Hearts of Iron 4 (HOI4) Ideology Guide

Publish date: 2024-07-24

The middle of the 20th century is one of the most divisive moments in human history, as the world split between three main ideologies and fought to decide who is right.

In Hearts of Iron 4, players will also have to make the decision, but not based on their personal feelings. In the game, all ideologies have special advantages and disadvantages that come either as buffs, limitations, or special mechanics.

Recommended Read: How to Use Instant Construction Cheat in HOI4

Generally, players will have to learn how to play as all ideologies since there are many fun things to do as any one of them, and there are many focus trees that you’d miss by just playing Fascist or Communist.

In this guide, we’ll go through all four ideologies in Hearts of Iron 4 and explain their limitations, buffs, and debuffs while also showing the direct differences between them.

Table of Contents

How do Ideologies Work?

There are 4 ideologies in HOI4:

All countries in HOI4 have a political pie chart where they can see the popularity of all the 4 ideologies. Usually, the most popular ideology in the country is also the one governing the country.

Each ideology has special “principles” that limit the country from doing various things on the diplomatic front or the civil political front.

These limits usually involve important parts of the country, such as laws and external involvement in other countries’ business.

The Fascist and Communist countries will usually attack and conquer other countries, while the Democratic countries will do their best to stop them.

The Non-Aligned ideology was initially supposed to represent the countries that don’t want to get involved in the grand conflict, but it now usually represents bizarre monarchic focus paths for most countries.

Depending on what you want to do during a playthrough, you can play as any one of these 4 ideologies and still have a lot of fun.

So, it’s time to go through all the real differences between the ideologies when it comes to effects in-game and mechanics:

Ideology Effects on Gameplay Mechanics

There are many game mechanics that are affected by ideologies in HOI4, and we will go through them all:

Diplomacy World Tension Limits

When selecting a country to do Diplomacy with in HOI4, there are a lot of options that only work if you have the right ideology or the World Tension is high enough:

Justify War goal

Guarantee independence

Create faction

Start Lend lease

Send Volunteers

Peace Conference

Peace Conferences are also different depending on your ideology since Democracies cannot puppet defeated countries:

Democraties

Fascists, Communists, and Non-Aligned

Puppets

All ideologies have different types of puppets, and they have different Autonomy ranks:

Democraties, Non-Aligned, and Communists

There are 4 Autonomy levels for puppets:

Dominion is the closest one to freedom, while Integrated Puppet is the closest one to annexation. If you puppet a country during a war, they will start at the Puppet level.

Here are the bonuses you get from an Integrated Puppet:

Fascists

Fascist countries have a different Autonomy level system, where the only levels are:

The Satellite works similarly to the Dominion, the Reichsprotectorate is similar to the Puppet, and the Reichskommissariat is the same as the Integrated Puppet. When you puppet someone in a war, you will get a Reichsprotectorate.

Here are the bonuses you get from an Reichskomissariat:

Occupation Laws

All ideologies, besides the Non-Aligned one, get special Occupation Laws that they can use to control conquered territories:

Democracies

Local Autonomy:

Communists

Liberated Workers:

Fascists

Brutal Oppression:

Army Spirits

The Officer Corps has some special upgrades that evolve the army and the country significantly.

Your ideology can also give you special Spirits unique to your cause:

Democracies

Best of the Best (Spirit of the Academy):

Relief of Command (Spirit of the Army):

Non-Aligned

Political Loyalty (Spirit of the Academy):

Communists

Academy Scholarships (Spirit of the Academy):

Ideological Loyalty (Spirit of the Army):

Fascists

Political Loyalty (Spirit of the Academy):

Ideological Loyalty (Spirit of the Army):

How to Change Ideology in HOI4

There are only two ways you can change your ideology in HOI4 without using cheats:

Using the focus tree, you are very likely to ignore any normal ideology change mechanics that basic countries have to face, and you will just change the country’s ideology just by completing a focus down the branch.

All the countries in the world that don’t have a unique focus tree, either in vanilla or through DLCs, will likely have advisors to help go through the ideology change.

If you don’t want to go through the slow process of using the focus tree or a Political Advisor, you can always just use cheats to get what you want.

Here is how to use command console cheats to change your country’s ideology in HOI4:

  • Press the “~” on your keyboard to open the command console.
  • Type in “set_ruling_party *ideology*”, replace *ideology* with the desired ideology, and press Enter.
  • Press “~” again to close the command console.

    • Instead of *ideology*, players will need to write f, c, d, or n, which each represents one of the four major ideologies in HOI4.

    So, if you want the communists to rule the country, write “set_ruling_party c” without the quotation marks.

    Cheats aren’t available in Ironman Mode, so make sure you are playing the normal version of the game.

    That’s everything you need to know about how Ideology works in Hearts of Iron 4!

    Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.

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