HOI4 Should you Annex or Puppet Countries? (Hearts of Iron 4 Tutorial) 

The axis would have won if they watched this video before their attempt at world domination.

I usually decide by looking at the map “Hmm will it look good if I annex them, no, no it won’t, fine then, puppet!

I love that you used Austria as an example, a country where Germany can get cores lol.

The puppet template thing is Together For Victory only

LOL You need factory -annex You need manpower - puppet if enemy contry have bigger population.

If you need manpower -> Puppet if the country that you want to puppet has a good amount of population. If you don't need manpower -> Annex it. (Sorry for the bad english)

What if I puppet for a very simple reason: Because I’m too lazy to micro-manage the country I just conquered...

always annex, cause no dlc ;D

Things you missed: 1) The puppet goes down their own focus tree and get free factories/infrastructure depending on the focus tree. 2) You don't get resistance if u puppet ukraine and give ukranian cores back to ukraine while invading russia. Same for belarus and vichy france. 3) Your puppet trains its own units/gets its own exp which theyll use for templates u can copy 4) Your puppets will research and you will be able to do research sharing or licencing to get their techs. 5) Depending on the country, the puppet may have better advisors or national spirits.

When playing Italy, I always puppet Ethiopia - since that war is already underway when you start the game, you can get a puppet within Feb'36 (no need to wait for PP or Justify timer). Before the war starts in '39, I'd have already pumped 30+ 20 width divisions out of them and used them to take out Yugoslavia and Turkey without ever needing to change Italy's conscription laws until half way into 1940. And Ethiopia only has 10 mill pop - but they will automatically keep changing laws to "scrapping the barrel" once they have enough PP if you keep recruiting colonial troops out of them. (If you want to conquer Africa, you can also start right away as troops in Somalia etc. will switch to draw supplies from the puppet's capital rather than Rome and not be cut off until you can take and open the Suez Canal for your supply ships.)

I like to take the provinces with resources and puppet the rest It makes a lot of bordergore but it's fixed once they're annexed

2:55 Yes DLC only

Ive owned this game for a while and had never realy got a grip of it and it started getting boring buy your videos have helped me become so much better and Ive started to enjoy the game again! Keep up the good content! 👍

You often need a Paradox game to tick a few days before everything updates properly. Every time you mess around, you should do that.

You just basically solved my issue with having too much land to cover with troops. Currently in my Road to 56 modded germany game, Italy formed a faction with Hungry since both are pissed at me for not sharing land, and allowing the Greeks to join my faction. I'm going to annex Hungry while puppeting Italy now that I see Puppeting a nation is worth it.

I only have death of dishonour and I can recruit divisions from my puppets.

It actually depends on how you play the game and how powerful that puppet is gonna be.

If you are able to you should never puppet the industry is more valuable. If you are starting to get short on manpower just make 1 puppet with the highest possible manpower. Don’t actually make them proper divisions just make a pure infantry divisions and add them to recruitment pool. Don’t deploy just recruit if they have a land border this is easier if not you need to do an extra step. 1. Land border? If yes go to step 3 2. Lend lease them as many convoys as possible. 3. Send them every possible piece of equipment,tanks and airplanes. 4. Build infrastructure or factories in their territories 5. Once they have 0 manpower annex them. 6. Cancel the recruiting 7. They join your glorious manpower pool 8. You now have their recourses, factories, manpower and your lend lease equipment back

Here's an IRL example of how powerful a puppet can be. In 1940, the british blasted the french navy out of the water just on the offchance that it might join Vichy France, and thus the Axis.

if I remember correctly, it's 80 resources per Civ to Integrated Puppets, 20 per Civ to normal Puppets and then 13 per Civ to Dominions and not uh 40 30 and 20

Thanks, that was some useful information. I'll return the favor now: there are programs that let you edit videos and crop out the undesired bits. When should you use them? Whenever you make a mistake in a video or when a demonstration fails. Why should you use them? To make better videos. ^_^ (I know that sounded super extremely patronizing, but I was just making a suggestion in a funny way, please don't take it to heart.)

2:50 thats in the dlc

Thanks! Teached me something Again! I usually always annex which as I look now is super useless... You're a great man!

To add on the buffer part, puppets count as allies regardless of whether their master is in a faction or not meaning that the ai will prepare troops on the puppets border when preparing to go to war regardless if they are called in or not. This can be useful as a distraction if you don't want to call in ANY allies for whatever reason (don't want to give up land, they will call in a vulnerable front, they ARE a vulnerable front, don't want them raising autonomy, etc). Plus if you still want their military help you can still take their troops and use them even if they haven't been formerly called in. Example: As China you subjugated the warlords and choose to puppet Shanxi. Then you take your army and place them at the river starting from the shanxi's south to the coast (or directly at the border if you gave in to japan during Marco Polo Bridge Incident). When you/Japan declare war then not only do you have a smaller front to defend but the Japanese ai will waste divisions on the entire Shanxi border. Note: IIRC when I did this, Japan still eventually gained a wargoal against Shanxi but chose not to act on it and even if they did, I had my other puppet's troops ready to defend an already more prepared Shanxi. Regardless I hope this example illustrates the idea well enough.

Formable nations can also affect the choice of annexing or not... unless you can form a nation when puppets controle the territories which I don't think it works. (ex: the nordic union / empire requires the player to own all the territories of jinland, denmark, norway and sweden) Those formable antions can make a massive difference as it gives cores on those territories, gich guves you taht manpower you wouldn't normally get from annexing

"also if you guys have any rain tapping you know thunder asmr all that kind of stuff in the background"

The template thing from puppets seems to work with waking the Tiger too. At least for me, I got it for some reason when I installed it. Officially it should be for together for victory only.

I personally think that if your empire is bigger than Germany and Poland, I would start puppeting because it gives you a free faction and if there is a thin part in your territory your armies in that territory won't be out of supply but annexing terriory around you wil normally give you enough resources to carry on expanding.

This is very informative. Now I can abuse my puppets with their manpower. Maybe as a topic for your next video you can do Tactical bombers. The pros and cons and on when you should use it

I always create a puppet who I give all of the islands I take to. I will also just create a giant puppet for all if Africa, up to Cairo.

I think it's important to mention that many provinces will be cheaper to take in the peace deal if you puppet them and give them back their lands. If you are the Soviets invading Germany, peace conference almost 100% involve France and the bordering provinces such as Piedmont will cost 1000 war score for you, which is ridiculous. The main reason you want Piedmont is not because of its factories, but because it shares a mountainous border with France, and if you puppet Italy and give Piedmont (it's Italian, but they will almodt certainly be involved, so yeah) to them, it will only cost 85 war score, which is great. And nations also seem to be reluctant to take another war participants' puppet's core, so I was able to get pretty much get all of Germany, Italy and Hungary while having 50% participation.

The thing about your ''bug'' was, that you didnt have equipment so the manpower was just used to train those first 3 divisions ;)

would be nice to see comments about La Resistance and how compliance and the new collaboration government factors in to when/why to puppet or collab

Very interesting video, thanks to share your knowledge.

i like how in the tumbnail you have churchil for your german pupets lol

Ay thanks Dustin you stay safe mate

Claims don’t really do much They give a boost to just time and reduce the tension from justifying but that’s it. Its cores that give manpower and factories

You can also annex a country through the autonomy system in which case you would get complete control over the puppet's navy. So in your last example you could lend lease a bunch of stuff to France and maybe build some infra to their remaining land and then annex them diplomatically and their navy would be completely yours.

I just puppet every country i can because i think its cute when they create units to fight in your wars

Dustin, u inspire me so much, u make me realize that with hard work u can achieve anything

😱 I didn't know about the free trading with puppets . Nice. Also,is there a way to direct a puppet's Navy?

In Juky, 1940, Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to attack the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. They did it to prevent that exact scenario. The one you described.

When playing with the AI, usually with axis countries I always annex. Because if you puppet a country that country usually exist in one state because your allies take the rest of the country's states. But if you take all states and then release the nation they are going to be a more efficient puppet since they have their whole country and not just one state. Another plus is less border gore, the AI in this game can be modern art masters.

bro you live in myrtle beach too, during florence i didnt lose power once, hope you had the same luck

totally agree, you cam always annex them quickly later giving a shitload of old equipment with land lease

So in MTG its best to release everyone as France (except the ones who have resources, like vietnam) and let them spawn factories, that you could never build, with their national focuses. Then use your puppets as industry multiplicator and more importantly - manpower sponge

My question for this vid is... what happens if you puppet, create a bunch of divisions using your puppets manpower, then annex? Could be a cheese way to bank a bunch of manpower if you just have some really shitty inf-only divisions using mostly their manpower sitting in the queue, then annex them later?

GREAT VID MATE:)

I actually always puppet, unless I have cores. The additional manpower is just too good. I actually even release all my oversees territories except for northern africa when I play france.

When I play as germany, I always puppet some of the UK, because the AI ussualy do some useful naval invassions an then you can pump a shit ton of reserve divisions and rush for some undefended victory points.

another underrated channel

When it comes to making a country a puppet, the size of the puppet comes into play as well. Like conquering Luxembourg as Germany. If Luxembourg go down the industry path, it’s free factories. No point making a puppet of a tiny nation. Unless you flood them with aircraft to be an air controller.

And also making puppet is a good idea because theid troops always holding front line as reserve division and they give you their civ factories too annexing countries without core or something making land bad because when you take land factorie limits are decreasing and you cannot built factorie and also puppets have nat.foc. so they can have factories

I only have the base game but i once got a bug where i was able to edit my subjects autonomy and steal their manpower. This game is so broken sometimes.

Puppets are great for front control, so I puppet everything that doesn't have enough factories and is not in central Europe (you receive worse supply in puppeted territories than in annexed territories and in Europe or against the USSR it is noticeable).

Outside of his house is a storm He: hello and welcome to a new video

I dont really fond the option to puppet. Sometimes the AI just....bad at doing things and could mess up with your own plan. Just like my experience with Vichy france...The Allies always land their troops south of France, despite my order to defend it. Thanks to Italy that tend to fail defending their own soil from naval landings, I need to allocate few divisions to defend key ports. Messy place with messy supply routes. Good thing from the puppet options is the "warmonger" penalty I guess? Its not as big as annexing though.

Can you make a video about how to deal with resistance and sabotage in annexed lands?

Question though (I know, old video, but...) As of La Resistance: a) are you still able to use their manpower like this if you puppet a country? b) if so, do those divisions still use _your_ equipment for initial training, or _theirs_ by default? In the rare case that, say, I'm training a Light Tank division with a copied Austrian template as shown and you actually have better/more advanced Light Tanks than Austria by one or even two steps, I probably don't want to be training them with their outdated Light Tanks and have to reupgrade them with ours all over again once they're in the field, so I just want to be sure that they'll automatically be using the best equipment available if I do this and won't be wasting time on upgrades.

You get only half of the building slots so if the state is max out you only gain half of all the factoris

Another big thing is if a country has a large navy like france or uk, instead of annexing all their land, puppet at least some of it. Then, annex them through the autonomy level and you get their entire navy for free!

Hey, it did not bug out as you said. The think is Austria die not bad enough Equipment for all of the 18 Division you trained. Only the first 4 had full Guns for Training and only these 4 took Manpower from Austria.

Hey off topic, but im trying to utilise fort buster trait in my generals, but I am fully unable to see it, and also, im unable to assign bombers to specifically go for forts, are these two features only available with a certain dlc pack?

If you need manpower, and the object nation has a large population=puppet If you need factories=annex If you want clear borders=both (this is extremely important for me)

When someone says Nah, let's invade poland Poland:"gulp" Help!!!

I just like to puppet nations, because it looks so much better

Don't agree with a lot of it, but the last tip is gold. As Germany i pretty much always attack bot italy and France and puppet both. With gives you a huge navy. Only thing Hoi4 creators need to work on is that you can set militairy targets for puppet navy's and army's. As germany it would help a lot with getting naval supremacy to invade the UK for instance.

hi so I'm playing as Estonia and I want to take Vidzeme from Latvia so I have access to Lithuania and Poland but I leave the rest as my puppet state, the problem is that you said just to leave them alone but Vidzeme has their capital wut do i do

Puppet when you hate border gore,annex when there isn't.

How do you pop it to country. Is already annexed because for me it only gives me the option to release the nation not released as a puppet

Puppets are also useful if you don't want to deal with resistance

and if you wanna start a faction, puppet is a good way to create

Even if you don’t have dlc you can still make barrier and naval stuff

Type "op" into the console and then ctrl click everything. Much easier.

When you play Italy make etophia puppet he can make more then 50 divs I see in game I use 48 divs

Honest to god I just annex if it makes my borders look good and the nation isn’t on a different continent. If the nation is on a different continent I just puppet it.

Can u make a top easy countryes? It s a good subject also very interesting.

I go to Myrtle beach every year my grand parents live there!

we deserve a vid and u deserve a huge sub and like! thnx alot for twhat ur doing and i hope u gonna be ok

Does it still make sense to puppet without the together for victory dlc? I mean it looks nicer without puppetting

Hey I'm from Dirty Myrtle as well :o

Do you have any graphical mods or is that the vanilla game? Thanks!

Update the video. In the la resistance update, the puppeting is 99% better unless you have collaboration government

I like this reasoning.

But is puppeting for resources a good idea in the long run? Given that importing from your puppet gives them autonomy points.

Thanks for the vid never would've thought that way. greetings from austria (why u annex it :-( xD)

and now, in 1.9 the annexation is useless. Good job Paradox.

the way how you was taking the manpower is very ineficcent 1. create a new templet with just one infantrie battalion 2. train a ton of the new templet and after 20% kick them out 3. change the new templet to the original templet of the puppet

Imagine winning war and not clicking annex all

Recording a video for millions in a state which is experiencing a deadly hurricane so close we could hear it

You can have puppets as buffer states if you simply don't call them into a war.

If you need the manpower you can drain your puppet by spamming out a ton of 1 battalion divisions and then switching them to a 40 width puppet template. Then when you annex them you keep the manpower! This works great with the Dutch East Indies.

wouldnt be nice if puppets give u supplies of their resource by 1/3 every day/week/month

Hurricane in his house , no problem u guys deserve a video

How about lend leasing to your puppets so they can make divisions?

Hi I'm pretty new to hoi4 and I had one more question. I know Germany has those Reich Protectorates or whatever they call them. Would that be better than puppeting or are they the same thing?

it uses their manpower but does it use their resources or yours?

So if you claim as many regions as possible during a justify war goal, will you then have a claim on the region, and this the manpower?

i puppet the coast and take the mainland i dont wanna deal with no navy.

Also puppeting countries that didn't capitulate or capitulated last results in them keeping their army I think. I know this because I didn't kill all of the Polish troops on my first run as Ukraine (built up Ukraine and attacked for Ukranian only lands) and they still had 30 or so divisions. Also puppeting is generally better for resources if you aren't on Limited Exports or Closed Economy.