Hearts of Iron 4 Console Commands: The Full List
Hearts of Iron 4 has one of the most generous consoles Paradox ever shipped. Political power, manpower, instant construction, annexing a neighbour, all one line each. What it does not have is a command for steel, and that gap is where most campaigns actually stall.
Takeaways What the Hearts of Iron 4 console can and cannot do
- No launch option needed The console opens in any normal game. Only debug_nuking wants the -debug flag.
- Ironman locks it Commands are switched off in Ironman by design, and Ironman is the only mode that hands out achievements.
- Political power, manpower, XP, nukes: one line each pp, manpower, xp and nuke all take an amount and default to a large one.
- No command for raw materials There is no line for steel, tungsten, rubber, aluminium, chromium or oil. The trainer carries fourteen switches for exactly those.
The console opens in any normal game, and that sentence is the whole catch
There is no launch option to set, no file to edit. Press the key under Escape, type a command, done. The one exception is debug_nuking, which wants the game started with -debug. Everything else in the table below works on a plain install of patch 1.19.3, released on 17 September 2026 according to the patch history on the Paradox wiki.
The catch is Ironman. Paradox switches the console off there by design, and Ironman is the only mode that awards achievements. So the question people ask, whether typing a command costs you achievements, has a simple answer: you were never in the mode that gives them.
The commands, sorted by what you were trying to fix
Names and syntax follow the Console commands page of the Paradox wiki. Amounts in brackets are optional and fall back to a default, which is usually large.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
pp [amount] | Adds political power, default 1000 |
manpower [amount] | Adds manpower, default 10 million |
xp [amount] | Adds army, navy and air experience at once |
gain_xp [amount] | Experience for the selected general or admiral |
nuke [number] | Adds nuclear bombs to the stockpile |
ic | Toggles instant construction, for every country on the map |
research_on_icon_click | Click a technology to research it instantly |
research all | Every technology, right now |
fa | Finishes the running national focus instantly |
instant_wargoal | Justification takes no time |
ae [amount] [equipment] | Adds equipment you have already researched |
ale [amount] | Adds the newest variant of each equipment type |
add_ideas [idea] | Adds a national spirit, law or idea by its internal name |
allowdiplo | Every diplomatic action becomes available |
yesman | The AI accepts whatever you propose |
annex [tag] | Annexes a country outright |
wp [tag] | White peace with that country |
tag [tag] | Switches you to another country |
setowner [tag] | Hands the selected state to that country |
civilwar [ideology] [tag] | Starts a civil war in the named country |
fow | Turns fog of war off |
tdebug | Shows province and state IDs under the cursor |
tp | Teleports the selected unit to where you click |
delall [tag] | Deletes every unit of that country |
Two details trip people up. ic is global: the Soviet Union gets instant construction the moment you do, and it stays that way until you type it again. And ae wants the internal equipment name, infantry_equipment_2 rather than “Infantry Equipment II”, which is why so many attempts at it fail silently.
Where the console stops: no line adds a ton of steel
Read the table again and look for steel. It is not there. Nor is tungsten, rubber, aluminium, chromium or oil. The console can hand you a thousand political power and ten million men, and it cannot give you the one resource that has a factory line standing idle.
The workarounds exist and they are clumsy. add_ideas works if a mod or the base game happens to contain an idea with the right resource modifier. tag lets you jump into Malaya, then setowner its rubber states to yourself, then jump back. Both are three or four steps for something that should be one switch, and both leave marks on the world you were trying to play in.
The same is true of subtraction. pp adds. Nothing takes away, nothing sets a value, nothing acts on the state you have selected or the general you are hovering. The console is a set of hammers, and a good one, but every hammer only swings in one direction.
What the trainer covers that the command line does not
The Hearts of Iron 4 trainer lists 77 cheats, nine of them free. Twenty-two of the 77 are resource switches, and fourteen of those are for the seven raw materials the console has no command for: oil, aluminium, rubber, tungsten, steel, chromium and coal, each with an add and a sub.
Political power, stability, war support, clearing country threats and fast war goals are all in the free tier. Manpower, fuel, command power and the raw materials need the premium plan.
The rest of the list reads like the gaps in the table above. Resistance and compliance on the state you have selected. Experience on the leader trait you are hovering. A marked production line that runs at super or mega speed while the others stay honest. Fast naval production on its own, because ships are the one queue ic does not feel like enough for. And a dev codes group: instant construction on placement, instant research on selection, instant national focus, no focus prerequisites.
None of it needs the console. The trainer changes values in memory while the game runs, so it never types anything into a box the game can lock. That is not a loophole anyone should build a campaign on. It is simply where the two tools differ.
Console or trainer, by situation
The console for a one-off fix. Justify a war now, hand a state to an ally, finish the focus that was going to take another forty days. Type it, close it, keep playing.
The trainer for anything that has to hold. A resource shortage does not go away because you added a lump once, it comes back next month. The add and sub pairs, the per-state switches and the production speed toggles are built for that.
Single-player only, in both cases. Multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 checks checksums for a reason.
Infographic What the Hearts of Iron 4 console can and cannot do Click to enlarge How do you open the console in Hearts of Iron 4?
Press the key left of 1 on most layouts, shown as ` or ~. German and Nordic keyboards use § or ^, some layouts need Shift+2 or Shift+3. No launch option is required for the ordinary commands.
Do Hearts of Iron 4 console commands work in Ironman?
No. Paradox disables the console in Ironman games on purpose, and Ironman is the only mode that awards achievements. If you can type a command, the game was not going to give you an achievement anyway.
Is there a console command for steel or tungsten?
There is not. The console adds political power, manpower, fuel, experience and equipment, but no strategic resource. The workaround is add_ideas with an idea that carries a resource modifier, or switching tag to annex a country that has the deposits.
What is the console command for instant construction?
ic, short for instantconstruction. It is a toggle and it applies to every country on the map, so type it again once your buildings are done or the AI keeps the benefit.
Does pp add political power to the AI as well?
No, it adds to the country you control. If you switch with tag and type pp there, that country gets it, and the AI keeps whatever you gave it when you switch back.