Dev Diary: Portugal Focus Tree

Today's Development Diary by ManoDeZombi

Olá everyone and welcome to another dev diary for La Resistance! Let me begin by introducing myself: My name is Manuel, I’m from Spain and I joined Paradox as a Content Designer for HOI a couple of months ago (just on time to attend PDXCON, yeah!).

I’ve been working on the implementation of Portugal for La Resistance. The original design of the focus tree was made by Portuguese professor Pedro Santos. He came with what I consider to be a really interesting idea, where the political branch of the tree has multiple possible interactions with the Spanish Civil War.

While I worked on Portuguese Events and Decisions, the whole tree was implemented by our producer, Vachon (big kudos to her!). We tweaked the design of the Focus Tree a little bit, specifically the communist branch, which we felt was a bit dull compared to others, and the SCW-related branches to make them properly interact with Spain. Now I’m the one who will polish the tree and will attempt to get rid of all those lovely bugs our great Betas are reporting. Talking about Betas, our freelance artist @Indyclone77 is the one to blame for all the wonderful Portuguese event pictures and new icons you are about to see in the focus tree and national spirits, he has done an amazing job not only in making all that cool art, but also in providing crucial feedback during the development, so big kudos to him as well!

Before going on, please note that balancing is still a work in progress, so there may be changes in what you are about to see.

So I’d like to start talking about the National Spirits Portugal will start with in 1936:

• Unreliable Army: Representing the poor state of the Portuguese army during the period of the First Republic, which historically led to a major reorganization in 1937, it provides some penalties to Division Organization, Recruitable Population Factor, War Support and Division Attack, so you want to get rid of this before entering any conflict (probably not the best idea to join the Spanish Civil War only to see how your disgusting Spanish enemies defeat your unprepared troops and occupy your precious mainland in a blink...).

• AdjustedUnstable RepublicDuring its 16 years, the First Portuguese Republic saw the inauguration of nine presidents and 44 cabinet reorganizations. Even during the Ditadura Militar there were several failed coup attempts. In 1933, after Salazar’s creation of the Estado Novo and the new Constitution approved in a referendum, Portugal’s stability slowly increased (maybe the censorship system and the different police forces that repressed all kinds of dissidents also helped a little bit with that). So another no-good spirit applying penalties to your Daily Political Power Gain, Stability and Construction Speed. You will be able to remove it through the different political branches, and you will probably want to do it ASAP.

Now let’s look at the Portugese Focus Tree and talk about the different paths a player can choose from:

See an enlarged version of this image on the forums

As you can see, the general structure varies a little bit from the standards of other trees, where you have clear separate branches for industry, military forces and politics.

Let’s start with the colonial branch, shall we?

Through the first focuses, Portugal will receive big bonuses to non-core manpower that will prove really useful in the early stages, since Portugal’s initial manpower is really low. The player can then choose between