With the announced Hearts of Iron 4 DLC, titled ‘ Together for Victory,’ in the works, the Commonwealth countries of the British empire will be fleshed out with new political options. This promises to be a big improvement as many of those countries, especially India, had very difficult decisions to make about who to support in the war. Soon the game will provide options for these choices.
Paradox has confirmed that this is just the first of DLCs intended to buff up the diplomatic options for countries that need it. Here is where they should focus on the next one:
China.
With a starting manpower of 4.96 million, China is only behind the Raj and the Soviet Union in terms of how many soldiers it can throw into the war.
Even with this huge starting manpower, its large territory, its importance to the Pacific front and its development into a super power in recent history, China is severely under-developed from a gameplay standpoint. Unlike other important countries that have unique development trees based on its historic situation at the start of the war, China gets generic trees in every area: Army, Aviation, Navy, Industry and Politics.
With the Imperial Japanese preparing to invade and a protracted Civil War with the Communists under Mao, you’d expect some interesting and unique political options to deal with these threats. Unfortunately, until future DLC comes out, this is not the case. China was one of the countries I was most excited to try, but I think I will wait until it is buffed by Paradox.
Similarly, above China to the North sits the fledgling People’s Republic of China. They start in 1936 with an uneasy truce with the main Chinese government, but it is only a matter of time before hostilities resume. Does the People’s Republic put aside its differences with the Nationalists to fight the Imperial Japanese, or do they use the chaos of war to gain territory and push the revolution forward? Unfortunately, the answer is probably ‘neither.’ With the same generic National Focus trees as China, you’ll have few options for where to take your Communist Revolutionaries. While it’s a little more excusable for the People’s Republic to use the generic trees, you’d think it would get a little more attention since China comes under Communist control by 1949.
I expect that both of these will be fleshed out in a Chinese centric DLC. I personally cannot wait.
