Mod «Better Generic Focus Tree» for Hearts of Iron 4 (v1.14.1 - 1.14.2)

Welcome to the Better Generic Focus mod! Where generic minors get a fighting chance, more interesting playstyle, while without being overpowered!

Design Philosophy

My main motivation for creating this is because I'm sick and tired of non-majors being literally unplayable, despite my best efforts they're doomed to be bystanders who can make little to no impact to the war. However, rather than a flat out "I Win" button I still want to make it more plausible.

The Political Effort branch of the tree is most significantly expanded with political engineering to shape up the generic government. There are Pro's and Cons with each path, and circumstances may force your hand taking more Fascist/Communist/Democratic approaches than you'd like. As such, I've also relaxed the requirements to adopt some of the branch-opening focuses such as Collectivist Ethos (previously requires Fascist/Communist government.)

Many political focuses also features what I call "fluid ideological drift"; your government gains momentum in different directions as you adopt more Fascist/Communist/Democratic policies. This might be a hit or miss with some people, but after play testing as Fascist/Democratic and Democratic-dip-into-Fascist styles, I believe I have it balanced well enough to encourage political management without making it unbearable. If you don't like it, you can modify your save file to add a global flag "Disable_Fluid_Ideologies" to disable it. You would want to do this for a fresh save only.

Side Note: Sorry, I didn't realize the Console didn't have a command to set_global_flag when I coded the switch. I'll see about redoing the on/off switch if there's demand for it.

Industries
There are much more opportunities to build factories/infrastructure and I tried to keep them in line with vanilla minor nations with dedicated focus trees. *cough*Greece*cough*Czech*cough* Some of the focuses, particularly Unified Infrastructure & Development, are scaled based on starting number of states.

The Black Budget branch is specifically intended to create perks for the small nation to "punch above its belt" given that they are already unable to field large scaled armies. I'm not 100% settled on the balancing for Black Budget, so I'm most interested in game balance feedback on this. Elite Corps path may seem OP but minors don't have the production capacity to field that many special forces anyway. Black Market/Smuggling paths I've toned it down significantly from an original build (especially Unlicensed Excavations) so now there's pretty limited access. (mostly expanded by being in a faction or building intelligence networks). Please let me know if Smuggling/Unlicensed Excavations needs a buff or if it feels about right.

Resources
The Forced Excavation/Deep Mining focuses are specifically designed to generate steel at home, because frankly it is stupid that towards the end game there is never enough steel in the world for any one to produce anything and materials to create basic infantry weapons shouldn't be nearly as scarce as it is. (The US convoys always get interrupted and Soviets always close down their economy and aligning with Germany requires land access to them, so there's never any access to steel) From a game balance standpoint, I loathe the idea that a minor nation can't even produce basic rifles. They do come at a cost, though, and I've thematically modeled it after certain historical events where an authoritarian regime deployed the military to forcibly bomb/develop an area which resulted in 200+ deaths and thousands of casualties, but did kick start the nation's economy and communication to the rural areas; let history be the judge if those decisions were right.

P.S. I've added some hidden bonuses called "Focus Synergy" in the game, can you find them?

• Update

Version 09.07.22 for Hearts of Iron 4 (v1.11.1 - 1.11.12)

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