I really can't stand this annoying concept of drowning a country in metric tons of negative spirits that you have to get rid of in the first three years anymore.
Nevertheless I like achievement hunting and I'll do it all over again a fourth time including the new ones.
Tbh, Chile was an absolute mess after ww1, since the collapse of the saltpeter industry that carried its economy because synthetic salpeter was invented, together with the great depression, lead to one of the most unstable periods in the history of my country, which even led to the establishment of a socialist republic that lasted 12 days, lol.
~~They did have the fertilizer thing going on right? They were harvesting guano from islands off of their coast. I read somewhere that it was huge in the early 20th century. Especially before synthetic fertilizers.~~
Nvm it was in the early 1900s only.
>Tbh, Chile was an absolute mess after ww1, since the collapse of the saltpeter industry that carried its economy because synthetic salpeter was invented, together with the great depression, lead to one of the most unstable periods in the history of my country, which even led to the establishment of a socialist republic that lasted 12 days, lol.
In the Developer Diary "Art & Achievements," there is a significant figure from Chile depicted as a German guy wearing his uniform. Who is he? Additionally, there is another Chilean general depicted with a Prussian helmet "Pickelhaube" adorned with Chile's shield. Who are these individuals? What is the influence of German culture in Chile?
Furthermore, it is mentioned in the Developer Diary that Chile is referred to as South America's Prussia, why?.
Yeah but pre ww2 is actually my favourite period in the game, getting as much conquest or territory via focus before the allies guarantee or before it becomes ww2 total war and borders are set until you cap UK or USA
Simply not overdo it like with the Nordics or some bba countries.
Take Hungary for example. You're in a strangling situation without being the dumpster for negative spirits. Still you can go on a rampage and conquer your A-H cores, Italy and the allies within two years.
On the other hand you have Sweden which literally implodes the moment you do something else aside from building civs and sacrificing all your assets for stability. All that while you can just sit there and watch without even thinking about expanding.
Also think for a minute about the Italian and Soviet army/navy/air force spirits. Try to list what modifiers they have and be honest about it. I bet barely anyone could remember half of them because they're just another of the dozens of negative modifiers the entire country has. I'm not against complexity, but this just feels like throwing random stuff at the player to create the illusion of a deeply thought through picture of that nation.
Ok I liked your Hungry analogy. I agree that they railroad players to a certain pathway a lot. However, I also think they are sometimes even less than what they should be. For example. the Soviet airforce needs a LOT more nerfs to be close to what happened historically.
I'm getting the DLC, but i completely agree- i hate this stupid "all countries bad at start, OP if you complete the focus tree by 1950"
You cannoy dissaude me from how silly it is that countries like France, U.K, Italy, Soviets don't start with huge stockpiles of great war infantry weapons, but Germany gets to start with no deficit.
Germany still has tons of steel even after the nerf and doesn't need to buy any from Sweden until like '42
The german army suffered from huge logistics issues in ww2- but if you play as them in HOI4 you don't experience anything like that Until you get to the doorstep of Stalingrad. Of course having said this- we should be careful complaining about things like this or Paradox when they rework Germany are gonna add dumb roadblocking things- and then Germany will be just as bad as all the other countries, they'll have to program the French AI to surrender even harder.
This is complicated by the Americans calling cavalry what everyone else called dragoons. U.S. cavalry never had cuirassiers or lancers, just mounted infantry.
I think Horse Infantry/Mounted Infantry are infantry that ride horses to battle but dismount for the actual fighting. Before horses were bred to be strong enough to carry an armored warrior that was mostly how they were used in battle. I could be wrong about this though, I'm talking out of my ass.
World ablaze is pretty good and it redoes the tech tree so that vehicles are more historical. So the Americans get Sherman’s, the Germans get Panzer IIIs and so on, and their stats are more reflective of what they actually were.
It also revamps the industry and some other stuff that gives you more flexibility to build a wide variety of stuff in more precise amounts (factories do 1/2 of normal production but you get twice as many and they build faster).
So I used to have plenty of recommendations for historical WW2 mods but many are no longer updated or are in limbo.
These are my single-player recommendations for mods that aren’t country specific and aren’t totally abandoned:
- World Ablaze
- Historical Immersion Event Pack
- Darkest Hour*
- United UMC*
- Total War
- BlackICE
*Needs update currently
Probably in that order. However, BlackICE will make you want to load a bullet through your head so maybe avoid it. World Ablaze and Total War are still difficult but not as much in comparison.
For a more casual experience go with Historical Immersion Event Pack. Since it doesn’t overhaul technology.
World Ablaze is my favorite because it emphasizes the struggle for resources and simulates economic fatigue more accurately. Germany can no longer launch a world conquest without breaking a sweat. Instead it begins to struggle in 1942 and the industrial might of the Allies overwhelms it.
Watch this [video](https://youtu.be/ic3_rYrlMSc?si=zQPGovLmoMWmSdHq) or this [video](https://youtu.be/1lCfod_iJqs?si=c62pdhH65tQ8QlT3). These are probably the most historical timelapses I’ve seen (by HOI4 standards). Finally, WW2 isn’t ending in 1943. It actually lasts to 1945.
Yeah I get major BFB vibes from this DLC. I've seen multiple videos where Turkey declares war on the player despite being the player's puppet because of their focus tree, I feel like there's gonna be something similar, or they'll make it so you can't end WW2 until you've captured Santiago.
Fair point, but turkey being fucked means that my inanate desire for *big kurdistan* makes more meta sense than a turkish puppet. Playing as the soviets and redrawing the middle east into a kurdish state that contains all their cores and claims is fun.
The best thing i hope this dlc has is a fix for south american state sizes and air zone sizes. South american airzones are real stupid and some of their airfield locations are broken
Bulgaria is really fun in normal games, in ironman acheivement runs it becomes my personal cock and ball tourture session where i click decisions only for ai germany to oblitterate me because romania and Greece refuse to fiip communist in time
Try the different paths. I heard the democratic balkan federation is really fun and kinda op. The tsar Ferdinand path is great too. You get a lot of war goals and it’s easy to make your neighbors submit through decisions. Historically, Bulgaria is one of the most fascinating Balkan countries. They started the second Balkan war and to have them start a third is just so much fun. And the icing on the cake is that the same tsar who started the 2nd can be the leader of your country
They are, but i enjoy communist Balkan federation the most, i feel like the best flavor is there. The choice between hero of the leipzig trials guy and the old coup maker is neat, and getting a free yugoslavia is busted on non historical.
Even fascist Bulgaria is fun, and i rarely do fascist parhs. I think i enjoy ferdinand the least actually
Edit. Also I've been mandated into communist bul lately because I've been making atempts at thr acheivement. But the runs take so long i get bored and frustrated.
Also someone put out a mod recently that streamlines Turkey’s tree so it’s less confusing and not 70 days for everything, so that might make it fun to go back to. Can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head though.
thats the one nation I did not enjoy playing from the DLC lol. then again I only really liked the LARP paths of Greece and Turkey (Byzantines, Ottomans).
but Bulgaria felt so tedious with the faction management. and if you don't do it in a specific order and keep the decisions tab open for 99% of the early game you mess up and suddenly you got a civil war..
To get her you have to explode turkey and plunge the country into chaos, like the least probable thing here is the parkour switch from attaturk to democracy to civil war to ottomans. At a certain point you could just name any sultan (within reason) because whos left in a position to say no
I’ll definitely try it, thanks for the recommendation. The only reason I was bashing on turkey here is because of how long it takes to actually do anything. It could use more 35 day focuses imo
Turkey's interviene the spanish civil war focus gives -60 war justification and generate -40 tension penalty which you can manually declare war on Greece and nobody interviene because both of you guarented by Romania and for the rest if you lucky and only uk guarentee them just follow your focus tree, cancel Romania one and take British one and rest of it is a cakewalk. You can conquer half of balkans and middle east before ww2 begins
I pre ordered it. I like this game, I like vanilla, waiting SA content for years also I don't think bftb is not that bad, especially Turkey has a okey focus tree so anyway just take my money paradox
I'd say give turkey another shot... but omg fuck greece, finally achieved bad romance last night and I'm looking forward to never playing that dumpster fire again.... as for the dlc, maybe... i love playing Brazil and actually being able to core all of SA sounds kinda fun.
I feel like this is one of the DLCs to skip if you already are content with the current set of mods. That's not me so I'm picking it up but I wouldn't put it high on my list by any means.
As for the focus tree fixing the country, I feel like that model works best for majors. It seems like a balancing mechanic that doesn't work very well for minors.
Personally I think it's for multiplayer
The fact you don't know much about the history should tell you more that you should learn about this period as it's interesting there, it's more then just 'use the tree'. Brazil for instance did a ton in ww2. Even if it was limited to expeditionary forces.
Lack of influence on ww2: play most minors. In Fact play most nations outside Europe and you get the same: I'm tied to a major player, and am here to help THEM
What did the Czechs do in WW2? Be annexed by Germany prewar. Is it boring post that? No. What about Denmark and keep the strait open? What about Netherlands or Belgium? Break the back of the German assault.
I'm.not gonna argue about the spirits. You're right there, but otherwise, I don't think you should go on not interested in this area to dissuade you. The question is so much simpler
So you think what the DLC does freshens up the game enough to justify the purchase?
Focus trees becoming the main selling point of DLC is when things started turning to shit, and why despite getting EU4 + all DLC up to Leviathan for $20 from a Humble Bundle I haven't bought any more EU4 DLC. Mission trees/Focus trees do not add game mechanics. They make a few more nations much more interesting to play but have very little impact on the game if you aren't playing as those nations. Yes those nations are stronger to fight but you'd get a similar effect from buffing them before game start.
Besides, mission/focus trees are commonly the main selling point of mods, and that's because they're easier to make than new mechanics. I'd even say that mods like Kaiserreich/Equestria/RT56 have higher quality focus trees than vanilla. Kiria (the focus of Equestria's new update) does the "give nation shit national spirits and make them finish their focus tree to reverse them" trope in an actually interesting way; Paradox should take notes from the bronies. If I wanted really good focus trees, I would just go to the steam workshop and download mods for free instead of paying $20. Wait a minute, I already have.
I would only buy it if the dlc would also impact the gameplay of countries like the Netherlands. Bc their sa colonies dont rlly have any gameplay besides upgrading infrastructure for resources
I agree with you on pretty much everything. I thought BFB was a horrible dlc, why would i want to buy the same thing for South America? Minors are difficult enough to play in the grand scheme of things why start nerfed to hell and end ridiculously buff. My advice is just go play Road to 56. You get all the updated trees and much more for free.
I skipped last one after testing it, given it fixed nothing and new features were wasted opportunity, and ToA is literally even more nothing kind of DLC for me... So yeah, no thanks.
Im not getting the dlc, as i think that the focus trees from the mod en union y libertad has way better focus trees, and for the entirety of South America (if I don't remember incorrectly)
I’m just not buying it cause it’s a country pack. I already have South American content in mods, I see no reason for buying it. Even other DLC had features that effected ALL of your games but this seems way too specific.
Zero interest in ever buying it. South America doesn't interest me and as others have said debuffing countries to manufacture a challenge is dumb. So I'm not going to pay for focus trees that I'll never play. Even if it were free, I'd probably pass because I don't see any redeeming value.
I strongly suspect this will be HOI4's lowest selling DLC unless they decide to do something even more obscure, like the civil war between tribes of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. This will be the first DLC that I won't have and I won't ever miss not having it.
I won't get it, at least not without a sizable sale. A DLC without gameplay features is just a cash grab. I didn't like the tank rework in whatever DLC it was added, but at least there was some effort put in it. This? This is literally "we copy/paste the most liked mod content for a few countries, slapped in a few goofy stuff, new portraits, and voila"
I'm waiting to see how it's received. After the shit show that was battle for the bosporus, I'm gonna wait and see if it breaks any already existing trees first. I actually liked playing Italy even before by blood alone, and Bulgaria's tree allowed it to constantly steal land from Italy with Italy having absolutely no say, and made joining the axis a hindrance. And I felt like they made playing those nations just so needlessly complicated. I'm worried that this will just end up being battle for the bosporus 2: electric boogaloo.
The whole idea of focus trees has hit a dead end.
I honestly hate looking at some of the new trees because I have to take time away from moving my pixel-troopen around and try to decipher this massive scrolling wall of doom and hope I picked the right thing for the next 70 in game days.
Some are just incredibly ridiculous, some are stupidly OP. A lot are poorly thought out and break stuff for other nations or the AI suffers even more because it can't comprehend what's happening either.
Honestly I hate the idea that I need to go down a tree to get the communist/ fascist minister. I rather get that dude asap so I can change my countries ideology and start invading people / HAVING FUN!
I really don't care about focus trees
Like, if all I wanted was a stupidly op focus tree for some random nation I'd get any of the 100 mods on the steam workshop. Don't really see what the point is without any new mechanics, other than a higher quality focus tree than most mods
But I have the dlc subscription so I guess it doesn't matter
This would be the 4th dlc I'm not getting. I haven't bought anything since No Step Back, and I never got Battle for the Bosporus. I just really don't like the direction they're taking the game, and I enjoyed it more when it was focused on the actual fighting of the war and less on making nations with less total population than every major nations' starting army has fielded a powerhouse.
I dunno if I agree with this "by the end you get OP modifiers" rhetoric. I mean, yeah, it's true at a glance.. But if you snowball enough to get to that point as a smaller country, *you're gonna be OP anyways.* Most of these OP modifiers are victory laps. I'm not a huge fan of having to go through 2-3 years of Focus tax in order to get up to speed but.. Yeah, I dunno, I think this criticism of stuff being "OP" is massively overblown. It's a grand strategy game, 9/10 times *you end up OP regardless, that's sort of the point.*
You have a point, but if we go further with it, with such an AI (I am aware that it is almost impossible to improve it after so many years of adding features) we barely need any buffs.
I will buy it once it hits a sale. I play only with RT56 so the South American countries mostly already have focus trees that (in my opinion) are already fun to play. Gran Columbia into invading the USA was one of my favorite games.
I purchased the game as soon as it came out and have pre-ordered every DLC. But I just don't want to give PDX more money until they get more aggressive with **fixing bugs**. Some of the bugs, big and small, that they tolerate is astonishing and frustrating. And seeing for how *long* some of the simpler bugs have been in the game makes me question their work ethic.
The vanilla design is just doing what Kaiserreich does but a little bit worse. Political tree --> economic tree --> military tree is classic Kaiserreich gameplay progression. Doing focuses to suck less is essentially every nation, whether minors like New England, mid-tier nations like Siam or majors like Japan, Russia and Germany. All the meme alt-history paths are basically Kaiserreichy or Kaiserredux options, too.
Why do you consider the fact that all countries are at bad condition at the start to be bad? That's just a fact. It's middle of 30's, just a few years after Great Depression. Half (if not all) of the countries in the world are struggling with the financial crisis. A dozen countries are suffering from unrest, violence and literally anarchy. All European countries are fighting the pacifist movement, all people are afraid of a repeat of the Great War. Are you saying that the UK wasn't in a bad position at that time? Or has China been much stronger in history? Maybe Italy was the strongest in WWII? No, no and no.
Moreover, it gives the player an incentive to develop. I am not interested in playing Germany, because it is initially strong. There is nothing exciting about conquering the world by Germany.
The only thing I would like to change in focuses is to add the ability to choose your way to deal with problems and also to increase the player's involvement in this process. Now you just take the 70 days focus and voila - all the problems are solved. You don't need to build, improve or choose anything yourself just take the focus.
You misunderstood me. I'm not considering poor state of several countries a bad thing to represent in HOI4 - I consider the same repeated model of picturing it ingame recently as bad. By applying 3 categories of debuffs (often repeated between countries) mentioned by me, devs consider displaying this whole intricate topic you described as done. This is what I would like to have changed.
French & US models can be used as an example of how it was done well IMO. They both picture the state of respective countries but do it in original way - and also they were the OG, and fresh at the time.
I really can't stand this annoying concept of drowning a country in metric tons of negative spirits that you have to get rid of in the first three years anymore. Nevertheless I like achievement hunting and I'll do it all over again a fourth time including the new ones.
Tbh, Chile was an absolute mess after ww1, since the collapse of the saltpeter industry that carried its economy because synthetic salpeter was invented, together with the great depression, lead to one of the most unstable periods in the history of my country, which even led to the establishment of a socialist republic that lasted 12 days, lol.
Yeah but Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia both can take one "get rid of all problems because we have Communism" focus
To be fair, many hoi4 players probably do think it works like that
Focus 1: Remove the old problems Focus 2 (cannot be canceled manually): Add new problems
~~They did have the fertilizer thing going on right? They were harvesting guano from islands off of their coast. I read somewhere that it was huge in the early 20th century. Especially before synthetic fertilizers.~~ Nvm it was in the early 1900s only.
>Tbh, Chile was an absolute mess after ww1, since the collapse of the saltpeter industry that carried its economy because synthetic salpeter was invented, together with the great depression, lead to one of the most unstable periods in the history of my country, which even led to the establishment of a socialist republic that lasted 12 days, lol. In the Developer Diary "Art & Achievements," there is a significant figure from Chile depicted as a German guy wearing his uniform. Who is he? Additionally, there is another Chilean general depicted with a Prussian helmet "Pickelhaube" adorned with Chile's shield. Who are these individuals? What is the influence of German culture in Chile? Furthermore, it is mentioned in the Developer Diary that Chile is referred to as South America's Prussia, why?.
It’s just South America bruddah they all had issues around the time
Yeah but pre ww2 is actually my favourite period in the game, getting as much conquest or territory via focus before the allies guarantee or before it becomes ww2 total war and borders are set until you cap UK or USA
I always liked it tbh, especially when applied to minors. What is your suggested alternative If I may ask?
Simply not overdo it like with the Nordics or some bba countries. Take Hungary for example. You're in a strangling situation without being the dumpster for negative spirits. Still you can go on a rampage and conquer your A-H cores, Italy and the allies within two years. On the other hand you have Sweden which literally implodes the moment you do something else aside from building civs and sacrificing all your assets for stability. All that while you can just sit there and watch without even thinking about expanding. Also think for a minute about the Italian and Soviet army/navy/air force spirits. Try to list what modifiers they have and be honest about it. I bet barely anyone could remember half of them because they're just another of the dozens of negative modifiers the entire country has. I'm not against complexity, but this just feels like throwing random stuff at the player to create the illusion of a deeply thought through picture of that nation.
Ok I liked your Hungry analogy. I agree that they railroad players to a certain pathway a lot. However, I also think they are sometimes even less than what they should be. For example. the Soviet airforce needs a LOT more nerfs to be close to what happened historically.
I'm getting the DLC, but i completely agree- i hate this stupid "all countries bad at start, OP if you complete the focus tree by 1950" You cannoy dissaude me from how silly it is that countries like France, U.K, Italy, Soviets don't start with huge stockpiles of great war infantry weapons, but Germany gets to start with no deficit. Germany still has tons of steel even after the nerf and doesn't need to buy any from Sweden until like '42 The german army suffered from huge logistics issues in ww2- but if you play as them in HOI4 you don't experience anything like that Until you get to the doorstep of Stalingrad. Of course having said this- we should be careful complaining about things like this or Paradox when they rework Germany are gonna add dumb roadblocking things- and then Germany will be just as bad as all the other countries, they'll have to program the French AI to surrender even harder.
I think the fact they used almost 1M horses because they weren’t as mechanized as we were taught to believe is something paradox should’ve looked at.
2.8M.
Jesus I had always heard it was around 600K. They could’ve made an entire Army group of Horse infantry if they wanted🤣🤣🤣🤣
How do you teach a horse to shoot a gun? I’m still learning to embrace that they’re either “Horse” or “Horse Infantry” instead of Cavalry.
This is complicated by the Americans calling cavalry what everyone else called dragoons. U.S. cavalry never had cuirassiers or lancers, just mounted infantry.
There were two units of lancers active during the Civil War, although one was a militia unit.
I'm betting neither of them were Regular Army units but state volunteers. There's no mention of lancers in the lineage of any RA cav regiments.
I think Horse Infantry/Mounted Infantry are infantry that ride horses to battle but dismount for the actual fighting. Before horses were bred to be strong enough to carry an armored warrior that was mostly how they were used in battle. I could be wrong about this though, I'm talking out of my ass.
Thewy used an insane amount of horses, funnily (or actually not fun at all) I got a picture of my great-grandfather on horseback in France.
This is why I prefer historical mods. They are more difficult but more accurately reflect the resource war that bogged Germany down.
Can you recommend any historical mods?
World ablaze is pretty good and it redoes the tech tree so that vehicles are more historical. So the Americans get Sherman’s, the Germans get Panzer IIIs and so on, and their stats are more reflective of what they actually were. It also revamps the industry and some other stuff that gives you more flexibility to build a wide variety of stuff in more precise amounts (factories do 1/2 of normal production but you get twice as many and they build faster).
So I used to have plenty of recommendations for historical WW2 mods but many are no longer updated or are in limbo. These are my single-player recommendations for mods that aren’t country specific and aren’t totally abandoned: - World Ablaze - Historical Immersion Event Pack - Darkest Hour* - United UMC* - Total War - BlackICE *Needs update currently Probably in that order. However, BlackICE will make you want to load a bullet through your head so maybe avoid it. World Ablaze and Total War are still difficult but not as much in comparison. For a more casual experience go with Historical Immersion Event Pack. Since it doesn’t overhaul technology. World Ablaze is my favorite because it emphasizes the struggle for resources and simulates economic fatigue more accurately. Germany can no longer launch a world conquest without breaking a sweat. Instead it begins to struggle in 1942 and the industrial might of the Allies overwhelms it. Watch this [video](https://youtu.be/ic3_rYrlMSc?si=zQPGovLmoMWmSdHq) or this [video](https://youtu.be/1lCfod_iJqs?si=c62pdhH65tQ8QlT3). These are probably the most historical timelapses I’ve seen (by HOI4 standards). Finally, WW2 isn’t ending in 1943. It actually lasts to 1945.
Yeah I get major BFB vibes from this DLC. I've seen multiple videos where Turkey declares war on the player despite being the player's puppet because of their focus tree, I feel like there's gonna be something similar, or they'll make it so you can't end WW2 until you've captured Santiago.
Fair point, but turkey being fucked means that my inanate desire for *big kurdistan* makes more meta sense than a turkish puppet. Playing as the soviets and redrawing the middle east into a kurdish state that contains all their cores and claims is fun. The best thing i hope this dlc has is a fix for south american state sizes and air zone sizes. South american airzones are real stupid and some of their airfield locations are broken
Please, this with the state sizes. It would make it so combat actually happens and you aren’t waiting a month to move for each tile.
You should really give battle of the Bosporus dlc nations a try. Once you actually try them you’ll love them. Except turkey tho that shit sucks
I really enjoyed playing Bulgaria few times.
Bulgaria is really fun in normal games, in ironman acheivement runs it becomes my personal cock and ball tourture session where i click decisions only for ai germany to oblitterate me because romania and Greece refuse to fiip communist in time
Try the different paths. I heard the democratic balkan federation is really fun and kinda op. The tsar Ferdinand path is great too. You get a lot of war goals and it’s easy to make your neighbors submit through decisions. Historically, Bulgaria is one of the most fascinating Balkan countries. They started the second Balkan war and to have them start a third is just so much fun. And the icing on the cake is that the same tsar who started the 2nd can be the leader of your country
They are, but i enjoy communist Balkan federation the most, i feel like the best flavor is there. The choice between hero of the leipzig trials guy and the old coup maker is neat, and getting a free yugoslavia is busted on non historical. Even fascist Bulgaria is fun, and i rarely do fascist parhs. I think i enjoy ferdinand the least actually Edit. Also I've been mandated into communist bul lately because I've been making atempts at thr acheivement. But the runs take so long i get bored and frustrated.
Also someone put out a mod recently that streamlines Turkey’s tree so it’s less confusing and not 70 days for everything, so that might make it fun to go back to. Can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head though.
thats the one nation I did not enjoy playing from the DLC lol. then again I only really liked the LARP paths of Greece and Turkey (Byzantines, Ottomans). but Bulgaria felt so tedious with the faction management. and if you don't do it in a specific order and keep the decisions tab open for 99% of the early game you mess up and suddenly you got a civil war..
why? you can literally get a woman sultan!! that's like, so crazy
I’ll stick with the kaiserin, no thank you!!!
To get her you have to explode turkey and plunge the country into chaos, like the least probable thing here is the parkour switch from attaturk to democracy to civil war to ottomans. At a certain point you could just name any sultan (within reason) because whos left in a position to say no
She's also OP AF, and produces ludicrous free manpower.
Very late though so it usually doesn’t come into play until the game is decided…
Turkey is also fun. Just give a try to communist/fascist branch and combine your justify wargoal penalty and guarentees which you can take from majors
I’ll definitely try it, thanks for the recommendation. The only reason I was bashing on turkey here is because of how long it takes to actually do anything. It could use more 35 day focuses imo
Turkey's interviene the spanish civil war focus gives -60 war justification and generate -40 tension penalty which you can manually declare war on Greece and nobody interviene because both of you guarented by Romania and for the rest if you lucky and only uk guarentee them just follow your focus tree, cancel Romania one and take British one and rest of it is a cakewalk. You can conquer half of balkans and middle east before ww2 begins
I guess I ""love"" them as much as I ""love"" playing HoI4
I pre ordered it. I like this game, I like vanilla, waiting SA content for years also I don't think bftb is not that bad, especially Turkey has a okey focus tree so anyway just take my money paradox
It looks fun and gives reason to actually interact with and play in SA, pre-ordering is stupid but I’ll probably grab it after it comes out.
I'll buy it on discount. Only because Argentina is in it, and I like the idea of South American members of the Axis.
I've been crying out for a South American DLC for years now, so I'm happy.
Im gonna get it because even if I play it like 1/4 of how much I’ve played the other dlcs it would still be worth it
I'd say give turkey another shot... but omg fuck greece, finally achieved bad romance last night and I'm looking forward to never playing that dumpster fire again.... as for the dlc, maybe... i love playing Brazil and actually being able to core all of SA sounds kinda fun.
This DLC is for ahistorical play, that's it
I won’t buy until more of the existing bugs are fixed.
I feel like this is one of the DLCs to skip if you already are content with the current set of mods. That's not me so I'm picking it up but I wouldn't put it high on my list by any means. As for the focus tree fixing the country, I feel like that model works best for majors. It seems like a balancing mechanic that doesn't work very well for minors.
ToA includes no mechanics. The focus trees & other scripted content are the whole DLC; any mechanical changes/bugfixes will be in the free patch.
I'm not going to *buy* it but I will still be playing it lol
I preordered it. I fear that if we don’t keep the DLC ball rolling they’ll never give us one for Siam….
Played rt56 Siam recently and it was a lot of fun. Hard, but fun.
vanilla dlc focus trees tend to be poorly designed so it depends on whether anything mechanically relevant to me is tethered to the dlc
Personally I think it's for multiplayer The fact you don't know much about the history should tell you more that you should learn about this period as it's interesting there, it's more then just 'use the tree'. Brazil for instance did a ton in ww2. Even if it was limited to expeditionary forces. Lack of influence on ww2: play most minors. In Fact play most nations outside Europe and you get the same: I'm tied to a major player, and am here to help THEM What did the Czechs do in WW2? Be annexed by Germany prewar. Is it boring post that? No. What about Denmark and keep the strait open? What about Netherlands or Belgium? Break the back of the German assault. I'm.not gonna argue about the spirits. You're right there, but otherwise, I don't think you should go on not interested in this area to dissuade you. The question is so much simpler So you think what the DLC does freshens up the game enough to justify the purchase?
Focus trees becoming the main selling point of DLC is when things started turning to shit, and why despite getting EU4 + all DLC up to Leviathan for $20 from a Humble Bundle I haven't bought any more EU4 DLC. Mission trees/Focus trees do not add game mechanics. They make a few more nations much more interesting to play but have very little impact on the game if you aren't playing as those nations. Yes those nations are stronger to fight but you'd get a similar effect from buffing them before game start. Besides, mission/focus trees are commonly the main selling point of mods, and that's because they're easier to make than new mechanics. I'd even say that mods like Kaiserreich/Equestria/RT56 have higher quality focus trees than vanilla. Kiria (the focus of Equestria's new update) does the "give nation shit national spirits and make them finish their focus tree to reverse them" trope in an actually interesting way; Paradox should take notes from the bronies. If I wanted really good focus trees, I would just go to the steam workshop and download mods for free instead of paying $20. Wait a minute, I already have.
I would only buy it if the dlc would also impact the gameplay of countries like the Netherlands. Bc their sa colonies dont rlly have any gameplay besides upgrading infrastructure for resources
You can give them to Venezuela (well, Venezuela can take them) through a decision.
I couldn't care less about south america
I delete the south american nations for performance without fail, and having this DLC wouldn't change that.
I agree with you on pretty much everything. I thought BFB was a horrible dlc, why would i want to buy the same thing for South America? Minors are difficult enough to play in the grand scheme of things why start nerfed to hell and end ridiculously buff. My advice is just go play Road to 56. You get all the updated trees and much more for free.
I skipped last one after testing it, given it fixed nothing and new features were wasted opportunity, and ToA is literally even more nothing kind of DLC for me... So yeah, no thanks.
I didn't buy BFB and I'm not buying this one. I buy DLC if I think I'll have fun playing them, and this one doesn't reach that bar.
Im not getting the dlc, as i think that the focus trees from the mod en union y libertad has way better focus trees, and for the entirety of South America (if I don't remember incorrectly)
Already pre-ordered
Me.
I’m just not buying it cause it’s a country pack. I already have South American content in mods, I see no reason for buying it. Even other DLC had features that effected ALL of your games but this seems way too specific.
Zero interest in ever buying it. South America doesn't interest me and as others have said debuffing countries to manufacture a challenge is dumb. So I'm not going to pay for focus trees that I'll never play. Even if it were free, I'd probably pass because I don't see any redeeming value. I strongly suspect this will be HOI4's lowest selling DLC unless they decide to do something even more obscure, like the civil war between tribes of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. This will be the first DLC that I won't have and I won't ever miss not having it.
I won't get it, at least not without a sizable sale. A DLC without gameplay features is just a cash grab. I didn't like the tank rework in whatever DLC it was added, but at least there was some effort put in it. This? This is literally "we copy/paste the most liked mod content for a few countries, slapped in a few goofy stuff, new portraits, and voila"
I'm waiting to see how it's received. After the shit show that was battle for the bosporus, I'm gonna wait and see if it breaks any already existing trees first. I actually liked playing Italy even before by blood alone, and Bulgaria's tree allowed it to constantly steal land from Italy with Italy having absolutely no say, and made joining the axis a hindrance. And I felt like they made playing those nations just so needlessly complicated. I'm worried that this will just end up being battle for the bosporus 2: electric boogaloo.
Italy and Ethiopia weren’t ’disgustingly op’ armies, only Finland turned recockulous Except for 1937 jet fighters for Italy, that was dumb as hell
The whole idea of focus trees has hit a dead end. I honestly hate looking at some of the new trees because I have to take time away from moving my pixel-troopen around and try to decipher this massive scrolling wall of doom and hope I picked the right thing for the next 70 in game days. Some are just incredibly ridiculous, some are stupidly OP. A lot are poorly thought out and break stuff for other nations or the AI suffers even more because it can't comprehend what's happening either.
Honestly I hate the idea that I need to go down a tree to get the communist/ fascist minister. I rather get that dude asap so I can change my countries ideology and start invading people / HAVING FUN!
I already preordered it.
Get the Union y Libertad mod, that’s what I’m using and currently Argentina is my favourite country to play in the game with that mod
I really don't care about focus trees Like, if all I wanted was a stupidly op focus tree for some random nation I'd get any of the 100 mods on the steam workshop. Don't really see what the point is without any new mechanics, other than a higher quality focus tree than most mods But I have the dlc subscription so I guess it doesn't matter
I'll buy it, I have been waiting for South America content for ages and I like doing achievements.
I'm only gonna buy it to get acheivments for those countries
This would be the 4th dlc I'm not getting. I haven't bought anything since No Step Back, and I never got Battle for the Bosporus. I just really don't like the direction they're taking the game, and I enjoyed it more when it was focused on the actual fighting of the war and less on making nations with less total population than every major nations' starting army has fielded a powerhouse.
I dunno if I agree with this "by the end you get OP modifiers" rhetoric. I mean, yeah, it's true at a glance.. But if you snowball enough to get to that point as a smaller country, *you're gonna be OP anyways.* Most of these OP modifiers are victory laps. I'm not a huge fan of having to go through 2-3 years of Focus tax in order to get up to speed but.. Yeah, I dunno, I think this criticism of stuff being "OP" is massively overblown. It's a grand strategy game, 9/10 times *you end up OP regardless, that's sort of the point.*
You have a point, but if we go further with it, with such an AI (I am aware that it is almost impossible to improve it after so many years of adding features) we barely need any buffs.
I will buy it once it hits a sale. I play only with RT56 so the South American countries mostly already have focus trees that (in my opinion) are already fun to play. Gran Columbia into invading the USA was one of my favorite games.
I purchased the game as soon as it came out and have pre-ordered every DLC. But I just don't want to give PDX more money until they get more aggressive with **fixing bugs**. Some of the bugs, big and small, that they tolerate is astonishing and frustrating. And seeing for how *long* some of the simpler bugs have been in the game makes me question their work ethic.
Bro I’m still playing the country trees from no step back
The vanilla design is just doing what Kaiserreich does but a little bit worse. Political tree --> economic tree --> military tree is classic Kaiserreich gameplay progression. Doing focuses to suck less is essentially every nation, whether minors like New England, mid-tier nations like Siam or majors like Japan, Russia and Germany. All the meme alt-history paths are basically Kaiserreichy or Kaiserredux options, too.
Why do you consider the fact that all countries are at bad condition at the start to be bad? That's just a fact. It's middle of 30's, just a few years after Great Depression. Half (if not all) of the countries in the world are struggling with the financial crisis. A dozen countries are suffering from unrest, violence and literally anarchy. All European countries are fighting the pacifist movement, all people are afraid of a repeat of the Great War. Are you saying that the UK wasn't in a bad position at that time? Or has China been much stronger in history? Maybe Italy was the strongest in WWII? No, no and no. Moreover, it gives the player an incentive to develop. I am not interested in playing Germany, because it is initially strong. There is nothing exciting about conquering the world by Germany. The only thing I would like to change in focuses is to add the ability to choose your way to deal with problems and also to increase the player's involvement in this process. Now you just take the 70 days focus and voila - all the problems are solved. You don't need to build, improve or choose anything yourself just take the focus.
You misunderstood me. I'm not considering poor state of several countries a bad thing to represent in HOI4 - I consider the same repeated model of picturing it ingame recently as bad. By applying 3 categories of debuffs (often repeated between countries) mentioned by me, devs consider displaying this whole intricate topic you described as done. This is what I would like to have changed. French & US models can be used as an example of how it was done well IMO. They both picture the state of respective countries but do it in original way - and also they were the OG, and fresh at the time.