HOI4 UK Guide 2026: Focus Tree, Navy and Division Templates

Up to date for patch unknown, DLC unknown. No version string or DLC name is spoken, shown on screen, or listed in the video's description or tags — checked against the video's upload date instead, 17 March 2026.

How to play the UK in HOI4 comes down to a decision the 1936 start never forces on you: which of the five branches of the British focus tree you commit to first. Nothing collapses if you dither, which is exactly why so many UK campaigns drift into 1940 with a huge navy, a small army and no plan. This HOI4 UK guide for 2026 keeps the whole walkthrough of the run it was built from — a monarchist King's Party route that gets Edward VIII off the throne early and ends up coring the United States — and adds the reference sections around it: the focus tree branch by branch, the naval doctrine choice, how to keep your colonies or hand them away deliberately, the Commonwealth dominions, the British Raj tree, and the templates worth building.

The opening position is the same whichever route you take. The UK starts with four research slots and four national spirits: London Naval Treaty Signatory, which caps designs at 9,500 for a carrier, 5,300 for a cruiser and 10,000 for a heavy ship; British Stoicism, worth +50% ideology drift defence and the ability to create factions; The War to End All Wars, a −30% recruitable population factor; and King George V, a popular figurehead. That third spirit is the one that shapes every UK strategy on offer — you begin with the largest navy in the game and an army you cannot fill, so most branches of the tree are really an argument about where the missing manpower comes from: the colonies, the dominions, or a law change at home.

🎯 The core idea

This is not the historical "appease Germany, hide behind the Royal Navy" United Kingdom. The plan is to force an early monarchy change — engineer a war with France so that France's own strategic bombers hit London, which triggers Edward VIII's death and installs George VI years ahead of schedule — then run the political King's Party branch and the colonial Empire branch in parallel to snowball manpower and factories, eventually coring the United States itself through Canada and finishing with the Imperial Federation focus.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to avoid

The UK focus tree at a glance

The HOI4 UK focus tree is unusually wide and unusually forgiving — nothing you click in the first month locks you out of the rest of it, and the two branches that decide the shape of your game sit at opposite ends. Here is the whole tree in one table, so you can see where the run below actually sits.

Two entries in the industrial branch repay an early look. Extra Research Slot is the actual focus name behind the UK's fifth research slot, which the video never reads out on screen. And Royal Ordnance Factories, which this run does take, adds 6 military factories spread across three random home states — a large part of why the factory count in the American-war section below is as high as it is. The Shadow Scheme in the same branch is worth remembering too: 4 building slots and 4 military factories, delivered when you enter a war rather than when you take the focus.

Establish the ABDACOM is the newest thing in the tree, and it is not really a British branch at all: Australia, the Dutch East Indies, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States all share it, and it exists to give the Allies a coordinated answer to Japan. It needs the Thunder at Our Gates expansion.

What patch 1.19 changed for the UK

The run below was recorded on 17 March 2026. Patch 1.19 landed on 11 June 2026 alongside the Thunder at Our Gates expansion, so some of what is on screen no longer matches a fresh install. None of it breaks the route; it does change what you should be building.

• Army HQs. Generals can be deployed into the field as an HQ supporting the army they are attached to, with 11 HQ-specific support companies for tailoring them to a job.
• Ship Captains. Individual vessels now carry named captains who earn medals and can be promoted to admiral. Every major country, the UK included, starts with 8 historical captains in both bookmarks.
• A new row in the Division Designer. Regimental Support was added, with 12 regimental support companies, and special forces got a doctrine system of their own.
• The Fortify East Asia branch was reworked — that is the colonial sub-branch running through Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong.
• Blackshirt "replace dominion government" decisions now fire an event instead of switching a dominion's ideology unilaterally, which takes a lot of the certainty out of the fascist route's grip on the Commonwealth.
• Royal Navy dominance in the Mediterranean was increased, specifically so that naval invasions launched from there land better.

Setup and rules of this run

The creator plays with Ironman mode on, historical AI focuses on, and achievements enabled — so nothing about the run relies on mods changing mechanics, only cosmetic ones. Two production calls are made in the first two minutes that shape everything after:

1. Build every factory in Southern England setupThe reasoning on-screen: if the AI decides to strategic-bomb wherever has the most factories, better it's a spot you can defend and rebuild than scattered across the whole country.
1:29
2. Cancel tanks, armored cars, and both airframe lines setupPut 8 factories into guns and everything else into support equipment — this early UK doesn't need a domestic tank or plane industry yet.
1:29

The King's Party path

The political branch runs alongside the colonial branch shown above. A Change in Course opens the door; Royal Marriage of Edward VIII unlocks The King's Party itself. None of the focuses in this branch have their day counts read aloud in the video, so the table below only records the order the creator actually takes them in — treat the "Days" column as "not stated" rather than guessing what the tree would show.

Forcing the war that installs George VI

This is the part that makes the whole run work, and it hinges on two observations the creator flags on-screen without fully explaining the mechanic behind them.

1. Scrap the heavy surface fleet grindSeparate out the HMS Hood into its own task force, then delete every other task force — carriers, battleships, battlecruisers, heavy cruisers. This is what opens up naval-treaty warning options against new countries.
2:34
2. Warn Spain, then invade once they refuse to disarm setupSpend 50 political power on the naval-treaty warning. Spain "commits to disarmament" but doesn't follow through, so the UK (plus Italy, France, and the USA) gets a war goal on them.
3:16
3. Do not annex Spain yourself skipLeave Spain open until France has joined the war and picked up enough war score to puppet it — the whole point is a French-owned puppet, not a British one.
3:57
4. Do not be at war before taking The King's Party skipThe focus requires peace. The creator calls out learning this "a little too much" from a mistake — plan the France war to start after, not before, this focus completes.
6:04
5. Send a second naval-treaty warning — this time to French Spain setup100 political power. Because French Spain is a puppet, warning it pulls the UK into a war against France itself — the trigger the whole plan needs.
6:26

Once Edward VIII takes the throne, France's strategic bombers start hitting London — that's the actual mechanism, not a coincidence of war exhaustion. Buckingham Palace gets bombed, Edward VIII dies, and George VI takes over.

The creator narrates the headline numbers — +15% stability, −15% consumer goods factories factor — but the two negative traits shown above (Stammer's −10% political power gain, and Humble's +0.05 daily support for unaligned) and the exact party-support counts are never said aloud at all. At the moment George VI takes over, the UK is still fighting France on 1% war support and 23 stability, so the stability boost is doing real work.

Consolidating the British Isles and the colonies

1. Declare war on Ireland setupFramed on-screen as "consolidate the British Isles." Low world tension at this point means Canada, Ireland's ally, doesn't join in.
9:58
2. Build a Colonial Garrison template on the Cavalry Brigade chassis grindAdd military police, set it to "local police force," and use it for every garrison need instead of a full combat template.
10:41
3. Foment a Canadian imperialist uprising whenever it's available grindThe stated goal is bringing every dominion back into the fold before the American war starts.
11:02

The Royal Navy that gets scrapped early on is deliberate for this specific political route — if you'd rather keep a real battle fleet and fight the naval war straight, the navy guide covers fleet composition and ship design for a UK that keeps the Home Fleet intact.

Uniting the Anglosphere and the war with the USA

By the time Royal Ordnance Factories and Unite the Anglosphere are queued, the UK is running 152 civilian and military factories total, with 10% of them diverted to consumer goods by event stacking. The American military is scouted at roughly 63 divisions — described on-screen as "screwed."

1. Switch production to Colonial Garrison only, cancel other lines setupThen force-deploy everything at once — 78 divisions go out in one push.
12:26
2. Ally with Germany before attacking setupExplicitly just to avoid being flanked — the plan is to leave the Axis again right after the American war ends.
13:08
3. Select 79 divisions and target American victory points directly setupGuard the victory points rather than fighting a normal front — the creator calls it "80 units just snaking to the American victory points."
13:08

Create Pan-North-American State

1. Annex Canada, then immediately release it again setupThis produces "the Province of Canada" — a subject that can legally take the Pan-American State decision.
16:02
2. Take Create Pan-North-American State setupThe Province of Canada annexes all UK-held American territory, gains cores on every American state, and becomes the Dominion of North America.
16:02

Research order

Research names and durations are never read aloud anywhere in the video — this panel, opened briefly mid-game, is the only source for them. At that point in the run the UK is queued on Streamlined Line (72 days, 1943), Advanced Small Airframe (59 days, 1944, a Hawker design), Fuel Refining III (208 days, 1939, giving +20% fuel gain per oil and +10% fuel gain from refineries), and Advanced Oil Processing (76 days, 1941), running at +40% research speed with 3 limited research bonuses active.

Division templates

Only one template gets a full stat readout in this video: the Infantry Division open in the Division Designer during the second Barbarossa push. Everything else — the Colonial Garrison and the Cavalry Brigade it's built on — stays at its unedited default in the Recruit & Deploy panel, so there are no comparable numbers for those to put in a table honestly.

That 249.4 soft attack on a plain infantry template is a stacked-modifier number, not a base stat — if you want to understand where numbers like that actually come from, the modifier stacking guide breaks down how soft attack bonuses compound. And if this single-template approach isn't enough and you want a proper defensive line-up instead, the defensive division templates guide has comparable width/org/cost tables across several designs.

The best UK division templates

The table above is the only template this video specifies in full, and it is a single late-game infantry design. Here is the rest of the roster a UK campaign actually needs, and what each one is for. The Division Designer gives you up to five combat regiments of up to five battalions each plus five support companies — and since patch 1.19, a Regimental Support row with twelve more companies on top of that.

The garrison row is the one worth copying exactly. The standing recommendation for rear-area security is military police attached to two to six minimally equipped and minimally trained cavalry battalions — which is precisely the Colonial Garrison this run builds on the Cavalry Brigade chassis and sets to "local police force". Military police raises the suppression stat of the division's line battalions, so a cheap cavalry chassis with police attached holds a province against partisans for a fraction of what a combat template costs, and the equipment it wants is equipment your gun factories are already making.

The best UK templates in one sentence: one cheap garrison you print in bulk, one infantry template you keep upgrading all game, marines for the invasions, and armour only once the factories from Royal Ordnance Factories and The Shadow Scheme are actually running.

Africa and the second Barbarossa

After the American war, the front moves to Africa and then to a fight against Germany that ends with the UK re-running Barbarossa itself once Germany capitulates.

1. Push Tripoli to Benghazi before German reinforcements arrive setupThe stated reason is winning the African campaign quickly enough to free up troops for Europe.
17:27
2. Add mechanized infantry and an anti-air module to the template cheapAnti-air is called out at 5,000 on the front at this point; an all-marine-battalion variant is separately noted as +15 breakthrough.
19:14

France's own strategic bombers are the mechanism that makes the George VI trigger work earlier in this run — if you're curious how the AI on the other end of that exchange is actually built, the France guide covers France's focus order and air doctrine from its own side.

The Imperial Conference and Imperial Federation

1. Stockpile political power before holding the Imperial Conference grindThe creator hedges on the target ("maybe 500") and actually holds it at 520.
20:16
2. Discuss Imperial Defense, then Discuss Imperial Federation setupCanada has to accept, which drops its autonomy — a precondition for taking the Imperial Federation focus itself.
21:20
3. Take Imperial Federation setup70 days. Requires the Dominion of North America as a subject and Hold the Imperial Conference already done. This is what actually cores the USA, on top of what Create Pan-North-American State already secured through Canada.
21:44

Elizabeth II's succession

George VI eventually dies too — late enough that the creator says he'd run this exact strategy many times before without it happening this early, and that the video was originally meant to be a speedrun to Elizabeth II rather than a George VI video at all. Elizabeth II's "Inexperienced Monarch" spirit is never described numerically in narration ("thank god we don't have to worry about doing or changing anything with this") but the screenshot shows +25% cost increases across conscription, trade, and economy laws, the political advisor slot, and every service chief plus High Command.

Focus day counts, most political-power costs, and the exact focus name behind "the extra research slot" are not readable from this video — narration skips them almost entirely, and they appear on screen only in passing. No tank, plane, or ship design is shown at any point, so equipment specs beyond the Infantry Division template above are out of scope. Patch and DLC are both unconfirmed; see the note at the top of the page.

The rest of this page is reference rather than walkthrough: the branches the run above never touches, the doctrine choice behind the fleet it scraps, and what happens to the empire if you play the United Kingdom a different way.

The historical path: Steady As She Goes

The HOI4 UK historical path is a single branch. Steady As She Goes gives stability and democracy support for 365 days and then splits into two mutually exclusive halves: Global Defense, which looks outward at the empire, and Home Defense, which looks inward at the British Isles. This is the democratic, historical-order route, and if you are learning the country it is the honest place to start — the manpower and war-support problems get solved in the open instead of through a political trick.

Two things about that table are worth saying out loud. Both halves of the branch carry their own way of removing The War to End All Wars — Every Man Will Do His Duty under Global Defense, the Military Training Act under Home Defense — so whichever side you pick, the 30% manpower penalty is a focus away rather than a fact of life.

And Maintaining Imperial Integrity is the most quietly important focus in the entire tree. It requires No Further Appeasement, it is mutually exclusive with Maintaining the Balance of Power, it takes three 50% discounts off naval doctrine research, and it hands every dominion in your faction a spirit worth −0.5 daily autonomy progress. That last number is the difference between a Commonwealth that is still yours in 1942 and one that drifted free while you were busy in France.

The rest of the branch is a war-goal generator: Secure the Oil Imports against the Middle Eastern producers, Continental Intervention against whoever is driving world tension, Secure Iraq and Secure Iran, the Scandinavian and Benelux interventions, Operation Unthinkable against the Soviet Union, and finally War with Germany.

UK naval doctrine: Fleet in Being, and the navy war against Germany

The HOI4 UK naval doctrine question has a default answer and a reason to think about it anyway. The UK starts on Fleet in Being — "a traditionalist focus on naval artillery and heavy armor, to overwhelm the enemy fleet" — which is exactly what the 1936 Royal Navy is built to do. The alternatives are Trade Interdiction, "an indirect approach to naval warfare focused on strangling maritime trade", and Base Strike, the carrier doctrine that strikes from beyond the horizon. The three roots are mutually exclusive, so this is a genuine choice rather than a research order.

Underneath all three hang the same four tracks — Submarines, Screens, Capital Ships and Carriers — carrying the same sub-doctrines: Wolfpacks and Long Range Submarines, Convoy Escort and Hunter Killer Groups, Line of Battle and Fast Battleships, Carrier Battlegroups and Massed Carrier Fleet. Staying on Fleet in Being does not cost you the anti-submarine half of the tree. It changes what those sub-doctrines are worth, not whether you can have them.

That matters because HOI4 UK vs Germany navy is not the fleet battle the map makes it look like. Germany starts on Trade Interdiction, the doctrine written for strangling maritime trade, so the German plan is your convoys rather than your battleships, and the fight is decided in the Screens track long before anything meets in the North Sea. Convoy Escort and Hunter Killer Groups are the two entries that decide it, and both are available whichever root you took.

Three UK-specific things bear on the whole subject:

• London Naval Treaty Signatory caps what you may design while it is in place: 9,500 for a carrier, 5,300 for a cruiser, 10,000 for a heavy ship. Your ship designs have to come in under those numbers.
• Maintaining Imperial Integrity, on the historical branch above, is worth three 50% discounts on naval doctrine research — by some distance the cheapest way down any of the three trees.
• The Sun Never Sets, on the political branch this run takes instead, gives research bonuses for every ship type rather than a discount on doctrine.

Patch 1.19 also gave naval vessels named captains who earn medals and can be promoted to admiral, with eight historical captains for each major country in both bookmarks, and raised Royal Navy dominance in the Mediterranean to make invasions launched from there work better. If you want fleet composition and ship design rather than the doctrine choice, the navy guide covers that side of it.

How to keep your colonies as the UK

How to keep colonies as the UK in HOI4 is a question about one running number: daily autonomy progress. Every subject accumulates it, and when enough stacks up the subject climbs a rung — Integrated Puppet, Puppet, Colony, Dominion, Independent — handing you less of its trade, manpower and industry at every step.

Moving a subject one tier by hand costs 50 political power in either direction; annexing one outright costs 300, and a subject buying its own freedom costs the same 300. So in the ordinary case the empire is not held together by force — it is held together by keeping that daily number negative. These are the levers that actually move it:

1. Take Maintaining Imperial Integrity freeEvery dominion in your faction picks up a spirit worth −0.5 daily autonomy progress. It requires No Further Appeasement and is mutually exclusive with Maintaining the Balance of Power. Nothing else in the tree comes close.
2. Do not take Indian Autonomy skipIt turns the British Raj into a dominion and gives it +0.5 daily autonomy progress for 730 days, which is precisely the wrong direction. Develop the Raj on its own hands you the civilian factories without the autonomy.
3. Stay out of the Revisit Colonial Policy branch skipEvery focus in it is built to give the empire away: Towards Dominion Independence, the five Self-Government focuses, and Decolonization itself.
4. Spend on Commonwealth Ties and the development focuses setupCommonwealth Ties pays each eligible dominion in your faction 50 political power and +15 opinion. Development in Canada, Development in Australia, Develop New Zealand and Develop South Africa add factories to them, and three of the four are prerequisites for Hold the Imperial Conference.
5. Or take them back by force on the King's Party route grindAppeal to Imperial Loyalists unlocks the civil-war instigation decisions, Bring the Dominions Back into the Fold gives claims and annexation war goals on the dominions, and Reclaim the Jewel in the Crown does the same for India.

One subject arrives already leaning your way: the British Raj carries Princely States, worth −0.1 daily autonomy progress, from the first day. And one focus leans the other way while looking harmless — Unify the Territorial Army of Malaysia unifies the Malayan forces and increases autonomy by 150. It is still a good focus; just take it knowing what it costs.

The decolonization path: Revisit Colonial Policy

The HOI4 UK decolonization path is a real branch with fourteen focuses in it, and it is the mirror image of everything above. Revisit Colonial Policy opens it — political power in exchange for stability, and an admission that the empire is ending — and the branch then walks it out region by region.

Why anyone takes it: the Self-Government focuses release regions as puppets rather than simply losing them, the political power is real, and the branch ends with the colonial assets repatriated and democratic popularity up. Why most people do not: you are trading away the trade and manpower in the autonomy table above, and the UK is already 30% down on recruitable population before you start. Treat it as a route with a payoff of its own, not as an optimisation of the empire route.

The Commonwealth: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

Most of what a HOI4 Commonwealth guide has to cover is the autonomy arithmetic from two sections up, plus the handful of focuses that exist only because these are separate nations rather than states you own.

Three focuses tie the group together. Commonwealth Ties needs Encourage Colonial Elite and at least one Commonwealth nation in your faction, and pays each of them 50 political power and +15 opinion. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan spreads air experience across the whole group. And Hold the Imperial Conference — which needs Development in Canada, Develop New Zealand and Develop South Africa finished first, plus the right governments in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand — pays 120 political power, fires the Imperial Conference event, and opens its decisions for 60 days.

The Commonwealth also stopped being scenery in 2026. Thunder at Our Gates, released on 11 June 2026, gave Australia a national focus tree of its own, alongside Siam and the Dutch East Indies, and added the joint ABDACOM branch shared by Australia, the Dutch East Indies, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. If your plan runs through the Pacific, the dominion down there now has ideas of its own about it.

The British Raj focus tree

The HOI4 British Raj focus tree matters to a UK player for two reasons: the Raj is the largest single block of manpower in the empire, and it is the one subject with a tree long enough to talk itself out of your hands.

It starts with four national spirits, and every one of them is a penalty. Princely States costs −0.1 daily autonomy progress. Marginalized Muslim Community is −20% recruitable population factor and −10% stability. Risk of Famine fires if core Indian states are lost and not retaken within 30 days. Agrarian Society is −70% recruitable population factor, or −72% with the Graveyard of Empires expansion, which also adds The Great Depression on top of the pile. The old Together for Victory tree is in the base game; Graveyard of Empires replaces it with a far larger one.

That larger tree runs in three directions:

• Great Depression Price Controls — the economic branch, tying the rupee to sterling and working the depression off, with the Look to the Past and Look to the Future sub-branches under it.
• Onto the Road of Independence — the independence branch and the biggest of the three, holding the Mahatma sub-branch and Tryst With Destiny, the League Against Gandhism with Forward Bloc and Netaji beneath it, and Reds In The Shadows for the communist route.
• His Majesty's Loyal Government — the branch that stays inside the Empire. The Government of India Act delegates authority to local ministries, Confer with the Congress opens the concessions decisions, then Favor the Muslim League and Court the Princes fork, as do The Indian Parliament and The Integrity of India Act. Its capstone is The Dominion of India: dominion status within the Empire rather than a flag of its own.

From the UK's side of the relationship there are three focuses and no more. Develop the Raj adds civilian factories and is the prerequisite for the other two. Indian Autonomy makes the Raj a dominion and gives it +0.5 daily autonomy progress for 730 days. Indian Independence frees it outright, or — on the version where you only promise it — leaves you a spirit costing 10% stability for 1,460 days. The two are mutually exclusive and both are optional; taking Develop the Raj alone is the version where you keep the factories and the men.

One focus on the Raj's own tree points back at you, and is worth knowing about before it happens: The Jewel Becomes the Crown requires the United Kingdom to have capitulated, and raises the Raj's factory and dockyard output when it does.

Sources

Murcenary, "The BEST Way to Play Britain in Hearts of Iron IV | HOI4," 25:11. Top comments (31 root-level, sorted by likes) were reviewed for corrections and alternative approaches; see the callouts above.