Every HOI4 cheat is a console command you type into an in-game text box. There's no cheat menu, no button combo, and no unlock to grind for first.
The one thing to settle before you type anything: the console only opens in non-Ironman games. Ironman is also what gates HOI4's achievements, so any save where commands work was never on the achievement track to begin with.
That trade sounds heavier than it is. Keep one Ironman run for the achievements and a separate non-Ironman save to bend however you like, and you lose nothing.
We've pulled together the commands players search for most and grouped them by what they do. StarCraft and StarCraft 2 cheats work the same fast chat-box way if you want an RTS instead. Each entry shows the command, what it does, and exactly what you type.
The HOI4 console commands worth knowing
The full list on Paradox's wiki runs into the hundreds. These are the two dozen or so we reach for, sorted by the job you're trying to do.
Type each one exactly as written, then press Enter. Arguments in square brackets are values you supply, and most commands have a sensible default if you leave the amount off.
Money, manpower, and equipment
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Add political power | Grants political power, defaulting to 1000 if you give no amount | pp [amount] |
| Add manpower | Grants manpower to your country, defaulting to 10 million if you give no amount | manpower [amount] |
| Add equipment | Adds a set amount of a named equipment type to your stockpile | add_equipment [amount] [equipment name] |
Two shortcuts save typing here: pp also answers to fuhrer_mana, and add_equipment shortens to ae. One catch on equipment: you can only add gear you've already researched, so it won't hand you tanks you can't build yet.
Research and construction
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Research all technologies | Instantly finishes research for every technology | research all |
| Instant construction | Every building and ship finishes the moment you queue it | instantconstruction |
| Add a national-focus idea or law | Adds a named focus-linked idea, or swaps a national law by ID | add_ideas [idea name] |
Instant construction speeds up the AI's building too, not just yours, so the whole map races ahead. If you'd rather finish one research slot than the entire tree, use research followed by a slot ID instead of research all. The shorthand for instant construction is ic.
War, peace, and territory
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Allow all diplomatic actions | Enables every diplomatic action, including declaring war with no valid casus belli | allowdiplo |
| White peace | Forces an immediate white peace between you and the country tag(s) you list | whitepeace [country tag] |
| Spawn a civil war | Triggers a civil war in a target country under an ideology you choose | civilwar [ideology] [target country tag] |
| Trigger an event | Fires a specific event by ID, optionally on a target country | event [event id] [target country tag] |
| Set state owner | Sets the owner of a state you click to the country tag you name | setowner [country tag] |
| Set province controller | Sets the controller of a named province to a given country tag | setcontroller [country tag] [province id] |
| Add a core | Adds a core claim on a state ID for your current country | add_core [state id] |
| Remove fog of war | Turns off fog of war everywhere, or inside one province if you name it | fow [province id] |
A few notes that trip people up. allowdiplo also answers to adiplo and nocb, short for no casus belli. The civil war ideology values are communism, democratic, neutrality, and fascism, so a working example reads civilwar fascism ENG. Set state owner now needs you to click the state in-game first, because the old state-ID argument no longer works, and fow shortens to debug_fow.
Absorbing a nation gets its own command. Run annex [country tag | all] to annex a single country by its tag, or pass the all argument to start annexing every other country at once.
Ideology and stability
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Add stability | Adds stability to your country, capped at 100% | st [amount] |
| Add war support | Adds war support to your country, capped at 100% | add_war_support [amount] |
| Set the ruling party | Sets your country's ruling ideology group | set_ruling_party [ideology group] |
| Add party popularity | Adds popularity points to a named ideology group | add_party_popularity [ideology group] [value] |
Set the ruling party takes vanilla one-letter shortcuts: d for democratic, f for fascism, n for neutrality, and c for communism. Add war support shortens to ws.
Switching country and the tag system
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Switch your country | Switches the country you control to the tag you name | tag [country tag] |
Country tags are three-letter codes like GER or ENG, and they stay fixed no matter what a nation renames itself or which ideology it swings to. The full official list lives on the Country tags page of the Paradox wiki, not on the console-commands page, so that's where to look one up.
Utility and debug
| Command | What it does | Type this |
|---|---|---|
| Spawn a 3D actor | Spawns a named actor at a province, with an optional animation | spawnactor [actor name] [province id] [animation] |
| Toggle frame smoothing | Turns frame smoothing off, which can noticeably raise effective game speed | debug_smooth |
| Teleport tool | Turns on a tool for moving units and objects around the map | teleport |
| List or describe commands | Prints every command, or the description of one you name | help [command name] |
Teleport shortens to tp, and help answers to clist. Frame smoothing is the sleeper pick of this group: switching it off with debug_smooth can push effective game speed up hard, which is worth knowing on a slow late-game save.
One command does double duty. gain_xp [amount | trait] adds experience to the selected leader, general, or admiral if you give it a number, or grants a gainable trait if you give it a trait name instead.
How to open the HOI4 console
The console lives on PC only, and it opens in one step, but the key changes with your keyboard layout. Start or load a non-Ironman game first, then press the toggle key to bring the console up.
Depending on your layout, that key is one of the tilde neighbors: the grave-accent or tilde key, ^, °, §, the backslash key, the quote key, or º. Some layouts open it with Shift+2, Shift+3, or ALT+2+1 instead.
Type your command, press Enter, and press the same key again to close the console. There's no separate always-on debug mode to launch; opening the console is the entry point for everything above. The Bannerlord console commands take a different route, flipping cheat mode on in a config file first.
What using a command switches off: achievements and saves
The achievement question has a cleaner answer than the forum back-and-forth suggests. The console only works in non-Ironman saves, and HOI4's achievements are gated behind Ironman mode.
Put those two facts together and the conclusion is direct. The moment you can open the console at all, that save is outside Ironman and already off the achievement-eligible track, so no single command is the one that costs you anything.
That status doesn't come back. Once a save has lost Ironman and achievement eligibility, you can't restore it, which is the whole case for keeping a clean Ironman run parked next to your sandbox save. Paradox's Stellaris console commands follow the very same Ironman rule.
On sourcing: the official Paradox wiki states that commands may not work in Ironman games and that the console only opens in non-Ironman saves. The achievement link itself is corroborated by a Steam Community guide and Paradox forum discussion rather than one official sentence, but it holds up consistently across them.
Commands that circulate but the wiki doesn't document
This is where a lot of lists overreach. A handful of commands get passed around that the official console-commands page doesn't actually document, and we'd rather flag them than promise something that may not fire.
surrenderall, instant_wait_time (sometimes written nocbtimeout), and add_equipment_to_stockpile all turn up in searches but aren't documented on the wiki's console-commands page. By contrast, the Warcraft 3 cheat codes are a short, fully documented set. Treat them as unconfirmed until Paradox lists them.
There's also a quiet change worth repeating: setowner used to take a state-ID argument, and that syntax no longer works. Click the state on the map instead and the command applies to it.
Where to start your command run
Switch Ironman off on a save you don't mind bending, open the console with your layout's key, and lead with pp, research all, and instantconstruction to skip the slow opening. Keep your Ironman campaign untouched on the side, and you get the full sandbox without giving up a single achievement. For a lighter RTS, the Age of Empires 2 cheat codes type into the chat box mid-match.
Between HOI4 campaigns, get points for mobile play
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