Expanding the "trees"

No Step Back was a particularly high ambition expansion from Hearts of Iron. Usually expansions contain only 3 “focus-trees” (mission trees), and as time has gone on, these trees have become more ambitious and tend now to also include bespoke mechanics for each nation. NSB had 5 focus trees, 4 of which were my responsibility. I worked on the Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian focus trees which involved both design and implementation. Since this was a lot of work, I tried to be smart about creating flexible and modular content so it would be easier to make small but transformative adjustments to each nation. The end result was 4 focus trees that stand out strongly from each other and were often praised by the community, with Poland and Lithuania in particular commonly being praised as some of Hearts of Iron’s best focus trees.