Nonetheless, Hearts of Iron remains one of those franchises where it's not quite enough to just Read The Freakin' Manual. As good as it is, National Focus doesn't straitjacket your style. You'll have to develop some extremely unique stratagems to land several of the Steam Achievements, such as 'Duce Nuked'em' (Italy has to detonate a nuclear device in California to pull that one off). Nor are you required to use it, if you prefer to blaze your own wild and crazy path across mid-20th-Century Earth. It's rare that a developer manages to provide even more options for gameplay while simultaneously simplifying things, but Paradox nails that combo here. And if you want a game which locks the AI into the paths they historically took, there's an option for that too. Most nations have rather extensive decision trees tailored to their historical situations, as well as many 'what-ifs'. even regarding Poland, the original flashpoint for Europe. Perhaps you'd like Germany to befriend its neighbors, rather than annex or invade them? That's entirely doable.
National Focus serves as a guiding beacon, letting you plan and carry out long-term strategies without having to fumble through quite so many details. TREES, MEET FOREST: NATIONAL FOCUS Color highlights added for illustrative purposes.
