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HoI 4 Dev Diary - Manchukuo

Hello and welcome back to another Dev Diary. This week we will look at the last unrevealed focus tree for Waking the Tiger: Manchukuo.


Manchukuo is perhaps one of the weirdest players in the Chinese Civil War. Formally an Empire led by an Emperor, it was also a puppet. Despite owning a large chunk of China, it was never able to field the numbers the other Chinese factions brought to the fight. Despite being ruled by the last legitimate Son of Heaven, no one particularly liked this government.


Capture_intro.JPG



As such, your position at the start of the game is precarious at best. You have practically no support from the population, your industry base is mostly working for the Japanese, your army is somewhat less than befitting your station and to start with, there are bandits running around the country causing havoc.


man_ft2.jpg



So your first step has to be the pacification of the countryside. You can do this by either maintaining a military presence in the relevant areas or spending some manpower and infantry equipment in a more aggressive campaign to hunt them down. You should hurry, though, as the bandit raids will damage your infrastructure and industry if you let them proceed too long.


raids.jpg



Once the country is reasonably pacified, you face a more difficult choice: Either you decide to be an obedient little puppet or you start down on your path to independence and restoring the Empire that has always been yours by birth.


We developers, of course, withhold any judgment about which path you take.


Should you choose to remain a mere pathetic lapdog of the Japanese, you sell your dignity and freedom very dear indeed, as that branch gives you a much more powerful economy. Five year plans allow you to shape the direction of your industry for the next, well, five years, giving you the option to focus on industrial growth, military production or aircraft development. You will gain more infrastructure and factories along the way.


Capture_fyp.JPG



Finally, by allying with the Kwantung Army, you can position yourself as the natural leader of China from the Japanese perspective and get all captured Chinese territories turned over to you. Only then can you gain some autonomy and finally arrive at an equal standing with your supposed “Brother-Emperor”.


Should you, however, decide to take a stand for your freedom and independence and assert yourself, you will have a much harder job ahead of you as your imperial masters will not invest nearly as heavily into your state.



hoi4_120.jpg


More than that, in order to gain your independence, you will have to be patient and gain some small concessions here and there. The next fundamental choice for you is whether you want to turn your country into a society dominated by Manchus, or if you will make good on the propaganda of five equal races under one banner. Each will give you different advantages.

Afterwards, you will at last prepare for the war of independence against Japan (we actually had to rewrite our war system to allow you to be at war with both Japan and China, while they are also at war with each other). However, this branch will allow you to eventually get rid of the penalties from low legitimacy as you climb the ladder to restore your Imperial rule all across China. Once you break free from your Japanese overlords, you will once again be known as Qing China. Conquering the rest of China allows you to claim the Mandate of Heaven and announce yourself to the world as The Chinese Empire (2.0)


hoi4_121.jpg



Much like the other main Chinese factions (Nationalists and Communists), Manchukuo has access to the shared focus tree that allows them to build up their industry and develop new technologies. Owing to its position in the world, the only viable paths at game start are Germany and Japan, but breaking free will give you the opportunity to reach out to new partners.


That is all for this week. There will be a dev diary next week, but we won't tell you what it is just yet (we are working on a number of things that may or may not be done in time for the dev diary). At World War Wednesday today, our intrepid team of Daniel and Gabriel will continue to try and conquer China while making some of the worst jokes known to humanity. Tune in at 16:00 CET and ask your questions about the focus tree: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


Rejected Titles for this Dev Diary:

China - under new MANagement

This Focus tree sponsored by Burger Qing

MAN-spreading all over China

Henry Puyi and the Dragon Throne

This focus tree will make a MAN out of you

This DLC is basically MAN-datory

Hail to the Qing

Coming up with rejected titles took longer than writing the rest of this diary
 
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Based on the history, Japanese have no attempt to let Manchukuo unite China or even let them take the leadership of China. That's why Manchukuo called Manchukuo (Manchurian's nation) instead of Qing China. Japanese tends to separate Manchuria from China and create a new Manchu identity, in their propaganda, Japanese helps the Manchus reclaimed their nation. Then it is necessary to educate the next generation to cooperate with the Japanese in order to meet their colonial ambition. So, if Puyi chose to obey the Japanese Kwantung army, he might not get the chance to gain "Chinese leadership" or "Vassalize Mengkukuo"...
 
Seeing all these "Non-Aligned" monarchies is abit weird, it would be cool if you guys could make a monarchist ideology since now we have Austria-Hungary, German Empire, Japanese Shogunate (in the A-Historical path), Ethiopia, The Balkan Kingdoms (Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria) and now the Qing Empire (There are many more that i didnt name), so it would be really nice to have a monarchist faction in the game to better support these Kingdoms and Empires.
 
are you guys ever going to re-evaluate and update some of the bigger states in the game? Like in Africa and big parts of South-America and Northern China, this should be the perfect moment to re-distribute some provinces and states
 
"This Focus tree sponsored by Burger Qing" RIP soda and pc screen
 
We decided rather than showing portraits in each diary we will do a diary before release and go over all the art. so stay tuned for that :)
THANK YOU! :):):)
So very excited! Enough new artwork for its own DD?!?!?!
Most Excellent!
 
Rejected Titles for this Dev Diary:

China - under new MANagement

This Focus tree sponsored by Burger Qing

MAN-spreading all over China

Henry Puyi and the Dragon Throne

This focus tree will make a MAN out of you

This DLC is basically MAN-datory

Hail to the Qing

Coming up with rejected titles took longer than writing the rest of this diary

"Lets make a MAN out of YOU"

"The Attack of the 50 foot MAN"

"It's raining MAN"

"Got MAN?"

"That's one small step for MAN, one giant leap for MAN-kind."
 
Based on the history, Japanese have no attempt to let Manchukuo unite China or even let them take the leadership of China. That's why Manchukuo called Manchukuo (Manchurian's nation) instead of Qing China. Japanese tends to separate Manchuria from China and create a new Manchu identity, in their propaganda, Japanese helps the Manchus reclaimed their nation. Then it is necessary to educate the next generation to cooperate with the Japanese in order to meet their colonial ambition. So, if Puyi chose to obey the Japanese Kwantung army, he might not get the chance to gain "Chinese leadership" or "Vassalize Mengkukuo"...

This is very much accurate w/r/t China in terms of a strict historical playthrough, but Mengjiang was actually under a suprising degree of Manchurian control. Probably because they were far less significant, they got little attention directly from the Kwantung army and were actually largely controlled by Manchukuo's lot in a kinda tiered system of puppets.
 
I love the focus tree, but I can see from the screenshots that the borders are as inaccurate as they were back in HoI III.
 
This is very much accurate w/r/t China in terms of a strict historical playthrough, but Mengjiang was actually under a suprising degree of Manchurian control. Probably because they were far less significant, they got little attention directly from the Kwantung army and were actually largely controlled by Manchukuo's lot in a kinda tiered system of puppets.
@Archangel85 Could we get some clarification on this? Will Manchukuo switch over to Qing even on historical settings?
 
Not as flat and round face as she seems to have in most of her pictures. Looks distinctly less asian in game.
Pretty much yes.
The inevitable Anime mods will fix this.

(Or I'll just draw a black-and-white version of her, who knows. Still want to do young Franco too, though.)
 
Seeing all these "Non-Aligned" monarchies is abit weird, it would be cool if you guys could make a monarchist ideology since now we have Austria-Hungary, German Empire, Japanese Shogunate (in the A-Historical path), Ethiopia, The Balkan Kingdoms (Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria) and now the Qing Empire (There are many more that i didnt name), so it would be really nice to have a monarchist faction in the game to better support these Kingdoms and Empires.

A modern shogunate may be more fascist than the traditional Japan Empire.
 
Pretty much yes.
The inevitable Anime mods will fix this.

(Or I'll just draw a black-and-white version of her, who knows. Still want to do young Franco too, though.)

If you want I can give you the WIP .dds that I was working on with my old Manchukuo mod before my computer died. It's still far from a good match, but it's close enough that it doesn't really stick out from the other portraits much. You'd need someone much better with images than me to make it fit right, though.

CWEZIMB.png