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Hearts of Iron 4 cheats – a guide to the best console commands

A quick guide to using the in-game console, as well as the best cheats to help make games go smoothly

Joe Robinson

Published:

Hearts of Iron IV 

Is it time to bust out some Hearts of Iron IV cheats? Grand strategy games provide an amazing strategic sandbox to play around in, but they can also be hard. If you’re aiming towards a particular long-term goal, you will often need everything to go exactly according to plan, or your entire run will be ruined.

There are other reasons to play, of course, and there’s a wonderfully vibrant Hearts of Iron 4 mods scene that will let you experience the game in new and exciting ways. But if you’re wanting to take the vanilla game through its paces, you may need some help in other ways. Like most games, Hearts of Iron IV has a command console that will let you shortcut your way to various outcomes with the help of some console commands.

We’ve rolled similar guides for Victoria 2, EU4, and Crusader Kings 3, if you want to read those. We can’t take full credit – there is a useful resource in the form of the official Paradox wiki, as well as this handy guide on steam that we’ve used to help collate the important information. We’ve not listed every command available, but we’ve got the most interesting ones for gameplay.

Hearts of Iron 4 cheats

One thing to note regarding the below console commands, many of them require the country ID tag. For example ‘ENG’ is Great Britain. There’s an easy way to find out the country tags you’re interested in. Bring up the command console (usually TAB, but will depend on keyboard), and type tdebug and then hover the country you want, and it will show you the tag.

You can also do this to find out state and province IDs as well, but you may need to switch map modes in order to get the right information.

  • gain_xp [amount] – The selected leader or general will get the specified amount of XP
  • cp [amount] – Use this command to increase your Command Power (up to a max of 100%)
  • st [amount] – Add stability (up to a max of 100%). Remove stability by using a negative number.
  • ws [amount] – Add war support (up to a max of 100%). Remove support by using a negative number.
  • allowtraits – This command removes restrictions on general trait assignment.
  • add_equipment [amount] [equipment name] – Use this to add any amount of a specified equipment to your stockpiles (not naval). You will need to have researched it first in order to use it.
  • add_latest_equipment [amount] – Similar to the above, but it will only add the specified number to equipment listed on the logistics screen.
  • whitepeace [country tag] [country tag] – This will immediately enforce a white peace between the two specified country tags
  • teleport [province id] – Instantly teleport selected ships or armies to the specified province id.
  • allowdiplo – Allows you to use any diplomatic action (e.g. declaring war) without justification.
  • instantconstruction – Enables or disables the construction cheat, which causes all construction to happen instantaneously
  • research [slot id / ‘all’] – This can be used to research all equipment, or just things in a specified slot.
  • research_on_icon_click – Use this to instantly research any technology you click on.
  • annex [country tag] – Start annexing the specified country tag, which will incorporate their territory to your nation.
  • winwars – Gain maximum warscore for every conflict you are currently involved in.
  • manpower [amount] – Gain the specified amount of manpower in your reserves.
  • tag [country tag] – Use this to change the country you’re playing as. Will need country tag.
  • observe – Less a cheat, and more a cool way to watch the game play itself.
  • setowner [country tag] [state id] – Set/change ownership of a state to a specified country.
  • setcontroller [country tag] [province id] – Set/change controller of a state to a specified country.
  • xp [amount] – Gain the specified amount of experience to all pools (Army, Navy, and Air)
  • pp [amount] – Gain the specified amount of political power.
  • civilwar [ideology] [country tag] – Trigger a civil war within a country, with the specified ideology: ‘fascism’, ‘democratic’, ‘neutrality’, and ‘communism’.
  • add_party_popularity [ideology group] [amount] – Adds the specified amount of popularity to the specified party, same options as above.
  • set_ruling_party [ideology group] – Sets the specified ideology group as the ruling party: ‘f’ (fascism), ‘d’ (democratic), ‘n’ (neutrality) and ‘c’ (communism).
  • focus.nochecks – Allows you to ignore focus requirements.
  • focus.ignoreprerequisites – Allows you to ignore focus prerequisites.
  • decision.nochecks – Allows you to ignore decision requirements.
  • nuke [amount] – Adds the specified amount of nukes to your country’s arsenal.
  • yesman – Causes country AI to automatically accept any diplomatic offers.
  • deleteallunits [country tag] – Deletes all armies and fleets of the specified country tag.
  • fronts – Toggles the visibility of foreign fronts.
  • traderoutes – Toggles the visibility of trade routes.
  • debug_tactics – Toggles the visibility of the tactics debug tooltip.
  • Nomapicons – Toggles the visibility of icons in the map.
  • Nopausetext – Toggles the visibility of the pause menu.
  • morehumans [amount] – Adds more humans. Use a negative number to subtract.
  • add_autonomy [country tag] [amount] – Adds or subtracts from the specified country’s autonomy level.
  • add_interest [country tag] – Adds the specified country tag to your interest.
  • remove_interest [country tag] – Removes the specified country tag from your interest.
  • fow – Toggles fog of war on/off. You can also specify a province ID to just toggle fow in one place.
  • savegame – Forces a save.
  • add_core [state id] [country tag] – Adds the specified state as a ‘core’ of the specified country.
  • error – Print errors from the log file.
  • moveunit [unit id] [province id] – Move the specified unit to the specified province.
  • Weather – Toggle weather on/off.
  • tag_color [rgb] – Set the tag color of your current country.
  • Instant_wargoal – Allows you to use any war goal without justification.
  • airealism – this is a joke command that’s mean’t to get the AI to start smack-talking players, however it’s essentially useless because the chat window isn’t available in single-player, and the command console is unavailable in multiplayer.

This list isn’t exhaustive, so make sure you check out the official wiki for the other cheats and console commands available for this game.

HOI4 country tags

If you’re looking for Hearts of Iron 4 country tags, a good place to start is the command console. As mentioned above, there is a cheat you can use to find out the country tag of any nation that exists at the game’s start dates of 1936 and 1939.

There are many more tags buried within the game files however that relate to releaseable and formable nations. For example, the Kingdom of Prussia can be brought back viat the French focus tree, and has the tag of ‘PRE’. Not every formable nation has a separate country tag, but all releasable nations do. No Step Back introduced new releasable nations for the Soviet Union that brought the total count up to 29 just from the USSR alone.

For a full list of country tags, we recommend checking out our sister website Wargamer, who has its own HOI4 country tags guide.

Strategy games aficionado Joe was previously editor of Wargamer and has written for RPS. Enjoys all Paradox games, especially Hearts of Iron 4, Total War: Warhammer, Halo, and long walks on the beach.