One of the most interesting countries you can play in Hearts of Iron 4 is the Soviet Union. The USSR is probably the most important country in the Second World War, considering they are all that stands between Germany and world domination.
As you play as the USSR with Stalin ruling the country, you will have to face the very annoying Political Paranoia mechanic that will make ruling one of the largest countries in the world incredibly hard.
Recommended Read: How to See Country Tags in Hearts of Iron 4
Players who think playing as the powerful USSR will be easy are not ready for the great purges that Joseph Stalin has prepared for you.
To get rid of Political Paranoia as fast as possible in Hearts of Iron 4, you will need to quickly reach the middle part of any focus tree branch that involves the government that rules the USSR.
Table of Contents
- What Political Paranoia Is
- How to Get Rid of Political Paranoia in HOI4
- How to Lower and Handle Political Paranoia in HOI4
- What Advisors and Officers Get Purged in the Great Purge
What Political Paranoia Is
The No Step Back DLC for HOI4 added a new and improved focus tree for the Soviet Union, which also brought a mechanic that shows how close Stalin is to purging some of the advisors and officers of the country.
In April of 1936, the USSR gets an event where Political Paranoia appears for the first time, and you will slowly get 2 Paranoia every week.
Once you get over 25 Political Paranoia, random events will start where you can choose to go through with minor purges or to get even more Paranoia.
Once you get over 75 Political Paranoia, there will be a big chance that you will get great purge events, which will remove a lot of characters that you could use as advisors or generals from your game.
The main idea of the Political Paranoia mechanic is that you will lose a lot of possible advisors if you don’t properly take care of these points.
As you try to keep them low, the Paranoia weekly gain will keep increasing, making this task worse and worse.
Luckily, there are moments when you can fight the purge events, but you will have to give up a lot of Political Power and gain extra Paranoia, which will just cause problems in the future.
So, what can you do to combat this mechanic? Well, your best bet is to quickly try to get rid of it altogether since there is no way to “win” when playing the Political Paranoia game against Stalin.
How to Get Rid of Political Paranoia in HOI4
The only ways you can get rid of Political Paranoia in HOI4 as the USSR is to either complete the focus The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites or start the Civil War to change the government.
Unless you reach one of these ultimate endings for all the plots and factions in the state, there is no way to completely get rid of Political Paranoia.
All you can do is fight it, trying to keep it low while reaching one of those two end goals.
If you are playing the Stalin route, then your best bet is to rush through the Great Purge events as fast as possible, by completing the following focuses:
- The Zinovyevite Terrorist Center
- The Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre
- The Military Conspiracy
- The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites
All of these focuses will cause a Great Purge, which will remove around 4 to 5 political advisors or military staff.
Though losing military staff isn’t such a new problem in the newer updates, since you can get new ones from divisions, political advisors are a huge loss.
The other way to get rid of Political Paranoia forever is to start the Civil War as one of the opposing factions: the Left, the Right, or the Monarchy/Fascist group.
All of these political paths have an inevitable Civil War, which will lose you the Political Paranoia mechanic the moment you lose Stalin as your leader.
However, until you reach the Civil War focus for all of these paths, you will still have to face the power of Stalin’s horrible Political Paranoia.
This can often lose you potential political advisors that you could use in the future, so you will need to pay a lot of attention and keep him in check.
How to Lower and Handle Political Paranoia in HOI4
Since it takes a few years for players to get rid of Political Paranoia completely in HOI4, they will need to know how to actually lower and handle it until the inevitable end.
Political Paranoia will continuously grow every week. At the start, you will only gain 2% every week, but this weekly growth will increase as Stalin gets more paranoid.
The only good Decision that you get to lower Political Paranoia is the Forge Satisfactory Production Reports, which costs 25 Political Power and decreases Paranoia by 20%.
Unfortunately, you won’t get to use this Decision again for 180 days, which comes up to around 26 weeks.
Since you will get 20 Political Paranoia every 10 weeks, you will have to find other ways to combat this mechanic until you get another use for this decision.
The best way to actually fight Political Paranoia is to give in to it.
Once you get over 25%, you will start getting purge events where you get to either sacrifice random political advisors or military staff or where you get to choose a few debuffs that you can’t remove until you get rid of Political Paranoia.
Usually, you should avoid getting rid of political advisors that you might want to use in the future.
You will see the name of the advisor you are purging in the event by hovering over the decision, so make sure to first check what buffs they give you before getting rid of them.
If you take the “good” option in the purge events, you will lose either 30 Paranoia (for character purges) or 20 (for debuffs). The “bad” options will lose you 60 Political Power and increase Paranoia by 10%.
Using the Focus Tree
The best way to combat Paranoia is to plan out what focuses you will take. All of the focuses down Stalin’s path will lower Paranoia, helping you keep all your political advisors.
The only problem is that you will purge some people no matter what down this route.
For the other political paths, you will have to be careful with your focuses, as many of them will increase Paranoia.
Make sure to only pick the focuses that you think will actually help you long term, and ignore the ones that only give you temporary buffs for the Civil War.
What Advisors and Officers Get Purged in the Great Purge
If you go down the Stain route in HOI4, you will go through 4 Great Purges that will remove 18 characters from the Russian roster. The people that will get purged are predetermined, and you can’t do anything to save them.
However, if one of them dies in earlier minor purges due to Political Paranoia events, they will get replaced in the Great Purge with random characters.
This will make you lose out on very good political advisors without even having a choice since the newly selected characters are random.
To make sure you keep all of your good political advisors safe, here is a list of all the characters that die in the Great Purges that Stalin goes through down his path in HOI4:
- The Zinovyevite Terrorist Center – Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, Ivan Smirnov, Grigory Sokolnikov, and Aleksandr Shlyapnikov
- The Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre – Karl Radek, Ivar Smilga, Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, Martemyan Ryutin, and Nikolay Ustryalov
- The Military Conspiracy – Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Aleksandr Yegorov, Vasily Blyukher, and Vitaly Primakov
- The Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites – Nikolya Bukharin, Aleksey Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, and Maksim Litvinov
To successfully defend your other political advisors, you will need to make sure that you don’t remove any of these people in the previous purge events.
Pick the “bad” option to increase Political Paranoia and keep them safe for their respective Great Purge.
That’s everything you need to know about how to get rid of Political Paranoia in Hearts of Iron 4!
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