and the seizure of the accumulated assets of all sides of World War II would be a practical blow to the entire capitalist system, which, without capital, would not be able to function properly, therefore communist Switzerland would be crucial and it would certainly be more interesting than fantasies about an Alpine empire. Now Only Ethiopia can save this DLC for me. I look forward to seeing the fascist path for Ethiopia. If the creators are well prepared, as I believe, this path will be based on the racist, radical fraction of Rastafarianism, i.e. it will be the black equivalent of National Socialism.
 
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I cant believe the devs made such fantasy history big big big Focus Trees to just forget about introducing even just one Communist alt branch among the 4 monarchist and fifty nuance of Fascism branch.

I mean, come on.
Is there absolutely no art direction, no planning anymore for HoI content ?

It feels like the alt history fantasy Focus Tree direction has gone so far it is now on auto parody mode.

You are entitled to an opinion - but hyperbole will get you nowhere. If you have constructive feedback, that will be listened to, but please try to express it in a manner even remotely approaching polite.
 
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Question1: Can you make it possible to add more tank variety—currently it's hardcoded, it's a killer for mods.
Question2: Can you allow the addition of more fuel-like type resources with a lot of modability. so mods can add deeper supply mechanics like ammunition.

I-Player who bought all DLCs and spent 0 hours on vanilla, we will still spend money, just make the game more moddable so you can attract a greater player base whom you cannot address with only one style.

BICE is LIFE, LIFE is BICE
 
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I think I mentioned bits of this on the responses to the previous DD, but basically, we did consider this at the start, but ended opting for states that do not match language lines (except for Ticino), since we consider Switzerland as a united country separate from those three nations a more interesting scenario.
In all due respect to you and the team, this has got to be my least favorite alt focus tree in the game.

The main reason is that Switzerland, utilizing the focuses in these trees, has essentially become a border-gore terror-state. It's main function in the request of new cantons is something that makes almost no historic sense, and it's intriguing that this is allowed when the argument against a communist tree was that it was difficult to justify from a historical perspective. (This is without even mentioning the eyestrain that is the alpine federation) In your very own game, there is a quote of Adolf Hitler calling Switzerland a pimple on the face of Europe, and it's supposed to be considered "historically justifiable" that Hitler would give Europe acne by granting it even more concessions.

I think the one saving grace of Switzerland would have been the ability to split it up by language lines and annex them to their respective powers, but you can't even do that. I find this to be the biggest downside of the swiss tree, considering that this is almost certainly what most players would have intended with it in any of their fascistic/communist playthroughs (evidenced by the reception of the post that I am responding to.)

You used the reasoning of time to justify not adding a communist tree, which is understandable from your perspective, however I don't believe most of the community would mind if the DLC was delayed enough to alter the tree and to add polish.

That being said, I very much like the neutral tree laid out in part one of Switzerland and I applaud the team for their creation of something so creative and fun. I would almost just prefer them to keep that aspect of the tree and to remove everything else.
 
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You used the reasoning of time to justify not adding a communist tree, which is understandable from your perspective, however I don't believe most of the community would mind if the DLC was delayed enough to alter the tree and to add polish.
Much the same as you cannot suddenly make a Cruise Ship do a 360-degree spin you can't just suddenly decide to delay a DLC, it has has major knock-on ramifications for every part of the business nor is it ever simply a case of "Oh if only we had that extra month from those evil bosses the DLC would be Eden on Earth"
 
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Much the same as you cannot suddenly make a Cruise Ship do a 360-degree spin you can't just suddenly decide to delay a DLC, it has has major knock-on ramifications for every part of the business nor is it ever simply a case of "Oh if only we had that extra month from those evil bosses the DLC would be Eden on Earth"
Which is precisely why I don't consider it to be a massive slight on the part of the developers. I have very little insight on the inner workings of paradox.

I don't intend for my initial comment to come off as scathing and I don't expect that extra time will be allocated because a guy named goat13 with a default pfp doesn't like the swiss alt focuses. I overall appreciate the work that has been done.
 
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I think there should be a new way how smaller Nation can interact/merge with bigger ones. Puppet means its a handicap on a weak nation that makes it even more weaker(If i'm correct). And joining Factions is too much on Eye level with the bigger ones and can be exploited to sabotage the bigger Nation. I think something in between whereby the Nation is considered Part of one Nation but the players still control their smaller Nation.
I tough about this because the Swiss focus Tree touches this and joined the Faction of Germany would be a better player experience than turning to a puppet. Or joining the German Reich as a playable "Bundesland". Same system could be used for Austria players to keep playing as part of Germany without getting wiped or gimped.
 
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The lack of left-wing path for Switzerland, just like the lack of democratic path for Russia in the previous DLC, is quite annoying. While it's a rather implausible (to say it lightly) scenario, it's not nearly as ridiculous as a Cossack king for Poland or neo-Napoleonic France.
Just to provide some background for Switzerland. The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland was leading in popularity since 1928 elections, scoring 1st by popular vote and either 1st or 2nd in National Council seats in all elections until 1975. While it rejected the idea of violent revolution, it followed socialist principles and, until 1935, supported the introduction of dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory phase. In 1921, a more radical group split from it and formed the Communist Party of Switzerland, which never achieved much success but managed to maintain a small representation in the National Council until 1939, peaking at 4 members (that is, 4 times more than fascists ever managed).
A democratic socialist path, concentrated on internal development, intervention against fascists and alliances with non-Soviet socialist countries (most countries have such alt-leftist paths) would allow for a non-expansive but still diplomatically engaged game. But apparently there was no time because we need another ridiculous Roman Empire path
 
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Since Switzerland mostly bought planes during this period mostly just the planes they were using with a texture matching what they had. There is a new one unique to Switzerland though.
Yes I knew of one, great to hear it will be in the DLC.
 
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You have some point here, but anarchist in HoI is one of the "non-aligned" ideologies xd
But i don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing. The "ideology cake" was largely designed with a historical game in mind, with little deviation, which HoI4 was in the beginning and it represented... well the alignement of nations between the 3 large factions and those who are aligned to neither of them. However with the addition of more forms of government in more alt-history scenarios the original purpose seemingly got lost.

Quinessentially anarchists are non-aligned and i if we take it by solely representing alignement (or a lack thereof) i don't see any contradiction between forms of government, which lie on the extreme ends of whichever metric you compare them on, to share the non-aligned ideology.

The only way this could be cleared up in the future is by a rework of said mechanics and a clear seperation between diplomatic alignment and forms of internal-goverment.
 
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