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I finally got around to playing this after playing a bunch of HOI2 and skipping 3. I did a Communist China run on normal ironman with historical focuses. My first two attempts ended when I waited too long to attack Shanxi and I couldn't overwhelm them fast enough, but on my third try I rushed the decision that gives you annex CBs on your neighbors and attacked the Shanxi before they could get any additional divisions out. It ended up going ok: I still didn't know what I was doing for a lot of it, so there were a few close calls. I picked to ally Nationalist China in an event right after I finished Shanxi and Japan declared war right after that when I still only had ten divisions. I managed to hold them back on my border, but they hooked around me to get further into Nat China. At the worst part around 1942 Nat China only existed as a buffer zone of 1-2 provinces all the way around my territory and I was pretty sure I was about to lose, but Japan declared on the British and they saved the day by opening a second front in southern China, allowing me to concentrate on the North and take Manchuria and Korea. Then I got bored and took the infiltration decisions to turn on Nat China and the other warlords, and Germany crushed the USSR so I took Mongolia too. I'd like to stick it out to get the achievement for winning the Chinese civil war, but I think the war with Japan would have to end somehow, and the Allies haven't made a single island of progress against them the whole game I think, and I'd have to start from scratch with naval research and production, so I think that's out. Super Germany's way too buff for me too, so I think I'm done. Overall I had a great time. 36'-46 only took about ten or eleven hours, which feels blazing fast compared to HOI2. I'm still getting used to how hands on to be with combat. I had to do everything with the first war because the AI just wasn't aggressive enough quickly enough to win the war before Shanxi could ramp up. Later on I mostly let the AI handly 90 percent of the front while I managed a couple units to attack and do encirclements. I gotta admit though, I was expecting the AI manager stuff to be... better overall? Less messy. I kept zooming out to review the situation and finding really weird things like one of my armies would have their front line stretched out way further than I had placed them, so there wasn't enough coverage and they would get pushed back. At one point part of the front just became uncovered by any army and I had to go in and pull two armies' front lines back in to cover the gap while enemies moved in. It's possible that I was just loving something up, though.I also just had more weird things and glitches than I was expecting. Next I think I'm going to do an Italy run. Somewhere with infrastructure and fewer provinces. I had terrible supply issues basically that whole game.
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Mar 26, 2019 05:13
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Ms Adequate posted:Nah, declare on Germany, see how you do! Show them what a real power with infinite manpower is! Well, I also sort of became dependant on Germany for steel and chromium after the USSR fell.  gently caress it though. Might as well.
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Mar 26, 2019 08:51
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I got a Turkey -> Ottoman run off the ground after a couple test runs, but I might be in trouble soon. I went fash and joined the Axis for the bonus manpower and since most of the land I wanted to take was allied. At first I was trying to rush Bulgaria, but I was having a hard time breaking through their lines. Taking Greece first turned out to be much easier since they just wasted most of their army in fruitless naval invasions and left Thrace underdefended. After that pushing the allies out of the middle east and north Africa was pretty easy. I made a lot of early progress into the USSR when the Soviets declared on Germany too, but the Allies landed in France while I wasn't looking and they're rolling Germany up pretty quick now. I guess I should divert some forces over to help them out since it's not like I'll last long without them, but I'm already spread thin across my Soviet front. I probably should have foregone armor and just focused on pumping out infantry once I took the Ottoman restoration decision. Before that I was struggling a bit with manpower but that gave me an instant ~2.5 million recruitable population that I mostly still have in reserve. It's been fun, though. Between this and my first Communist China run I've learned a lot about the game. My only real complaint is having to babysit front lines to make sure the AI isn't leaving gaps when territory expands/constricts. The pacific war seems wonky, even though I've only seen it from afar. I had never seen the US make a single island's worth of progress except in one test game where they got pulled in early and landed in Tokyo and Osaka within like three months.
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May 18, 2019 05:20
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What's the basic strategy to ally with other countries? Com China attacked Xibei San Ma and one of their other neighbors, and I'd like to join in and win it for them as the USSR, but I can't get over the -20 modifier to join my faction even with +100 relations, mil access, and a non-aggression pact. They waited too long to kick things off so they're getting crushed even with my helper division, inf equipment and military attache. I also won the Spanish civil war for Republican Spain (god they were useless. My expeditionary force basically won the war by itself, even retaking Madrid for them when they lost it despite having a army advantage from my encirclements) but I'm not sure how to fold them in peacefully. This is my third game and I've been trying to build up the Comintern. I invaded and puppeted Iran and did a coup + invite to faction to get Communist Turkey. Also, what's general strat for focuses for the USSR when historical focuses are turned off? I was testing doing the extra research slot, then free factories, then purge with historical focuses turned on, because if Germany offers you the Molotov Ribbentrop pact you get all those claims from the antifascist focus tree for free and save like two years of researching focuses, but it feels like with historical focuses off that's less reliable and it might be smarter to go after those claims earlier. Maybe skipping the factories and putting off the purge?
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Jun 28, 2019 22:15
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GHOST_BUTT posted:The other good option for Poland is to try to join the Comintern and let Russians die for you. That's a good strategy for Communist China right now too. You can join their faction from the start if you improve relations to 100, then just call them in one at a time to wipe out the northern warlords, attack Nat China after Japan starts winning the war agains them, scoop up as much China as you can, grab any remaining warlords, then attack Japan and take the rest. The timing can be tricky because you want to get everything done before Germany attacks the USSR, and the USSR needs Mongolia to join in to get to the warlords before you get Sinkiang and Mongolia's reluctant to join wars on their borders, but even if Mongolia doesn't join at the start if you call the USSR and Tannu Tuva in they always seem to get pulled in after a few weeks (the USSR also might not want to join against Japan if you're the aggressor, but again I attacked anyway and after a few weeks they came in.) I was able to kick Japan out of Asia and grab all of modern China by 1940 in my game this week on normal ironman with historical focuses, and the Soviets took 2/3 of the casualties doing it. They won't generally send enough divisions to take Japan or Nat China by themselves, though, which is why it's good to hold back if possible and wait for Japan to start pummeling them, and then by the time you need to attack Japan you should have been able to build enough inf to keep them occupied from the south and west while the USSR attacks them in Manchuria.
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Jul 5, 2019 22:38
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I love how there are just those two historical flavor events every game, Amelia Earhart and the Hindenberg (and maybe one or two more? Is Chiang Kai-Shek getting captured by Communist China random?) Crusader Kings 2 has the same thing where the first time you play you get those Rise of the Hashishin events out of nowhere and think "is this what this game is going to be?" but nope, someone on the dev team just thought the assassins were badass and you're going to read a little about it in every campaign.
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Jul 16, 2019 06:28
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God, the Allied AI sucks so bad. The Germans and Italians have been winning a slow battle of attrition against the USSR, UK, and US in my Communist China game. It's 1948, and the USSR has taken 31.5 million casualties (20 from Germany, 10 from Italy, and the rest from Japan), the US and UK have taken 10 and 9 million casualties (mostly from their endless useless naval invasions, I'm guessing. They've barely interacted with Japan despite being at war with them for the better part of a decade) and Germany has somehow only taken 4.5 million casualties, and 1.9 of that is from me, and I only sent a couple infantry armies west to help when the Soviets started losing ground too quickly (I would send more, because I'm sitting on an ocean of spare manpower and infantry, but everything I send to the front starts taking attrition from low supply, which I'm guessing is how the Soviets are getting murdered so bad to begin with.) It's unbelievable how useless they've been, and I'm not even sure how to save them.
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Aug 28, 2019 07:12
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Japan will usually offer to China to surrender if they kick them off the continent and I think historical China will always accept. They will often do it all over again, because lol focus trees/AI, but they'll be much reduced. Ugh, I wonder if it only goes to Nat China, or if you only get it if the united China faction exists or something. I played two Communist China campaigns into the mid 40s a few months ago where I took back all of China and Korea and then was stuck in a war against Japan where they'd make constant unsuccessful naval invasions against two ports in Manchuria, the US hadn't taken a single island in years, and I was building a navy from scratch. In the first campaign the Nazis beat the Soviets and I got bored and attacked them and got stuck in Siberia, and in the second game I slipped by and took Taiwan, but then my small fleet got caught and wiped out while I was preparing a naval invasion of Japan proper. In retrospect I wish I had just moved my garrisons out of those ports and let them come in so I could at least destroy their divisions. I don't know if it would have helped the US though. In both games they didn't do poo poo against Japan and just wasted all of their manpower and equipment on incessant failed naval invasions in France.
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Jan 6, 2020 22:36
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Phone posting so excuse the lack of specifics, but the way I worked my Communist China games were to start improving relations with the USSR and working on attacking your eastern neighbor ASAP. They should let you into the Comintern once you max relations and then you can bring them in against the warlords. If you declare war on your eastern neighbor ASAP, you should be able to rush east and take their capitol right before their first wave of new units can be deployed. You have to manually control your divs at this point though because the AI will be hesitant to advance since you don't have enough divs to cover your border properly. The USSR should come into the war, but you also need Mongolia to join so they can invade from there, and getting Mongolia to join can be iffy. I found that if they don't accept your call to arms, the USSR will usually pull them in mid-war after a few weeks, so just zip to their capitol and try not to lose ground. After that move on to the northern / western warlords and do the same thing, using the USSR to distract the enemy's main force (they often aren't aggressive enough to actually win the war for you) while you shoot forward and claim the victory points. When Japan attacks Nat China, you should be all set up in the west and pumping out inf with your new factories. Declare on Nat China and push in from the west while Japan squeezes them from the north. This bit is tricky because the USSR might not agree to come in against China right away, but if you wait for Japan to beat up China too much the USSR might pull them into the Comintern, or Japan might get to all the best bits before you can. Ideally you gobble up a bunch of China and meet Japan in the middle, Lady and the Tramp-style, then take as much as you can in the peace deal. After that you build up until you feel ready to take out Japan. You could leave the Comintern at this point if you don't want to deal with that drama. If Japan got enough of China to make a puppet there, it might be best to invade early while the puppet doesn't have much of an army. That was the best way I found to grow quickly as Com China and take out Japan, but as discussed earlier Japan probably won't peace out to you at that point, so you gotta be prepared to build a navy from scratch and take the fight to Japan or just fend off naval invasions and hope the US gets its poo poo together. The good news is you'll get immense manpower from having united China even if some of the provinces are still owned by Japan and controlled by you, so you're pretty much impossible to dislodge once your infantry production really gets rolling. Randallteal fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 21:25
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For some reason I'm reminded of how there was a discrete technology for tank snorkels in Hearts of Iron I.
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Feb 15, 2020 07:06
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Gamerofthegame posted:nah you gotta remember this thread HoI is a board game about human suffering with the harsh edges sanded off, so it's always going to kind of suck, but they could do a better job of presenting it without compromising the game part, yeah.
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Feb 22, 2020 04:31
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:loving Victoria 2 influence system in my HoI! Literally the worst mechanic from that game. Thank god just invading Orenburg was an option. Woah woah woah, let's not be hasty. The random infamy gain when fabricating claims is the worst mechanic in Vicky 2. Nothing like rolling the dice on whether you're going to be sitting on your hands for ten years after your next war.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:12
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Alchenar posted:The purges are different through the prism of a video game because they fundamentally impacted the ability of the Soviet state to do things in the way the Holocaust did not. In a grand strategic wargame it's really important whether or not Stalin decides midway-though to wipe out 90% of his own top-level officer corps. But you can just refuse to address the Holocaust in your video game and it doesn't present quite the same issue. Sure, just abstract out that concentration camp labor into a factory number and presto, guilt-free fun.
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Aug 21, 2020 16:58
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Pvt.Scott posted:Just fill in the blanks with the plot of your favorite shonen or sentai show. It’s probably close enough https://i.imgur.com/rVSa0BN.mp4
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Nov 4, 2020 23:30
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Jeoh posted:What's the least popular nation to play? Of the majors you don't see a lot of talk about the UK.
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Mar 3, 2021 11:45
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:You only need half an army of armor at most. I wonder if new players think they need more tanks because so many German and Soviet commanders start with the armor commander trait. Assigning almost all of them to all infantry armies definitely felt weird to me at first. I don't remember running into that in HOI 2 either. I think I must have kept most of the tank guys low rank in 2 so they could all have small mobile armies. Jeez, I'm already forgetting how that game even worked. 
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Mar 5, 2021 02:00
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i saw a star wars mod for hoi4 that looked pretty legit so i suggest all paradox games move up one era. ck is the new eu is the new vicky is the new hoi is the new stellaris A box labelled "still more fun than unmodded HOI 4"
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May 22, 2021 00:57
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I've played like three Communist China games that I abandoned in the late 40s / early 50s because I reunited China but the Soviets lost and I ended up in a neverending grind across Asia with Germany. The last couple games I tried sending armies to help the Soviets hold the line in the west but the supply situation on the German-Soviet front was such a disaster that I couldn't find a way to insert myself that didn't end up causing more casualties on us than the Germans (through supply problems when they'd shift their units around inside the already packed supply zones.) The pacific theater was more or less solved by 42 in those games though.
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May 29, 2021 22:52
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The alt history paths they're putting in for countries like Turkey are already on the wrong side of too silly, IMO. What would a democratic Germany run even look like without some other alt-history nonsense like Fash France popping up for them to fight? "Year 10 of waiting for the Soviets to attack. I've run out of infrastructure to improve."
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Jun 12, 2021 01:49
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Gort posted:I think industrially the AI builds what it's short on. It doesn't have a template for medium tanks, so it's not short on them, so it doesn't build any. I remember finding the files in HOI2 that controlled research, production, and naval invasions and being scandalized that countries just built units according to predefined proportions (like 10% MEC, 20% MOT, 60% INF, etc), were only capable of invading specific coastal provinces, and would never develop or use nukes. Sometimes it's better not to pull back the curtain.
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Jul 9, 2021 18:30
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Up Circle posted:if your analysis is just that they got really lucky not once, twice, or three times, but at literally every single important decision or hinge point from 1934-1944 you're closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ear just so you can say "nazis bad and also bumbling". Up Circle posted:Claiming that all the success Nazi Germany had was due to the mistakes of their enemies is a weird sort of ideological gently caress you to a bunch of dead old germans who can't argue back. I don't know what debate you think you're having but I'm glad you're winning the one in your imagination anyway.
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Nov 21, 2021 23:35
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If you aren't building at least one Yamato-sized super battleship just to have one, I don't know what to tell you. Efficiency is one thing but you gotta live a little too.
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Dec 10, 2021 04:57
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At least Sudetlovakia is contiguous along the south.
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Dec 11, 2021 05:29
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I got the Not One Step Back achievement pretty easily as Stalin-USSR by: 1) Doing the Path of Marxism-Leninism -> The Centre focus tree first, and picking up industrial focuses and focuses for demanding the baltic states / bessarabia when you have to wait before you can pick the next focus under The Centre 2) Building civs till 39ish, then switching to mils 3) Focusing almost entirely on Infantry w/ art, aa, eng, anti-tank and fighter planes. I kept the tanks and cav you start with but never built any additional tanks. I also kept the mountain troops you start with and put them on the Romanian front 4) Demanding Bessarabia / the Baltic States in mid-39 and putting level 5 forts along the entire western border after you get eastern Poland from Germany I wasn't aiming for level 5 forts specifically, that's just about how many I could build before Germany attacked. For fighter planes you want a fuckload. I was trading for more rubber w/ the UK from early on, but I also ended up building some artificial refineries and researching the rubber techs. You can also get a couple free refineries from one of the deeper five year plan focuses if you can get there. I didn't mess with too much with the division templates outside of adding support companies because I wasn't sure what would be better than 18 for inf and 21 for mountain. Germany declared war on me in late 41 but never actually attacked across the forts, so it was roughly three years of just air war for me before the allies took Italy and I decided to start attacking. Since I ended up staying in place for a long time, static anti-air might do better than AA support companies and fighter planes, but I think you definitely have to do something to keep their bombers from destroying your forts at least.
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Jan 3, 2022 15:12
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Agean90 posted:The Joseph Stalin route is the Historical Route. Shotgun down it until the purges stop, it'll save you a lot of trouble since you can pivot to unfucking the army and the economy before the Nazis show up Yeah, you should always be prioritizing the right side of the focuses under The Centre IIRC. That path has a left side with focuses that reduce paranoia and give some bonuses, but IMO that one's lower priority. I also took the diplomacy focuses in the middle right part of the tree that give you the ability to demand the Baltic states and Bessarabia. I think you get the claims for free from the Molotov-Ribbentrop event, but you can't demand them diplomatically without the focuses. The air tree is also borderline mandatory to go down before the war if you want to have a functional air force because the red air force has huge negative effects at the start, but that can wait till a little later (39-41) as long as you start getting them before the war. I ended up getting all of the military focuses too, but they didn't seem as high priority (plus you're locked out of progressing past a point till after you're at war with a major power). I ignored the far right of the tree pretty much.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:03
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Lostconfused posted:Ok so there's like 0 reason to join the United Front if you're playing Mao. Yup. I did three or four Commie China runs a couple years ago where I attacked Nat China after they went to war w/ Japan and moved all of their troops north and split the territory w/ Japan before attacking them after building up some more (and allying the USSR for a neighbor beat stick / Japan deterrant).
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Jan 12, 2022 00:33
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Raskolnikov38 posted:god forbid people recognize that both sides suck rear end and hope that nothing happens regardless Yeah that tracks with cancelling someone because they tweeted "I love Ukraine". Hopefully Twitter will take action against these provocateurs before they stir up more hate.
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Jan 27, 2022 17:02
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TheMcD posted:What I usually see in Europe is Berlin falling with the Germans still holding on to Kiev, Leningrad and more. It is the weirdest god drat poo poo. Though I've never looked into just why that is - is it because the Soviets are too weak to counter, or is it because the Germans overfocus on the Eastern Front and as such get mopped up in the West while holding the East? I don't envy anyone trying to balance a simulation based on how ridiculous the eastern front was historically with the Soviets losing thousands of airplanes and millions of soldiers in the initial fighting, turning the Germans back at the edge of Moscow, etc. One thing I wonder is how much effective lend lease actually gets delivered to the USSR vs historical (not in 41 obviously, but in 42 and 43 when they should be pushing back). Something I often see if the Germans are winning is they start out slow and then actually speed up as they advance east, like the Soviets are the ones getting stretched thin and overextended as they get pushed back.
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Feb 6, 2022 23:21
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Lostconfused posted:The game is too stupid and broken to waste time on ironman unless you're a crazy person. I've only played ~200 hours but they've all been ironman and I haven't been hosed by any bugs or anything like that. Peace conferences are moot for 95 percent of campaigns anyway, because by the time they fire the game's done.
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Feb 17, 2022 15:37
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For as much scrutiny as the USSR gets, France has to be by far the most screwed major power compared to history. I get why they do it and it's always been that way that I remember, but they really took a hatchet to France's industry and military to make sure the German invasion goes off breezily and the rest of the war gets to happen.
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Apr 7, 2022 12:05
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Vengarr posted:Atomic Bomb Designer DLC HoI 1 actually had a whole branching nuke research tree where you would start out by picking a fuel isotope (thorium 232 / uranium 238) and then each one would lead to more efficient types (uranium 233, uranium 235, plutonium 239 etc) and then you would research bomb technologies and you could end up with a wide range of bombs from nuclear waste bombs to tritium-boosted fission bombs. It was deeply unnecessary but I kind of liked it (HoI 1 research in general was greebly in the extreme).
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Jun 9, 2022 23:32
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Is there a really good concise supply tutorial around anywhere? I've played a few games since No Step Back and I've got the gist of the interface, and how upgrading / building / motorizing supply bases work, but I'm still terrible at estimating how many divisions I can put in an area, and once my troops take one step beyond my borders, it always just turns into a disaster. I actually don't know if I've ever not had armies in low supply since that update. I played an entire USSR campaign, beat Germany, and got the no step back achievement and from January 1 1936 on my armies were always in low or very low supply. At one point pre-war I put like a hundred infantry divisions in area defense mode over a stretch of land that required 300 divisions to cover effectively just to keep them out of the way and the AI still put divisions in very low supply provinces where they started taking attrition.
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Aug 14, 2022 00:51
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Nicodemus Dumps posted:I'm not sure if you're aware but a reality tv host became president of the United States of America Tbf he was arguably better known as a microblogger at that point.
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Sep 2, 2022 01:10
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Maybe modders are moving away from silly stuff because the base campaign is getting so wacky. HOI4 with historical focuses off already feels like a tc mod. It's got that "two dozen choose-your-own-adventure stories running simultaneously" vibe going on. EU4's getting there too with its new(ish) mission trees.
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Sep 4, 2022 22:11
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Byzantine posted:Turned off historical for a USSR game (actually just forgot to turn it on) and Lithuania had a communist revolution and joined the Comintern as a puppet. Then while I wasn't paying attention, Poland ate it with no notification then attacked the other Baltics and Finland, and somehow I couldn't intervene. Historical focuses off is indeed hilarious because all the countries with DLC focus trees can start acting out their revanchist imperial fantasies via event instead of waiting for Germany to kick things off.
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Apr 8, 2023 21:08
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