HOI4 Dev Diary - Czechoslovakia and AI Update #2

Hi everyone, this week we will be looking at the last nation for Death or Dishonor and get an AI update from SteelVolt. Lets dive in!

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia is probably the biggest what-if of the pre-war period. What if they had made a stand? What if the Allies had not rolled over and abandoned them? Or perhaps - what if Czechoslovakia had come to an “arrangement” with Hitler? What if they had decided not to rely on a France and Britain that failed to defend the Versailles settlement and decided to form an alliance of their own? Of course, standing up to Germany requires you to prepare the ground, and Czechoslovakia is not entirely without its problems. The marriage between the Czechs and the Slovaks is not a very happy one, you share a long border with the Germans and time is short until you have to make a choice to fight or surrender. You will have to make tough choices on what area to focus on first. Extensive fortifications in the Sudetenland can slow the enemy down and possibly buy you the time until the western powers come to your rescue, but will take a lot of time to finish. Time you might want to spend on modernizing your army, expanding your air force or building up your industry. Historically, Czechoslovakia punched well above their weight in the arms business, keeping pace with several major powers in the fields of aviation and armored warfare. This is represented in game by the national spirit “Skoda Works”, which gives you a fairly sizable boost to your factory output. Together with the export focus branch, you can potentially keep up with Germany in production of war material for a short while. Diplomatically, you have two basic choices: stand up to Germany or bow down. You then have several options on how to do either. If you decide to make a stand, you can put your trust in the west (Spoiler alert: this did not work out historically), or you can create an Entente of your own, with Yugoslavia and Romania. This path will likely take you to conflict with Hungary down the road. Alternatively, you can also decide to side with the world revolution and join the Comintern, but that might not make you very popular with your neighbors. Should you decide that living on your knees is better than dying on your feet, you can try and appease Germany by handing over the Sudetenland right away and becoming a German puppet later. However, with Hitler seemingly hell-bent on humiliating the western powers, the Germans might not even accept such a low-key solution. Finally, you can go fascist and try to meet eye to eye with the Germans, becoming either a full-fledged partner in the Axis or a German Satellite state (what that means exactly will be discussed in a future Dev Diary). Czechoslovakia also comes with voice overs for troops, new 3d models (the Czech have sweet tanks) and leader pictures adding flavor.

AI Update #2

Greetings, friends! SteelVolt here again :) They tell me it is time for yet another AI diary. Let me start off by thanking all of you who came to my talk at PDXCon. It was fun to see it be so popular that we could barely fit everyone in the room, and there were great questions, several of which I wish I would have had time to elaborate even more on.