Developer Diary | Switzerland #2

The year is 1944, the future (If you live in 1936), you may find yourself in the middle of a war against France, as the Alpine Confederation, with a beautiful flag, the sound of gunfire off in the distance​

You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large army, composed of regular troops, marching through mountains and plains. You may tell yourself, This is not my Guisan, this is not my neutral and democratic Switzerland. And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?​

Hey there, it’s Carlo again, to update you on the alt-history paths of the Swiss Focus Tree! Now let’s go back a bit. To the present, 1936. It all started with the focus Swiss Guiding Principles, which triggered an event for you to proclaim the overall direction of the Balance of Power for the rest of the game. Should Switzerland continue with their policy of devolved power to the Cantons? Or is the current world situation too tense to go ‘business as usual’? Picking any will not block you from going one way or the other in the BoP, but it will certainly help getting to where you want to be more easily.​

By keeping the balance of power in the Cantons for enough time, you are able to complete some focuses in the historical path, giving you bonuses to militias and recruitable population, and allowing you to build up a large militia army. You might think it’s not worth the time considering you want to go alt-history, but you’ll see the reasoning later.

A bit afterwards you can go down the Federal Police Intelligence Department focus, which unlocks a series of focuses that give you bonuses for managing resistance in occupied states (And your own states if they are occupied, just in case), and more importantly, a military sub-branch, to develop your war capabilities further. This sub-branch is shared with the fascist path, but you don’t need to go fascist to access it.​

Then Allied Gold, GotthardBund and where things really start to diverge; Press for Vorarlberg.

Remember the last Switzerland Dev Diary where I stopped to give historical context? Well this is one of those. In 1919 the very rural Austrian region of Vorarlberg held a referendum to decide if they would join the Swiss Confederation, and the vote actually went towards uniting with Switzerland. Unfortunately for them, neither Austria or Switzerland wanted this to happen. Austria because, well, governments tend to prefer to keep their territory and Switzerland because, among other reasons (Including World War I), they already had a majority of their population speaking German, so they didn’t want to increase that gap further. In a Switzerland that seeks to defend their democracy by projecting power and growing in military might, this is not as important, so Vorarlberg is the first stepping stone on their quest to expand.

When you complete that focus, an ultimatum is sent to Austria (Or Germany if you let the days go by), demanding that they hand over Vorarlberg, or else. Hopefully it doesn’t get to the “or else”, and if that’s the case, congratulations, you’re the proud owner of Switzerland’s newest canton!​

After this you’re confronted with another fork in the road. You can go the fully autocratic way, and Pre-empt Anschluss, allowing you to annex the rest of Austria; or you can go slightly more democratic, with The New Eidgenossenschaft. They both allow Switzerland to expand. With the Preempt Anschluss path, you’ll be able to core all