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HoI4 Dev Diary - France Rework

Bonjour! Today we will be talking about the upcoming rework of the French focus tree. At this point in development, not all the art is in, so some of the things you’ll see are still work in progress.

We are well aware that the France Focus Tree currently in the game is perhaps not the worst of the remaining vanilla trees, but we believe that reworking France allows us to better integrate some of the new features coming in the upcoming DLC. For that reason we have decided to split “the French Experience” (™ pending) across three weeks. Today we cover the base tree, next week we will be looking at the reowrk of the resistance and occupation system, and in two weeks we return to take a look at Free France and Vichy.

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While the basic French Focus Tree was good, we wanted to improve on it a bit. Specifically, a France that survived past about 1941 would find itself entirely out of focuses, so the new focus tree would have to be deeper. In addition, we wanted to have a more accurate representation of the many issues that impacted French policy-making in the period, and to have decisions you make come back to haunt you (“Short-term solutions cause long-term problems”).

We also wanted to give proper representation to the unusual state of affairs that existed between the Vichy government and the Fighting French under de Gaulle, but you’ll have to wait for a bit longer to see just what we have in store for them.

The French tree as it is currently in the game represents fairly well what has become the unofficial focus tree design philosophy: Separate branches for industry, the armed forces, politics and alternate ideologies. So the base structure should still look familiar.

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The Industry branch has been expanded by a system that I, in all humility, consider to be pretty clever: the “Invest in…” focuses give you building slots in a number of states in the area, with later focuses adding factories into each of the states previously invested in. That means the longer you wait in pulling the trigger on the Colonial/Civilian/Military Industry focuses, the bigger the payoff - but it comes later in the game. If you take all the investment focuses, you can get a whopping 18 civilian factories and 14 military factories in just three focuses (numbers are, of course, absolutely, 100%, final and won’t ever be changed for any reason).

In the political sphere, we decided not to introduce a fully new gameplay mechanic for France when we already have a perfectly functional stability and war support system that works fairly well in representing the internal politics of the Third Republic. To put it simply, you will have to tread a narrow line between raising your stability by lowering your war support and raising your war support by lowering your stability. Should your stability drop below 25% for too long, a civil war breaks out. To make matters worse, you have to contend with far-right and far-left groups taking to the streets in anger if you make decisions that they disagree with, potentially lowering your stability even further. You can ban these groups - at a stability penalty depending on their relative popularity, which might be difficult to recover from.

The threat of civil war is removed when you go to war with another country, and the political violence stops if you can get stability above 70% but it returns if stability drops below 50% without political action being taken to remove the causes.

And if all that wasn’t enough, France suffers from rather significant issues with manpower. The gruelling losses of the Great War had demographic effects down the line - fewer Frenchmen meaning fewer children being born, meaning fewer men reaching military age some 20 years after the war ended. This is represented by a national spirit reducing your recruitable population factor. Simply increasing your recruitment laws won’t save you, since you are now pulling workers away from their workbenches, causing a severe production penalty. You will have different ways of dealing with this issue, but expanding the citizenship and encouraging immigration might not be welcomed by everyone (the timescale of the game means you can’t make up the shortfall through new family policies).

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In better news, France will have a slightly bigger industrial base to play with to balance out these factors. The new diplomacy branch will also allow you to not just invite countries to the Little Entente, but to also invest in them and grant them some military factories, and later invite Britain and the Commonwealth to join your faction. It also allows you to exchange guarantees with the Soviets, or try to form a common faction with Italy. The so-called Stresa Front was already pretty much over and done in 1936, due to differences in opinion between Britain, France and Italy about the Italian-Ethopian border (mostly because Italy believed it shouldn’t exist). To revive that alliance, you’ll have to make some concessions and hand over some territory to Italy. If you can convince Britain to back you, it will make Italy even more likely to join you.

All ideologies get the option to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, but as you might expect for such a historically contentious topic, it comes with a stability penalty, which, in the worst case, can tip you over the edge into your own civil war.

Should you, for reasons passing understanding, not want to experience the historically accurate French experience, we have greatly deepened the alt-history focus trees. Starting with the formation of the Popular Front under Leon Blum (no relation), you can choose to invite the communists to the government (instead of simply having them tolerate you). From there you go on to implement more of the communist agenda, such as legal equality for women, economic centralization and propaganda to prepare the population for the inevitable revolution (we are, after all, talking about France). After you have forced the issue by essentially breaking up the temporary alliance with more moderate forces and having communists take power directly.

After the revolution you essentially have three choices: You can either dial back the revolutionary vigor and try to reconcile with the rest of the country to pursue a broad-front approach to fighting fascism, or you can double down and decide to spread the revolution by any means necessary. Some of the stuff in this tree dips into some new mechanics which aren’t quite ready yet.

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On the other side of the tree, you can either opt for a more conservative approach in the 1936 parliamentary elections, making Pierre Laval the Prime Minister of France. Much like with the Popular Front, you can stay democratic and reform the country with a more market-liberal approach, or you can forge an alliance with the far-right elements and topple the republican government to start the “National Regeneration”, imagined as a less radical version of the National Revolution attempted by the Vichy government. Once the disgustingly republican form of government is removed, you can choose between two main branches.

One, under Francois de la Rocque, has you form a Latin Entente with Spain, Portugal and Italy and later split up Africa into zones of control, with France taking most of the west and Italy taking the east of the continent. With de la Rocque representing a more independent version of an authoritarian France (whether or not he was a bona-fide fascist can certainly be debated, that he has the kind of military background and authoritarian mindset that other fascists had is, I believe, less controversial), the other branch is lead by Jacques Doriot, and entails coming to an understanding with fascist Germany. After agreeing to split the low countries between you and joining the axis, you can put some pressure on Belgium. You can either anschluss Wallonia or force the entirety of Belgium to become your puppet. Once this is accomplished, you remind them that puppets don’t get to have colonial territories right next to their master’s. Beyond this, you mostly tag along with the German strategy by opening up a second front in North Africa.

Finally, there are the Monarchists. French monarchism at the time was closely related to the political far-right (being anti-republican made the idea of a monarchy a logical rallying point), so it makes sense that they spin off from the reactionary branch. The idea behind this branch is that the continued political turmoil in the Republic, represented by continuously low stability (you have to be below 35% stability to take the first focus) has so disillusioned people that the time has come for a return to the kind of stable leadership a monarch provides. As such, you don’t immediately select a king - you first create the groundwork for a return to the monarchy by repealing the Law of Exile (which banned any pretender to the throne, or their heir, from setting foot on French soil) before picking one of three candidates (because having only one pretender is for the Boche!).

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The Orleanist candidate was perhaps the most moderate of the pretenders, ruling largely along the lines of a constitutional monarchy. As such, you focus heavily on social welfare and containing fascism - ironically, one of the first acts is to inform the arch-reactionary Action Francaise that they have served their purpose and will now no longer be needed. On the other end, the Bonapartist candidate has an ambitious program of reshuffling the borders of Europe and restore the family name. In the middle between the two are the Legitimists, which is a faction that split from the Orleanists in 1830 and which maintains that the Orleanist heir is not, in fact, the legitimate pretender to the throne. Through a number of dynastic events, the legitimate pretender to the throne of France, according to the Legitimists, is none other than the previously deposed King of Spain. As such, the obvious goal is to restore both his crowns to him, and potentially unite the two realms of France and Spain into a double monarchy (because that worked out so well for Austria-Hungary and Denmark-Norway).

Since the current French focus tree already has some (short) alternate ideology branches, these old branches will still be present if you don’t have the DLC, and replace the branches starting with “Invite Communist Ministers” and “Utilize the Leagues”, respectively.

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Finally, we also spent some time making sure France has the full lineup of design companies and some options in terms of naval designers.

That’s all for today. Next week we will talk about the rework of the Resistance and Occupation system coming with 1.8!
 
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i like very much this tree but i think the monarchist path need more work: the orleanist has no diplomacy focus (expansion or alliance), the legitimate heir is uninteresting, with only two focus, and the napoleon path is only for expension, it could be better, with choice betwen ally spain or claim catalonia, same for italy. also attack britain should be the last focus
 
I'm not an expert on French history for the time so
either am I but in less than 10 minutes I discovered, while FRA had a lot of planes....
Pierre Cot, the secretary of the French Air Force, decreed that national security was too important for the production of warplanes to be left in the hands of the private enterprises that were thus far failing to meet production goals. In July 1936 the French government began nationalizing many of the larger aircraft companies, creating six state-owned companies, which encompassed the majority of aeronautical production, and regrouping those companies to their geographical regions. Bloch was nationalized in January 1937. However, the aircraft engine industry, even as it proved incapable of providing the badly needed powerful engines, escaped nationalization.


Dewoitine D.510 monoplane fighters from the mid-1930s
By 1937, it was clear that more modern aircraft were needed, since the air force was still flying relatively antiquated aircraft like the Dewoitine D.500 and orders to construct more than 2,500 modern machines, among them the Bloch MB.170 bomber and the Dewoitine D.520 fighter resulted. The inadequacy of the French aeronautical programs, as well as indecision in high command resulted in the French Air Force being in a position of weakness, confronting a modern and well organized Luftwaffe, which had just gained combat experience in the Spanish Civil War.

France attempted to respond to the likelihood of another European war via an intensive re-equipment and modernization program in 1938–39, as did other countries desperately in need of new aircraft including Poland whose 1939 orders of 160 MS-406 fighters from France still hadn't been delivered by the German invasion of Poland. Germany production outstripped that of its neighbors, so it was a question of “too little, too late” as far as the French – as well as the whole continent of Europe – were concerned.

An attempt was made to purchase the latest American bombers and fighters – or at least fighter planes. American planes were 50% more expensive than French models, and no superior models were for sale. U.S. law required cash purchases, and the French finance ministry opposed using its gold reserves for this purpose. French labor unions refused to lengthen its 40-hour week, and were strongly opposed to imports that would reverse the growth of jobs in the French defense industry. In any case, the American aviation industry was too small and too committed to orders from American forces to be of any help. Inevitably, the French industrial response fell far behind the German threat. The British aircraft industry was working all out to rearm British forces
So it would seem that the air NFs could be less than spectacular for a reason...

I mean 10 minutes to do a little research versus just posting for the sake of it. idk what to tell you.
who had a significiant air force for the time
in numbers only, not quality.
Some national spirits that increase combat performance or something would be nice, similar to the Americans with strategic bombing, or the Germans for permanent doctrine research speed. Something more than just generic research buffs is all I'd like to see added.
this is good. something like this would be fine for one of the alt history branches imho. I mean the comparison are to things that are historically correct, but still an idea for things that would be nice.
 
Assuming Italy is the second major for rework they absolutely should be able to pursue a puppet Savoyard on the Spanish throne in place of the Balearic demands since that's both historical (arguably more historical than the French Monarchists doing the same given Franco and Mussolini) and far more rewarding than the currently atrocious Balearic Islands focus. Maybe also some political power?

Also that's the fun branch of the Savoy, with the probable claimant even getting into a duel with the Orleanist claimant!
 
either am I but in less than 10 minutes I discovered, while FRA had a lot of planes....
So it would seem that the air NFs could be less than spectacular for a reason...

I mean 10 minutes to do a little research versus just posting for the sake of it. idk what to tell you.

in numbers only, not quality.

this is good. something like this would be fine for one of the alt history branches imho. I mean the comparison are to things that are historically correct, but still an idea for things that would be nice.

I'm sorry but since when are the numbers/quality of foci determined by how good at something a nation was historically? If that were the case, how would France's political tree or China's entire tree exist? How does Germany have a good half of the naval focuses it has?

Regardless, your difference of opinion does not justify the tone you are taking with other posters. You can't peer into their minds to determine their intent, nor should you call them lazy for not coming up with suggestions when that's frankly not their job.
 
This looks like an excellent step forward for the French tree, but the lack of any focuses regarding Colonial policy (particularly in relation to the Communist branch), anything relating to the Foreign Legion (at least for now - I would hope that it will get touched upon in the Free France/Vichy rework, but it still needs something at base), the seeming lack of much foreign policy choices for the Monarchist paths, the disappearance of nuclear focuses, and that the air branch looks entirely undistinguished leaves me wanting more for it.

Additionally, I hope that the dearth of French generals is finally rectified, especially if Vichy/Free France are being reworked. Rene Olry and Pierre Koenig are perhaps the most egregious absences, but other notable vacancies would be the likes of Gaston Billotte, Andre-Gaston Pretelat, Andre Corap, Georges Blanchard, Georges Catroux, Paul Legentilhomme, Rene Prioux, Philippe Auboyneau and Andre Marquis. Marshal Petain not serving as a field marshal is the most glaring issue. Perhaps something could be done for Marshal d'Esperey under an Orleanist Restoration as well, like Lettow-Vorbeck.

Of course it was Alfonso's grandson who eventually took the throne in 1975. Franco proclaimed Spain a Kingdom in 1947(IIRC, may have been 1948 or 49) but no King took the throne until 1975, nor was Juan Carlos decided as Franco's successor until around 1970. This was kept in the air for so long in part because Franco didn't want to undermine his own power and authority, but also because no 'Alfonsine' candidate could be chosen without alienating the Carlists. By 1970 they were all geriatrics or dead, so it no longer mattered. This was not the case in the 1930's and 40's.

As another aside to all of this, Franco reportedly considered Otto von Habsburg for King as well - likely not in any serious capacity (and not in a formal one either), but that he asked Otto at all is notable. Given we're getting the option to restore the Bonapartes, a Habsburg restoration in Spain seems sane in comparison.
 
Will the “Disunite Germany” focus mean that historical German state cores can be released? I want to be able to split Germany after an allied victory >:)

As a descendent of the people of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Would ask the devs to remember Baden was only merged with Wurttemberg in the 1950s by the allies, so while it can be an option it was historically its own.

Great to see a rework of France. I am still crossing my fingers, for a fight from the colonies option. It has been said France had two capitals, Paris and Algiers.
 
I have to voice a very serious concern upon one sentence. The Orleanist was the most moderate….

There was no Legitimist pretender in 1940, the family had died off. The Bonapartist pretender fought in the Resistance. (Some purists backed the Spanish king, on the ground that he was the heir of the grandson of Louis XIV, but it was beyond minority)
 
The Bonapartist pretender fought in the Resistance. (Some purists backed the Spanish king, on the ground that he was the heir of the grandson of Louis XIV, but it was beyond minority)

Wasn't the Bonapartist pretender prevented from joining the French military as well since they deemed that too much of a threat?
 
Wasn't the Bonapartist pretender prevented from joining the French military as well since they deemed that too much of a threat?

Officially, yes, but he just adopted a nom de guerre. In fact, Napoleon's childhood tutor actually was serving in the first unit he was assigned to, managed to recognize him, and said nothing about it.
 
As another aside to all of this, Franco reportedly considered Otto von Habsburg for King as well - likely not in any serious capacity (and not in a formal one either), but that he asked Otto at all is notable. Given we're getting the option to restore the Bonapartes, a Habsburg restoration in Spain seems sane in comparison.

This is interesting. I've read a few books on the Nationalist Regime and Franco but never saw mention of that. I believe it, though. This sounds exactly like the kind of bluff Franco would make to intimidate the Carlists and supporters of Alfonso into doing what he wanted. That was the main reason he ensured nobody was on the throne until he was a corpse. He often threatened to proclaim a republic when particular monarchists annoyed him enough. He could make various promises and threats to curry favors without following through on anything.
 
Shouldn't Prussia be, I don't know, Prussian Blue? (I don't think people are that liable to confuse it with any other tag and the country name would be perfectly legible)
 
Shouldn't Prussia be, I don't know, Prussian Blue? (I don't think people are that liable to confuse it with any other tag and the country name would be perfectly legible)

I agree with you, I think because Prussia eventually formed Germany which has been associated with grey that Prussia is often portrayed as being grey. Of course grey is more what Prussia moved to around the time they united Germany so you could say it depends on what version of Prussia. So it's not a major concern for me since I could still a see Prussia using grey if their empire was further fragmented by France, but blue would be a nice change of colour from all of PDX's other colours of Prussia.
 
In the Napoleonic path, I find that the conquest of Sweden is lacking to get rid of Benardotte (who betrayed Napoleon) and allied with Denmark to put the continental blockade into practice (which the British prevented by destroying the Danish forts).
 
You will have different ways of dealing with this issue, but expanding the citizenship and encouraging immigration might not be welcomed by everyone (the timescale of the game means you can’t make up the shortfall through new family policies).

Not sure that's very realistic either (in relation to the family policies), as for immigration to lead to a surge in manpower in only a few years would require a) a huge influx of people and b) have them be from a background relatively compatible with the new host country, so that they can quickly be put into the workforce and/or military service.

opt for a more conservative approach in the 1936 parliamentary elections, making Pierre Laval the Prime Minister of Franc

From a perspective of historicity, I do hope that "Form the Popular Front" is the optimal path to take in games where you expect France to fall in 1940, but aim to cause as many casualties to the Germans, i.e. in most MP games. Otherwise the conservatives ahistorically winning the 1936 elections would become the new meta in MP.

With de la Rocque representing a more independent version of an authoritarian France (whether or not he was a bona-fide fascist can certainly be debated, that he has the kind of military background and authoritarian mindset that other fascists had is, I believe, less controversial), the other branch is lead by Jacques Doriot, and entails coming to an understanding with fascist Germany. After agreeing to split the low countries between you and joining the axis, you can put some pressure on Belgium. You can either anschluss Wallonia or force the entirety of Belgium to become your puppet. Once this is accomplished, you remind them that puppets don’t get to have colonial territories right next to their master’s. Beyond this, you mostly tag along with the German strategy by opening up a second front in North Africa.

No returning Elsaß-Lothringen to Germany? While Hitler would've likely compromised on it in return for an alliance, what about him coming back for it after winning in the East against Russia? Though I guess this would be harder to implement well, particularly in those games where the world has gone totally off the rails.

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I like.

you will need to wait for 2 weeks to find out :3

I hope Vichy is handled more historically than now, with colonies defecting piecemeal, à la HoI2 (and 3?). It'd also be nice to see Vichy become a frequently played country in MP without it screwing up the balance too much in the favour of the Axis (just another country to man the beaches of Fortress Europe, or to add to the pile of people microing against 1-2 players on Russia).
 
France actually (well, presumably) getting Naval Dockyards out of its tree is already an upgrade. Before, it was one of the very few trees in the entire game that didn't get any Naval Dockyards - Warlords and Hungary being the other ones IIRC, and the latter gets +10% Dockyard output when getting coast. Even the landlocked Czechoslovakia got those if it ever gained a coastline!