Hearts of Iron IV – Puppeting Ethiopia Guide (By Blood Alone DLC)

In this guide you will learn all the fine details and advantages to splitting up Ethiopia into 8-10 new puppet countries when you capitulate them. Some might call this border gore- until you find out how many free factories and resources you are getting! This guide requires HOI4: By Blood Alone DLC. This guide requires you, as Italy, to defeat Ethiopia before they become a government in exile. If you see the peace conference screen, you’ve done things right.

Balkanizing the Horn of Africa

Сrеdit gоеs to All talk and no fight!

I’ve Defeated Ethiopia! Should I Annex Them? or Puppet Them?

Once you’ve defeated Ethiopia, you have several options. You can annex them entirely, Puppet them Entirely, Or Balkanize them And puppet a bunch of tiny little countries. Lets cover what each option entails.

So what are the benefits of annexing Ethiopia outright?

Not much. By annexing them you don’t get access to every factory that Ethiopia had. Ethiopia starts the game with 2 civs and 2 military factories, when you annex them one of the civilian factories in Hargaghe is destroyed because since you are now the non-core controller, you have way less building slots- 0 in fact- which is why the civilian factory is destroyed. Now you are only getting 3 factories from Ethiopia.

Except you don’t even get all 3- since again Ethiopia is not your core territory, so you only get access to those 3 factories if you have sufficient compliance. So for conquering Ethiopia and annexing them, your immediate reward is… 1 factory. That’s not very useful!

So what can you do by annexing them outright? Well if you do the focus Ministry of Africa, you will unlock decisions to improve Ethiopia- this in effect just allows for increasing compliance, reducing the starting modifier on all Ethiopian states that gives -30% to local construction speed and max factories in state (-10% in their capital region of Shewa) which means your new territory will eventually have some building slots to build your factories again.

But, again, this is not your core territory, so you won’t have access to every factory you build in those states- not without high compliance. Italy’s unique occupation law they unlock from Ministry of Africa: Colonial Police can help reduce this since they can be improved to give +25% local factories among other bonus’, but why go through all that just to improve your holdings in Ethiopia when you could be building new factories in mainland Italy!

Fully improved Colonial police is awesome- but you could be doing focus to improve your mainland industry instead! reducing your terrible starting army/naval/airforce spirits!

Don’t get me wrong though, the Bonus’ can get pretty nutty under Italo Balbo’s Italy.

Forming Italian East Africa via Decision

There is something else you can do by Annexing Ethiopia however. If you or a subject is the owner of all Ethiopian states(this means that Ethiopia CANNOT live on as a government in exile. They must be defeated before Ethiopia completes the focus Boarding the train), Eritrea, Somaliland, and Jubaland then you can form a new subject nation out of all those countries, Italian East Africa! You must have done the focus’ “Ministry of Italian Africa” and “New Emperor of Ethiopia” beforehand though

This is a very special country. They have 0 cores whatsoever, but have a leader with unique traits, a unique national spirit, they start with a unique political advisor, and are given the generic focus tree.

You also unlock new decisions to give your puppet more manpower, weapons, and land you capture in a war with France or the United Kingdom.

So although Italian East Africa doesn’t have any cores and so thus has to deal with resistance the entire game, they have a massive +25% non-core manpower- meaning they can extract aloooot of manpower out of the lands they have- which you in turn can use by creating divisions using their troops!

Thus you can think of Italian East Africa as a way to get more manpower out of the territories you’ve conquered, but at the expense of less factories since although you still get factories from your subject, your subject needs to build up compliance in all their owned lands for them to get factories to you in the first place!

By the way as an aside- If you form Italian East Africa with King Vittorio Emanuale III in charge, the leader of Italian East Africa has a different trait:

So if you want manpower, you can form Italian East Africa (Country tag is AOI, so on non-ironman games you could type in console: tag AOI to play as Italian East Africa), but what else could you do with Ethiopia?

Puppeting Ethiopia from the Peace Conference

Instead of Annexing Ethiopia and keeping the land for yourself, or forming Italian East Africa, you could also just puppet Ethiopia yourself from the Peace conference!

This new puppet is… also called Italian East Africa! This is different from the formable one via decision though- the country retains its purple colors, and is essentially Ethiopia, but now as your subject. They are thusly put onto the ahistorical “Reach out to the Italians” part of Ethiopia focus tree.

These are the focus’ your new puppet will auto complete.

So, by puppeting Ethiopia you don’t have to deal with resistance or building up compliance, in fact you could get war reps from Ethiopia right away and get access to their 3 civs factories instantly!

In essence, this means you get some civs from Ethiopia straight away, in addition to getting civs from them regularily due to being a reichskomissariat of Italy.

Other benefits include automatically getting Puppet troops (just like you would from any low autonomy subject) and because they are your puppet, you don’t have to call them into the war against Britain and France! Thus you can tie down Allied troops without having to actually fight them. You can do this with the other Italian East Africa as well- its better for them actually since they take Somaliland Jubaland and Eritrea from you- which puppeting Ethiopia doesn’t.

There is however, one very, VERY big problem by doing this.

If you are playing on Historical, your new Ethiopian puppet will always do this focus:

This sets them on the path to eventually declaring independence from you- so you have to fight them again!

And it’s worse because before they declare independence they can do some focus’ that affect you painfully, such as this one!

So on second thought, puppeting Ethiopia is actually a terrible, TERRIBLE idea. There is only one situation where puppeting them is ok: and that’s if on ahistorical they randomly decide to do the Italian cooperation path, or if you set themselves to do that from the custom game rules. In that case Puppeting Ethiopia is an OK thing to do since they will not break free and will be a loyal subject.

Of course you won’t reach the peace conference screen anyways since if you set the Ethiopians to take their Fascist cooperation with Italy route, they will enter into a civil war with the Haile Sellasies’ Ethiopia becoming a splinter nation, and the original tag becomes fascist and your puppet.

So… What else can we do to Ethiopia to get the most out of them? Simple. We balkanize them.

Splitting up Ethiopia into 8-10 New Subject Countries

Now, what if we were to split up Ethiopia into a bunch of puppet nations, that all get their own special focus tree, and thus all have the opportunity to give you free factories, and inexpensive resources to trade for?

Before I talk about this further, the more astute of you might notice that in this guides thumbnail, there’s actually a 10th puppet country- That’s Italian East Africa locked in Shewa. You actually don’t want to puppet them because again, on historical they will default to the independence route and although you could easily crush them again, they are going to do focus’ that will increase your supply consumption, consumer goods, and steal equipment from you!

So do not puppet Ethiopia themselves- give Shewa to one of your puppet nations. If, however, you are playing ahistorical and by chance Ethiopia goes down the Fascist Cooperation path- OR you set Ethiopia to go down that path manually, then you should puppet Ethiopia in Shewa instead of giving it to the 2 nations I’ll mention below. Technically Ethiopia being locked in Shewa means they can only do 1 focus that adds factories- that being “Develop Shewa” but thats fine, i’ll expand on this later.

So, You want to split up every state into their own country- with the exception of the state of Wella- this can either be given to Oromia, or Benishangul-Gumuz nation. It makes no difference.

So you want the Peace conference to look like this. in this screenshot I’ve decided to give Wella to the Benishangul-Gumuz nation. Make sure you also select the additional peace conference options for all applicable puppets- demand war reps and demand resource rights.

So this is how you want the map to look when you’re done:

Now let’s talk about the benefits of doing this.

8-10 Subjects with Individual Focus Trees = Free Factories and Bonus Resources!

So we now have plenty of new subject countries- all of them now have new names because they are fascist. If you care about their old names, see the previous Guide content- I will now use their new fascist names.

8 of these new subject countries all get a new unique focus tree- the Horn of Africa focus tree!

This is what their tree looks right. your subjects will randomly proceed and take every single focus they can in this tree! the exceptions being the branch path of “Political Stability” as that requires them to be independant.

Also note however, that one of your subjects, the Ajuraan Empire will instead have the generic focus tree. This is because they aren’t technically special- they are actually the Somali Sultanate which you could actually release from day 1 if you wanted to- Somali Sultanate has cores on Somaliland, Jubaland, Bale, and Haraghe. But since we create them as a puppet from one state- that state being Bale, they get to exist as a new subject country!

Anytime I talk about the Horn of Africa’s special focus’, remember- the Ajuraan Empire only gets the generic focus tree- which ofc can still give you factories.

What sort of benefits can your subject give you? Well let me summarize what each Horn of Africa focus tree gives each of your subjects:

• A new supply hub (Capital hub)
• 2 Civilian Factories, Potentially 4*
• 2 military factories
• Free divisions, some of which you are given as expedition units
• 2 infrastructure
• Improved region types which means more building slots
• Bonus’ to local construction and max factories in state
• Sometimes a level 1 railroad
• 2 25% research bonus’ for industry and electronics, for Italy, PER puppet.
• 8 resources of a unique type per country.
  • *there is a mutually exclusive focus between 2 civs and a 15% boost to local construction speed/max factories in state. Its better for your puppet to take the 2 civs ofc

So, not AS good as the generic focus tree like the Ajuraan Empire when it comes to factoriesgets, but if they all had generic focus trees- then yeah Italy would get a ton of factories by doing this every game. Instead, you will get some factories which is good, but not like a million+. Here’s the factories and resources from the generic tree for comparison:

• 4 Civilian factories
• 3 Military factories
• 6 infrastructure
• 3 dockyards if coastal, but you don’t get them

The absolute best thing from each of these countries however, is their unique 8 bonus resources per country- I’ll list what each country can get.

• Sidama Realm: 8 rubber
• Upper-Nilotic National Union: 8 rubber
• Empire of Harar: 8 oil
• Greater Oromo Territories: 8 oil*
• Ajuraan Empire: Nothing (generic focus tree)
  • Greater Oromo must have Bale under their control if you want them to do 8 oil. This means you must not puppet the Ajuraan Empire AKA Somali Sultante there. This means you have a choice between not getting potential extra oil to trade for your subject, or less factories from a generic focus tree nation which is AJuraan Empire.
• Funjistan: 8 steel
• The Futurist Union of Qemant and Qwaran People: 8 steel
• Aksumite Kingdom: 8 Aluminum
• Aussa Governante: 8 oil
  • The Aussa Governante can only do the 8 oil focus if you return the territory of Afar to them.

So apart from those asterisks, your subjects can produce these natural resources:

You can then trade for these resources at a rate of 1 civ per 80 resource. Obviously the resources you aren’t trading for isn’t 80, but still! a discounts a discount.

However, if you notice the rubber on the 2 bottom puppets- you’ll notice that because we demanded resource rights from them in the peace deal, all the new rubber that they produced is now added to our resource rights- so that means we get all that rubber for basically free!

Basically free… so long as they do the focus’ to improve their 8 resource bunches! If RNG isn’t on your side, then your puppets might not be doing much for a long time…

Downsides to Balkanizing the Horn of Africa

There are some “downsides” or things you should look out for/expect if you form a bunch of tiny puppet countries. While they’re kind of bad things, You’re still gonna be reaping tons of benefits that you wouldn’t get if you simply Annexed Ethiopia or form Italian East Africa.

• Your puppets will be doing the focus’ at random- that means unfortunately that say by 1939 both of the rubber resource states in the south may not have done the focus’ to add 8 rubber yet.
• Your puppets might not do the mutually exlusive focus that gives them 2 civilian factories compared to an additional +15% local construction speed and factories in state modifier
• Your puppets have some options to do some focus’ that increase their autonomy. While none of the focus’ will allow them to become free, if they take enough of them they will become reichsprotectorates, and thus will only give you 25% of their civs to you, instead of 25% of civs and 65% of mills by being a reichskommisariat.

Having said that though, It is always worth it to balkanize Ethiopia!

And if you ever want to annex them all in one go instead of manually lend-leasing them convoys to reduce their dockyards, you can! Even with 8-10 subject states in Ethiopia, if you meet the requirements for forming Italian East Africa, you can do so! That will instantly wipe out all your subjects and replace them 1 singular subject- Italian East Africa- which if you want to you can then annex from there.

Conclusion

Although these subjects are not going to give as many factories as say, capitulating France then making reichskommisariats out of every single colony they had, they still give upsides, and it is always more beneficial to make puppets out of Ethiopia, instead of just annexing them all for yourself. The only “upside” to annexing Ethiopia instead of making these puppets- is less spam of your divisions giving you new troops.

I hope you enjoyed this write up! Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go play a game of Italy, Balkanize Ethiopia to hell and back, but not do a single colonial focus! the “Modernize the industry” focus is just too powerful to pass up every game!