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TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.



What's all this then?

This is Hearts of Iron 4, a grand strategy game released in 2016 by Paradox Development Studio. It is currently the latest in that series, and has been continually developed and received new DLCs up to now, with more content still due to be released past the writing of this post.

So what's this game about?

Basically, this is a game all about World War 2. You pick a country and guide it from 1936 to 1948 (actual end date is flexible), making decisions, building nations and running wars along the way. If you've played other Paradox games, you have a basic idea of how this is going to go, though this game is more war-focused than, say, Crusader Kings 2 or such.

If you haven't played a Paradox game, basically imagine yourself in control of the major facets of a country. You decide which direction your politics take, build your cabinet, you construct your nation's industry, you decide what weapons you build and what kind of an army, navy and air force you set up with those weapons, you trade resources with other nations, build alliances, spy on each other, all sorts of stuff you need to do to run a successful nation. As such, there's a lot of stuff to learn with this game.

And what about the LP?

Well, as I said, there's a lot of stuff to learn with this game. Furthermore, this game has an interesting multiplayer function where multiple people can play the same nation, with changes any player makes instantly being visible to all players. With that in mind, I decided to combine those two factors to create this LP. As such, here's who's part of this LP.



First, we have myself, TheMcD. I have about 1000 hours in this game, though a good part of that was probably spent in observer mode watching games with different mods develop because that interests me. Still, I have a fair amount of experience in this game, even if there are some parts I really don't know how to work optimally. I can get through games and win wars. Sometimes. I will be taking the role of teacher in this LP.



And for our second participant, we have Ibblebibble. As he describes his experience with this game himself: "I last played the game on release, and then played Italy and lost to Greece." Ibble will be taking the role of student in this LP.

So together, we will be playing this game in co-op multiplayer and attempt to get through a Germany campaign while I teach Ibble to play the way I play. From there, we see how things go. Things might go great! Things might not go great. Hopefully, it will be entertaining either way.

You said something about mods.

Yeah, I'm using a few minor graphical mods I like and one multiplayer utility mod. Here's the list of mods I'm using.

- Square Counters: Exactly what it says. Normally, counters that show units are rectangular in this game. But I come from HoI2, where counters were square. So I prefer it this way.
- Universal Colored Puppets: This colors puppet states the same color as their overlord. It makes maps look a bit nicer when you can tell at a glance that a country is just a puppet.
- WW's Map: This is just a map mod. I think it looks cleaner and nicer, so I use it.
- No Forced Pause / Slowdown For MP Lag: There's an automatic slowdown with speed when somebody lags behind in multiplayer. Since this is just two people playing co-op and we're probably going to be frequently pausing to go over stuff anyway, I figure it's easier to disable the automatic slowdown and keep us in control of the speed.

I don't think that's all the mods you're using.

No, those are all the mods. Everything else is completely normal vanilla HoI4. Don't question it.

Anything else?

One more important note. Do not treat this LP as a comprehensive tutorial! You will be sorely disappointed if you do that. This LP will teach you to play my way. That is not necessarily a good thing. It will probably be enough to play the game, find some success, and have fun. But people who know the game better will probably tear their hair out at some things I say. Please don't get mad. I'm just kinda dumb.




















BGM List:

quote:

Episode 1: haircuts for men - когда зло господствует (Tracks 1 through 8)
Episode 2: VA-11-HALL-A - Prologue (entire album)
Episode 3: Tetris (CD-I) (entire album)
Episode 4: haircuts for men - 大理石のファンタジー (Tracks 1 through 7)
Episode 5: Anno 1602: Creation of a New World (entire album minus fight music)
Episode 6: Age of Empires (in-game soundtrack) + Age of Empires: Rise of Rome (in-game soundtrack)
Episode 7: Omerta: City of Gangsters (Tracks 1 through 9)
Episode 8: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1981 - 1984) VOL.1
Episode 9: Super Mario World Arranged
Episode 10: Victoria 2
Episode 11: Sim City 3000
Episode 12: Sim City 3000
Episode 13: Side Pocket
Episode 14: Omerta: City of Gangsters (Tracks 9-17)
Episode 15: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1985 - 1987) VOL.2
Episode 16: Knights of Honor
Episode 17: Root Double
Episode 18: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1988 - 1992) VOL.3

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is Kaiserreich, the most popular mod (that doesn't just enhance the vanilla game) for Hearts of Iron 4. It started out life as a mod for Hearts of Iron 2 / Darkest Hour and has been in development for ages.

What's it about?

Kaiserreich is a mod that sets out to answer the question "How would WW2 look like if the Central Powers had won WW1?". And as a result, a lot of things are different, even if we end up seeing a lot of familiar faces. We go more into what's going on in the world of Kaiserreich in the first video before we make our choice of country: The Socialist Republic of Italy.

How will this go?

In this game, Ibble will be taking over as host and making more decisions while I take more of an advisory/guide/military commander position and go over some more things as to how playing a minor power in an alliance is different to playing a major power. Let's see what happens!












BGM List:

quote:

Episode 1: Mario Golf
Episode 2: Kamaitachi no Yoru
Episode 3: Kaiserreich Soundtrack (Darkest Hour version)
Episode 4: Kaiserreich Soundtrack (Darkest Hour version)
Episode 5: Final Fantasy IV Guitar Collections
Episode 6: Grim Fandango
Episode 7: Fallout New Vegas (Old World Blues radio + some music from a mod extending that radio station)
Episode 8: Mega Man: The Robot Museum (+ one track from Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned) by Joshua Morse, available at https://ocremix.org
Episode 9: Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
Episode 10: AI: The Somnium Files

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is Equestria at War, one of the largest mods for Hearts of Iron 4.

...ponies?

Yes, ponies. Also griffons. And more.

So, what's it about?

Well, as the name might imply, this is a mod set in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic universe. In a way. Most of the world here is basically made up by the mod creators, but it does use main characters from the show in some capacity. Except now it's World War 2.

And, well, it's probably one of, if not the best mod made for Hearts of Iron 4. Everything in it just works, and there's a copious amount of content for basically every country you can see. While it doesn't go as crazy as some other mods on the custom mechanics and such, I would say it's the most polished experience you can have in Hearts of Iron 4 modding.

So much like with Kaiserreich, we start out by going through the world the mod gives us before eventually settling on our choice: The Griffonian Empire.
















BGM List:

quote:

Episode 1: 死夢VANITY - albums "diamond rush" and "eternal"
Episode 2: haircuts for men - nothing special, nothing wonderful
Episode 3: Plastique - albums "Suite" and "Vision"
Episode 4: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Episode 5: Heroes of Might and Magic III
Episode 6: haircuts for men - ダウンタンブルと死にます ep (tape edition)
Episode 7: Hearts of Iron 2 & Hearts of Iron 3
Episode 8: haircuts for men - テンペスト地域 (COLLECTED EDITION)
Episode 9: Caesar III
Episode 10: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Episode 11: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1993 - 1995) VOL.4
Episode 12: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Episode 13: Shadowrun Returns
Episode 14: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1996 - 1998) VOL.5

--------------------------------------------



What's all this, then?

This is the One Year War mod for Hearts of Iron 4. It's a Gundam mod.

What's it about?

Gundam. Universal Century Gundam, or so I'm told. Look, I don't know what the gently caress I'm talking about here. Ibble's the one that knows about Gundam, not me. I know there's Zeon, and there's an Earth Federation, and the point we start at Zeon has like half the world and I think I heard that that's when the original show starts or something (there are earlier bookmarks).

And what makes the mod special?

There's two main things. For one, there's the tech tree, which amongst other things has a whole bunch of different mobile suits and such to research, build and field. This comes with a whole bunch of different equipment. And the other thing is that there's space, which in HoI4 means that there's a part of the map that's just cut out and completely separated from the rest of the map apart from straits that go across the entire world. It's kind of a mess, actually.

Is it any good?

That's a complicated question. For now, suffice it to say that our time playing this mod will not last as long as Equestria at War.






BGM List:

quote:

Episode 1: haircuts for men - Solo Works Discography 1982~2016
Episode 2: Mega Man Battle Network 1&2
Episode 3: Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors
Episode 4: Mickey's Speedway USA

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is Red World, a mod with a quite simple premise: What if the Soviets won the Cold War? As such, in the year of 2010, the Soviets are on top of the world with the Warsaw Pact spanning most of Europe, and the USA collapsed and splintered into many different independent states.

Anything else special?

Not really. Red World is a pretty basic mod as far as mechanics are concerned, sticking pretty much entirely to vanilla and transplanting the research tree into the modern day pretty much unchanged, which is very handy. However, it has some very fun campaigns due to its premise. In this playthrough, we will be going through one of my favorite paths: John Foster's Union of American Soviet Socialist Republics. You'll see, things get fun on this path.















BGM List:

quote:

Episodes 1-13: Assorted Red Army Choir songs

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is Old World Blues, the Fallout mod. We have a larger, America-centric map with a lot more detail, a completely reworked tech tree, and a fuckton of content. Old World Blues is up there with Equestria At War in giving content to a whole bunch of different countries. Generally, if you know Fallout, you're going to recognize a lot of stuff, though since the devs need to fill an entire map, there is some stuff that's made up or extrapolated from, like, a single line in a Van Buren design doc or whatever. Still, the whole gang's here, from the NCR to the Legion to New Vegas, Vault City, Arroyo and more.

Anything else we should know?

Not particularly. There's a fair bit of stuff that is different, but not different enough to really throw you off. The first video will be an overview of the map and the factions, but we've already decided on playing as the Free Fighters, because a nation of luchadores is something we just have to go for.

Luchadores?

Yes.










BGM List:

quote:

Episodes 1-8: Assorted radio tracks from Fallout: New Vegas and mods, mixed together

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is No Step Back, the most recent DLC released for Hearts of Iron 4. It added focus trees for the Baltic countries, Poland and the Soviet Union, a rework of the officer and doctrine system, a tank designer, and a rework of the supply system. It also broke basically every mod. Fun times.

Anything else?

We're playing as the Soviets this time, and I'm going to be taking Ibble into account a bit more instead of running the show largely by myself. This may or may not end in disaster. Also, this is the final campaign of the LP. It's been a long while, and it's time to wrap it up.















BGM List:

quote:

Episodes 1-13: Assorted radio tracks from the Hearts of Iron 4 soundtrack

--------------------------------------------



What's all this then?

This is Hololive of Iron.

...what?

Yes. Anyway, long story short, this replaces a whole bunch of the vanilla map with countries run by Hololive characters. It's inherently very chaotic, with every Hololive country able to go fascist, communist, democratic or non-aligned, leading to very crazy alliances and clusterfuck wars.

Ibble and I did this for April Fools Day, and we might revisit it if the mod gets an update.



BGM List:

quote:

Episode 1: The Vocaloid Jazz Sessions (Vol. 1 and a small part of Vol. 2)

TheMcD fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jun 10, 2022

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TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

turol posted:

Video is still unlisted. Intentional?

Also the game (and DLC) is on sale on Steam for about another hour and a half.

Intentional. My YouTube channel used to be a place where I uploaded music from pinball machines and I accrued about 450 subscribers from that (note: Haven't uploaded anything in that regard in five years now, but still). When I started doing LP stuff, I made everything unlisted so I wouldn't spam those people with poo poo they weren't here for. And, well, it stuck. Call it a hot forums exclusive.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

biosterous posted:

seems like i'm a little too drunk to actually pay attention to this video but it makes some really enjoyable background noise! i will probably try again another day when i'm sober

So between this and feedback on Discord that this first video was a chill experience, I'm getting the feeling that my trajectory so far is, like, a low rate Bob Ross with World War 2.

I'm fine with this.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

OutofSight posted:

I demand naval warfare, cowards. Challenge British sea power. :colbert:

You'll get naval bombers and like it.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Yvonmukluk posted:

I suppose you could also do the Oppose Hitler focus down the road, since that would let you get to grips with the military system a lot sooner with the Civil War as a result.

Will you be doing other nations later on? It'd be interesting to see how to do a democratic nation to try and prepare for the war, as opposed to Germany which obviously is set up to be the prime mover. The revised France might be an interesting thing to try.

Well, we're going to play around with the military system with our volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. That should be enough for the basest basics and the war with Poland (or maybe the Czechs, depending on how that goes) should work for an actual war. I intend to stick with the historical path, by and large anyway.

My intent for later campaigns, if this takes off, is to do different mods. I love playing different HoI4 mods. So maybe we could do Kaiserreich next, as the mechanics are still largely the same but with a different world to play around with.

EDIT: Like, if you wanted to pin me down to something right now, the next planned campaign would be somewhere in China in Kaiserreich, since that's a really interesting region since the rework happened.

TheMcD fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Oct 2, 2020

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Hey, just a quick FYI: Ibble and I determined we're going to go for recording once every two weeks, starting next week. I will be shooting for having a video out every week. However, we can't record this week, and we only recorded that first video the first time, so the next session will be next weekend, and I'll see to it that I get the first video of that session edited and uploaded that weekend as well.

So no video this weekend, next one should be next weekend.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Alright, I got it in in time! It's still this weekend for me!



In this video, we add "WW2 factoid collection" to the list of things this LP is probably not going to be as we start letting time pass in the game and spend some time chatting about particular things we at least believe we know about WW2.

Also, note that from now on, episodes will be coming from longer recording sessions (this first one went about 3 hours and 45 minutes), so there will be abrupt cuts at the end and videos will start in medias res apart from the first one of the session.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

NeverHelm posted:

Ah, intelligence agencies. Very expensive for smaller countries, and their effects are a bit subtle compared to just building more military factories. In my experience, their most valuable contribution is the actual intel on the enemy: Knowing what they produce, what their division templates look like, where their fleets are stationed and so on is impossible to get anywhere else, and highly valuable if a bit difficult to quantify.

My usual order for upgrades is Cryptology Deparment first, since that takes a while to take effect and I want to get working on that straight away. Next comes a bit passive defense, followed by intel stuff and then whatever (usually cryptology upgrades).

As for spy operations, Intel networks are quite useful on their own even without any other operations. As a warmongering nation like Germany, building up Collaberation during the early game in countries you inted to capitulate early like Poland and France can save you tons of equipment and manpower later on by indirectly reducing the resistance there much more efficiently than directly placing spies for that purpose. You'll still probably have to do so though as Germany, due to the sheer volume of occupied territory. Stealing blueprints is nice as a way to boost your research but I almost never use it myself.

I'm going to try and make more use of spies in this game than I usually do, and yeah, collab governments is probably going to be what I'll try to do eventually because the occupation stuff wasn't fun in my practice game.

NeverHelm posted:

He's a spy for Britain in-game, but has both British and German nationality (helping him blend in better in those countries) and the "Double Agent" trait.

I was wondering how that was going to work, since there is a double agent system in game, but it'd be kind of a dick move to have a spy in Germany's pool that was just guaranteed to go double agent on you. I suppose him just showing up in Britain's pool is appropriate.

Lynneth posted:

I dare you to do EAW eventually. It's legitimately one of the highest-quality mods I played to date, alongside goddamn Kaiserreich.

You don't need to dare me on that. EaW is absolutely on my shortlist for mods I want to do (alongside Kaiserreich, Kaiserredux and Old World Blues) because yes, it is amazing.

Lynneth posted:

That said, looking forward to a complete newbie learning the game as it is nowadays. I've been playing for 500 hours and still feel like I'm learning constantly.

I bring this up in an episode yet to be posted, but I only learned that you can manually support attacks by holding CTRL and right-clicking the battle indicator after I was about 800 hours in. Sometimes, you just never learn something until someone specifically brings it up.

starbucks hermit posted:

the anime portraits and music are a nice touch

I'm not enough of a war history nerd to play this but I really appreciate the detail that goes into the speculative possible history aspects of all of this.

I do wonder if I'm eventually going to run out of music in my collection that is appropriate for what I want to go for, but I should probably be good for a while. And yeah, while there are some faults with the alt-history approach that HoI4 goes for, one perk is that a ton of different stuff can happen. I played a practice game as Germany after the first video just to see if I could still get through the Soviets without too much trouble, and things went radically different compared to what the save I'm running with Ibble is turning out as.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Alright, now that I have some episodes ready, I will be establishing a schedule - I'll post a new episode every Friday evening. And with that...



This time, we have a bit of a lull as we wait for the Spanish Civil War to kick off, so Ibble gets to look around the world and check out all the places he's been in his life, and then we start prepping for the Spanish Civil War.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



This time, we start messing around in the Spanish Civil War and find ourselves going over basic military stuff with our two tank divisions.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

starbucks hermit posted:

I assume that you just need to continue to capture territory until the other group capitulates. Do you intend to focus your efforts on Spain for now? And how long will it likely take before the enemy is defeated?

Yeah, basically, the war ends after we capture enough victory points (which are specific important provinces that have major cities and such).

We're going to focus on Spain mainly for lack of something else to really focus on. Those tanks and planes weren't going to be doing anything if we weren't loving around in Spain.

And if you don't mind a minor spoiler: The next two episodes will be the rest of the Spanish Civil War. So that's how long it'll take until the war is finished.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



This time, we have a lot more happening in the Spanish Civil War. We play around with the espionage system, let our tanks roll on the plains of Spain, and remilitarize the Rheinland. Also, stay tuned for the surprise ending!

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

What is with your oil reserves bouncing around so much every week? You went from 100 days to 250 and then 4 years at one point.

Oil reserves are calculated based on current usage. It's supposed to tell you "with usage the way it is right now, you have X amount of time left before you run out". Since we're currently using fairly low amounts (we have like 200 planes in the air and two tank divisions rolling around, compared to thousands of planes and like 40+ tank and motorized divisions rolling around by the time we hit Barbarossa) and we have a low oil production, small changes in use (so like our tank divisions stopping in a province to regain their organization) can cause drastic changes in the time remaining.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

wiegieman posted:

I'm a little surprised you guys didn't do the Victoria run, it's sort of the go-to gimmick run for Germany.

Well, I wanted the first run to be the most vanilla, standard thing possible. And for this game, that's standard historical Germany.

If I wanted memes, I'd play Kaiserredux.

We might play Kaiserredux down the line.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

starbucks hermit posted:

So what's the plan at this point? Do you need to take care of the other three factions now? And in a military fashion (as opposed to diplomatically)?

Yeah. Basically, the way it works - at least in vanilla - is that once you see the "X has declared war on Y" popup, it's war and it will be war until one side gets beaten so bad they surrender. There are no separate peace deals or something like that. The SCW is now a four-way slugfest that goes until only one is left standing.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



This time in our Spanish Civil War adventures, we get ourselves in a bit of a pickle.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Lynneth posted:

Victory points produce a limited amount of supply. So places like Badajoz and Oviedo produce some basic supplies if you hold them. This means that a city with like 40 VP that isn't the country capital can hold ridiculously well under the right circumstances, even when fully cut off from the rest of the country.

Huh. I've never really experienced that mattering majorly where I thought to myself "wow, how are these guys still going, they should be out of supply", but it does kinda explain some things.

See, this is why I say not to take this LP as a tutorial.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

wiegieman posted:

What encircling really does is prevent replacements and reinforcements from reaching divisions. Losses of men and equipment are constant and unavoidable; if a division can't reinforce it will quickly become ineffective.

Arbite posted:

True, and for whatever reason leaving a unit alone to rot when encircled can lower its org faster than attacking it.

Good to know. As you might notice, I am not a smart man, and as such, my knowledge of HoI4 encirclements is something along the lines of "encircled enemies = good; if troops have port = not encircled, take port to stop supply".

Still, that's a workable level of knowledge.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



With the Spanish Civil War done, it's time we turn our eyes towards our own territorial expansion. However, we're not going to be kicking off wars just yet - at least hopefully. For now, we'll just demand land and see what happens.

Note: My headset mic is a temperamental thing, and as such, even with leveling, some of the audio in this video in particular gets a bit too close to weird ASMR territory. Alas, not much I can do now.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



With the Anschluss done, we now start moving in the direction of countries where we might run into trouble. Plus, we take a trip back to our school days and remember what we were taught about WW2.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



The war with Poland comes closer, but for now, we're still trying to expand diplomatically. Also, a new potential competitor alliance bloc makes its appearance!

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



We're still waiting for Poland to make its own faction so the war becomes easier without France intervening.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

Should you try training your new divisions and build up some land xp?

It's a thing I can do, but at that point I'm more interested in getting my produced equipment into new divisions, so having my existing divisions run training and burn through some equipment with attrition isn't what I'm after right now. I'm sure there is some sort of calculation you can make whether training is worthwhile and when it isn't, but I can't be hosed to work that out right now.

Besides, once we get into the actual war, we'll have a ton of land XP just from combat.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



Italy does a dumb this time, and we don't get involved. Instead, we take care of Poland.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

What are the glowing dots on the map surrounding what I think are cities/squares?

Could you give me a screenshot or something pointing out what you mean? I can't exactly place what you mean by that.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.


Oh, those. I don't even notice those anymore. Those are just supposed to be city lights, entirely cosmetic.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Gideon020 posted:

Good playthrough so far, and your taste in pinball music is :golfclap:

I really need to sit down some time and actually upload some new pinball music stuff. It's been years since my public facing YouTube side has seen anything. Maybe when I'm on vacation around Christmas.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

I can barely hear the music. What I didn't hear was something like Black Knight 2000 or Addams Family.

They weren't talking about the video, but the public facing side of my YouTube channel, where I have a collection of pinball music uploaded.

EDIT: The music in the videos is intentionally held fairly sedate since it's not like we're talking loudly, and it's just supposed to be something in the background because otherwise there'd be silence. Here's what I've been using so far:

quote:

Episode 1: haircuts for men - когда зло господствует (Tracks 1 through 8)
Episode 2: VA-11-HALL-A - Prologue (entire album)
Episode 3: Tetris (CD-I) (entire album)
Episode 4: haircuts for men - 大理石のファンタジー (Tracks 1 through 7)
Episode 5: Anno 1602: Creation of a New World (entire album minus fight music)
Episode 6: Age of Empires (in-game soundtrack) + Age of Empires: Rise of Rome (in-game soundtrack)
Episode 7: Omerta: City of Gangsters (Tracks 1 through 9)
Episode 8: haircuts for men - EARLY TAPE WORKS (1981 - 1984) VOL.1
Episode 9: Super Mario World Arranged
Episode 10: Victoria 2
Episode 11: Sim City 3000

TheMcD fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Dec 17, 2020

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



We decide that we can help Italy out a bit this time, and as a result, we take a slightly different route than one might have expected.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

turol posted:

Why didn't you send your submarines to raid around the British Isles? You could start choking out their resources.

Also at some point you mention not wanting to trade with convoys because they'd have to go through the English channel. But I think there's a way to forbid convoys from using certain sea zones so that shouldn't be a (big) problem. I don't know what it is since I haven't actually done it but I saw someone do it on video.

Simple answer, I don't know what the gently caress I'm doing with navy. Right now, my only thought about my navy is "I leave them in the ports because otherwise they eat up oil I need for my tanks to drive".

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



With France out of the picture, we're left with the Balkans to mop up. But then, a great complication ensues.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

I am aware that armored cars are superior when it comes to occupation, but I wasn't convinced it was the optimal play in my situation to go and invest a bunch of military factories into producing armored cars that weren't going anywhere but dealing with occupation when I could've been putting that production into tanks, motorized, fighters and naval bombers, all of which are going to feature more heavily in actually finishing the war, at which point I can just puppet the territory and not have to deal with it.

Of course, that does come with the caveat that the war vs. the Allies has a good chance of going beyond the point I decide "gently caress this, we're not finishing this war and declaring this run over", but in that case, I was never going to have the chance to let compliance tick up sloooooooowly to the point where it's actually helping me out vs. just going Martial Law and pressing resistance down as hard as I can.

I might of course be doing the mental math in my head completely wrong, but that was my line of thought as to why I just went with CAV for suppression.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



Boy, do I feel dumb for blowing off the Anti-Comintern Pact a few episodes ago. Well, now we need to deal with the consequences of our actions, and that means the Soviets are coming for us.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

How much of Africa is considered impassible?

As far as I can tell, only the Sahara gets impassable terrain in vanilla, and it looks about like this:



wiegieman posted:

I'm surprised you're putting maintenance companies in your infantry divisions, there's not that much IC worth of equipment to lose in them even with full support.

For what it's worth, I won't actually ever switch any infantry divisions over to the full support template. (Spoilers: The entire vanilla campaign and basically the entire Kaiserreich campaign that will come afterwards is already recorded) It was only ever supposed to be a luxury thing I made because we had a ton of army experience.

wiegieman posted:

Speaking of, it might be time for some spearhead orders. You should be able to encircle that entire eastern front if you use two armies.

I'm not exactly confident in my ability to pull that off. In my experience, that leads to my units running out of organization halfway through and being basically stuck because the supply is completely shot.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



This time, we're going to try and figure out how we're going to crack this Soviet nut. And meanwhile, the Brits just can't get enough of us and keep wanting to go on vacation on our rightfully stolen land.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

Having fast tanks don't seem that helpful against that wall.

Well, the advantage is going to be largely when we actually do manage a breakthrough, in keeping enemy units from filling in the empty provinces behind the line. Moving to medium tanks would surely help with getting breakthroughs, but I wasn't convinced it was necessary at the time.

Scalding Coffee posted:

Your ships are going into combat with someone.

I presume that's just convoys under attack, which I at this point had filed under "that'll just happen and we'll live with it". My attention span for the navy is very slim.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

I'll have to see if I can't get that advice to work in a game or something.

Do you have a suggestion for a nation to sort of try things out with? I'm obviously not locked to vanilla, so if any mods have an interesting naval trainer nation, I'd be grateful for that as well.

And yes, I absolutely plan to cover EaW. Probably after Kaiserreich.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



It's time to stop screwing around and commit to a big push. Will it work?

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

New video!



With the Soviets now out of the picture, we start working on mopping up some different areas of the map.

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TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Scalding Coffee posted:

Are there no airfields in the Middle East? It looks like a large segment of the map is undeveloped.

Yeah, vanilla HoI4 has basically gently caress all going on in Africa and the Middle East. No real resources (beyond oil in the ME) and no real infrastructure. Makes fighting there real fun.

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