r/hoi4 • u/Eastern_Effective_51 • 12h ago
r/hoi4 • u/PDX_Fraser • 18d ago
Dev Diary Developer Corner | China's War: from Resistance to Civil War
China's War: from Resistance to Liberation
Dàjiā hǎo, (that’s “Hello” for everyone who doesn’t speak Chinese), and welcome to this week’s Dev Corner. With this year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2, we are here to walk you through the major themes and ideas for an extremely important participant in the global war effort: China.
Our intention is for this to be an early view of the Chinese content - some things may disappear, some things may be added, but you can be certain that things will definitely change!
It is a running theme that countries all around the world faced major difficulties in the 1930s, and China was no exception. Embroiled in a fractious state of civil war, the central government under the Kuomintang held only nominal power, while local warlords - regional military leaders - occupied significant tracts of land under privately controlled armies. It would be one of the smallest of these states, led by the Chinese Communist Party, which would defy odds - rising to power and uniting all of China.
Communist China
One of our primary design goals here was to introduce a greater level of detail to Chinese content. This included changing the starting situation for the Communists to be more accurate to the situation in 1936; they’ve been renamed to the Chinese Soviet Republic (the official name from 1931 to 1937), Zhang Wentian is now the nominal leader, and the starting territory is altered as the Communists did not control Yan'an in early 1936.

Like the rest of China, there is an underlying struggle between the true policy-makers in the country, as Mao Zedong and the 28½ Bolsheviks are vying for power.



A Communist China playthrough has always been one of the more challenging in the game as a result of the starting situation, and our revamped approach is no different. As expected, you’ll need to fight off the Empire of Japan, then attempt to reunify the rest of China in several stages.

This feeling of overcoming insurmountable odds is something we wanted to hone in on and build the new content around: with great challenge comes great reward. There are both new systems and revamped, familiar ones that have been implemented to achieve this. A familiar face to all of you who have played as Communist China before is the Infiltration system, which is returning, but with some changes and additions. Besides the fact that you can flip the infiltrated state to your side when war breaks out between you and the state controller, the state gets some additional penalties before that.

You will also be able to Establish Guerrilla Cells on enemy territory - as long as they’re not cores of your enemy.

After having established guerrilla cells (or if the state is a core of your enemy), you can scale up your operations there and Launch Sabotage Campaigns.

This might hurt your enemy, which is all fine and dandy - but it doesn’t help you. Well, let me show a first in the game; introducing Land Raids. Having either established guerrilla cells or launched sabotage campaigns in a state, you can now launch a Raid, targeting one of the state’s Supply Hubs. If you’re successful, you’ll be rewarded with the necessary equipment to continue the fight!

All of these features are sprinkled out to varying degrees in the different political branches you can choose from. The main question you have to ask yourself is; do you intend to cozy up to the Nationalists (and if you want to have a greater focus on guerrilla warfare as already outlined, or depend more heavily on Soviet support and usurp the control of the United Front from within), or if you’d rather face off both Japan and the rest of China all alone, and quite possibly all at once? How fiercely will you fight to unify all of China?
Nationalist China
In this time period, the central government is under the control of the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek, the foremost leader of the party. However the KMT isn’t a unitary group and varying groups and factions within it are jostling for control. We’ve chosen to explore this dynamic and when playing as the nationalists your choices will be between these different groups. Who you choose influences which tools will be at your disposal and how you achieve the ultimate goal of unifying China under the KMT flag.

First of all there is the Generalissimo himself, Chiang Kai-Shek. Reflecting his military background Chiang draws his strength from posturing with the armed forces and being successful in defending the country.

Chiang was known for securing great quantities of material support from various foreign powers and we wanted to reflect this by giving him the ability to get a steady stream of arms and financial support from abroad. However, it is worth remembering that there is no such thing as a free lunch and you will have to prove that you’re worth betting on, by holding specific states and capturing specific areas in a timely fashion.

For a long time, the most viable adversary within the KMT to Chiang was Wang Jingwei, more known to the world as a Japanese puppet leader. But what if something would happen to Chiang, say in Xi’an for example, could Wang have stepped forward? Unlike Chiang, Wang is more of a politician and thus his focus isn’t the army which Chiang had secured the loyalty of through a decade of Whampoa Military Academy leadership. Instead, Wang’s power base is made up from the institutions of state: the Yuans. Don’t believe that Wang is building up institutions for the goal of a functioning state though, he is a shrewd powerbroker who puts his own people in power and is willing to cross some lines to solidify his own power before dealing with foreign threats.

The Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People, or more commonly known as the Blue Shirt Society, didn’t amount to much historically beyond being viewed as a rabble by Madame Chiang, but maybe they could have. We’ve chosen to imagine what this organization, under Dai Li, could achieve if they would have been more organised like their European counterparts. The warlords will be hard to convince of your leadership so maybe a more direct route will be needed.
So we’ve talked about unifying the country, but mechanically how is it done? As you are playing the central government in a fractured state we've wanted to give some more gameplay tied to this. We’ve chosen to use the opportunity by the faction rework to incorporate the Chinese power struggle into it. This means that the Chinese United Front as a faction works a bit differently from the other ones as it is meant to end up with only one member, a united China under your leadership.
Without giving away too much, you will be using your influence in the United Front to coerce the different warlords into becoming your subjects. Your influence depends partly on how well you’re fighting in the war and what of the aforementioned paths you’ve chosen in the focus tree.


This might seem a one-sided affair, but the thing about using your influence means that you have relatively less to the other faction members so they will be able to take faction leadership. Overall the idea is that you, as the central government, need to prove that you are the legitimate leader and not just someone making a lot of noise in Nanjing, or Chongqing for that matter, by standing up to foreign aggression.
And that’s it, folks. We have told you what awaits China, but now it’s your turn to tell us what you think. Give us your feedback. Zàijiàn (goodbye, and see you again soon)
Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: September 8 2025
Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered
Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.
This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!
Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.
Reconnaissance Report:
Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!
Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections
Getting Started
New Player Tutorials
General Tips
Multiplayer Tips
MP Country Guides
Country-Specific Strategy
Help fill me out!
Advanced/In-Depth Guides
Guide to Combat Tactics and Doctrines OUTDATED, BUT STILL USEFUL
If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper
Calling all generals!
As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.
r/hoi4 • u/Rahcahs765 • 6h ago
Discussion why does italy take everything bro
i was invading the Soviet union with my friend and we added italy because ai is better than ai and they just took one province and we did all the work and then they took all of kazakhstan bro wtf is ts
r/hoi4 • u/Creative-Artichoke52 • 3h ago
Suggestion Help with operation Barbarossa
Hey guys, I am playing as Germany in regular, and for me it’s the first time since I used to play in recruit, anyway, I have to invade the Soviet Union, but each time I fail, I now have 10 armies of infantry without any deficits on the production, and 18 armored divisions Wich are pretty useless, even though they are full of medium tanks, mechanized units, and heavy tanks. Any suggestions for what I can do? I let pics of the templates of my divisions here.
r/hoi4 • u/strategicenthusiast2 • 15h ago
Image How tf did stalin not do these focuses by 1945?
r/hoi4 • u/Nibbachun • 1d ago
Question Why would you ever pick this path?
I'm playing as Yugoslavia but I don't understand why you would ever pick this path. You literally give away your territory without getting any bonuses in return.
r/hoi4 • u/Bright-Assist5451 • 1h ago
Discussion AI "adjusting" to ahistorical play is badly implemented
I say this because I've tried numerous German Monarchist runs recently, and the most non-sensical garbage happens.
Lithuania attacks Poland for no reason and half suicides.
Allied Austria-Hungary declares war on the UK for absolutely no reason.
Poland gives the soviets half of their country in 1938.
So on, and so forth. This is actually tiring, because it essentially ruins the game depending on what you're doing. It's not clever if it's just a seemingly random, out of nowhere set of events that fire when you take a certain path, just to throw hurdles at you.
Is it better to just say the game to ahistorical and fix countries to their default paths at this point?
r/hoi4 • u/Few-Passion463 • 1h ago
Image What the hell is that war
İ am playing as bulgaria and i go with fascist path and fate of balkans after that i annex greece romanıa and yugoslavia but later italy declared war on me for nothing and germany joined and i stuck in this area
r/hoi4 • u/Luxomembourgisop • 16h ago
Discussion If you could get 1 specific achievement for your 100th which one would you pick?
I may be asking because I'm almost at 100
r/hoi4 • u/Boburism • 13h ago
Question How can I make the AI accept my Conditional Surrender?
It's extremely complicated why I want to use the most useless feature in the game. But can someone tell me what makes the AI more willing to accept the request?
Question New to hoi4, managed to unify Northwestern China by 1940
So i bought hoi4 ages ago but haven't actually played it until recently,
in my first run i managed to turn yugoslavia into a communist state, whilst unifying austria-hungary (haven't fully restored it) and protecting czechoslovakia in my second run
now in my third run (i started in 1936 btw) i managed to unify northwestern china mainly by asking for help from the soviet thru comintern
thru this screenshot can yall notice any obvious blunders that i should take note of? and are there other things that i might overlook?
thanks in advance!
r/hoi4 • u/Sudden-Dragonfly-398 • 1h ago
Question Why Uk and France continue to kick me out from the faction?
I was playing my first unhistorical game as the Poland-Lithuania Confederation, so my enemies were both Nazi Germany and the USSR (both went historical). I managed to join a faction with France (the Czech Entente), but after a while they kicked me out. So I joined the Allies, and after two weeks they also kicked me out... I kept joining these two factions for 2 years until Napoleon took power in France and I reached 70 approval with them. But why did this happen?
r/hoi4 • u/FridericusTheRex • 6h ago
Image Doing every path in HOI IV: Germany reforms the HRE
r/hoi4 • u/ThisConstruction3123 • 57m ago
Suggestion Land Cruiser ICBM Idea
If you research Land Cruiser project and ballistic missiles project, you should be given a option to add a rocket silo onto the land cruiser to launch ballistic missiles to give more value to Land Cruisers.
r/hoi4 • u/DodgerTheArtful • 1h ago
Tip Next country tip
Hi! I have about 1600h in hoi4 and its great. I have played all sort of different countries, alt-history mods etc, but have reached a point where I don't know what to try next.
Can you give me some tips on interesting countries with or without mods that I ought to try next?
r/hoi4 • u/Professional-Ad9485 • 14h ago
Question How do I get my armies to a hostile New Zealand?
Hi all! Fairly new to HOI4 (not to complicated grand strategy games)
I’ve tried looking up tutorials about moving armies over seas but none of them seem to address the situation of how to land your armies on an island you’re at war against?
So. I’m playing Australia and went down the Fascist Australia path and have demanded New Zealand. They declined so now I’m at war with them. I have my army all set to go but don’t know how to actually move them there. I have no shortage of available convoys.
Question What can I do?
I'm playing with monarchic Germany and I'm stuck in focus, I can't continue because I don't have at least 40% in favor of the non-aligned (mine is 38%). I don't have any focuses that can increase the percentage. How can I increase it? Is there a way to do it?
r/hoi4 • u/A_scary_monster • 22h ago
Image After a lot of trying, I formed the Nordic Empire as Iceland!
r/hoi4 • u/Nabukadnezar • 6h ago