HOI4 (Hearts of Iron IV): How to Annex Puppets

Hearts of Iron IV (HOI4) is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Interactive, set during the Second World War. As a historical game, Hearts of Iron IV looks to recreate the setting before the start of the war, and this includes major powers (European, American, and Japanese predominantly) holding onto their colonial possessions across the world. We will inevitably see puppets and subject nations in Hearts of Iron IV as well. Here, we’ll go through the ways that you can annex your puppets and subject nations in HOI4, and bringing them directly into your empire, for better or for worse.

Related: HOI4 (Hearts of Iron IV): How to Increase Compliance

How to Annex Puppets in HOI4

To annex puppets in HOI4, you need to have 300 political power, the lowest autonomy level for the puppet, and 0/1000 points.

Autonomy is the measure that determines how free the puppet is. Generally, there are 3-5 levels of autonomy for most countries. From the highest levels to the bottom rungs, these are the levels:

To be able to annex your puppet, their autonomy level should be at the lowest level, at 0/1000.

Only supervised state and personal unions cannot be annexed, although collaboration governments can be annexed so long as their autonomy is brought up to the lowest autonomy level and then brought to zero.

How to Lower Autonomy

To fulfill the goal of annexing a puppet in HOI4, you need to lower their autonomy and autonomy level to the lowest possible level. The ways you can do this are:

• Sending equipment – to lower their autonomy, you need to send equipment that is at the same level as the best equipment that the subject can produce. It’s not possible to lower autonomy by sending obsolete equipment or foreign-made ones.
• Building infrastructure – building factories, infrastructure, and any other buildings—will lower the subject’s autonomy.
• Taking the Suppress Subject focus, this continuous focus will lower all subjects’ autonomy by 0.5 daily.
• Specific Focuses: The completion of some focuses can lower the autonomy level of a certain subject, like the ones in the British tree.

How Autonomy Increases

Since the goal is to lower the autonomy of your HOI4 puppets, it should be noted that these actions will cause the subject’s autonomy to increase, making it harder to actually annex them.

• Requesting equipment
• Trading for the subject’s resources
• Subject contributing to its overlord’s war efforts
• The continuous focus “increase autonomy.”
• The overlord capitulates.
• Sending attaches
• Specific national focuses

Be sure to avoid these actions, as they will increase the time needed to annex a puppet.

And that is all you need to know about how to annex puppets in HOI4. Check out other interesting HOI4 guides and articles:

• HOI4 (Hearts of Iron IV): Complete Germany Guide
• HOI4 (Hearts of Iron IV): How to Recall Volunteers
• HOI4 (Hearts of Iron IV): Division Template Guide (Best Options)

Jonathan Ledesma

Based in Santa Rosa, Philippines, Jonathan Ledesma is a Freelance Writer for Raider King.

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