Let me preface this post by saying that I really do like NWO2 and think it’s, overall, a very fun mod and certainly far, far, better than anything I could ever dream of making. Like anything, however, it’s not perfect and one of its admittedly more minor faults bugged me very recently and I thought it worth mentioning. I hope I don’t come across as too sharp – this is a genuine attempt to provide constructive feedback.
That said, I recently decided to play a round as the Democratic Republic of Greece, a country I hadn’t picked up for the better part of a year. After playing for a few hours, I remember why I hadn’t played them for the better part of a year.
The thing is after the Greek Civil War is triggered you are presented with an event which allows you to seek support from either the USSR or Tito. I went historical and chose Tito. This gives you a rather large influx of divisions (about eight as I recall, half infantry and half militia), with which you can begin a serious offensive against the Hellenic Army.
There are a few problems with this. The first is that the game puts you on a time limit, with two to four divisions disappearing every few months. This means that you’re essentially on the clock to deliver victory in the civil war. Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily mind such a system – after all, any revolutionary army which fails to produce tangible results is bound to lose support the longer a conflict drags on. The problem is that these events will trigger regardless of the actual progress of the war. I had at one point pushed the Hellenic Army off almost the entirety of the mainland, forcing their army onto Corfu and into the two provinces of the Peloponnese. I controlled Athens and Thessaloniki and had controlled them for so long that their IC had been completely repaired. True, absolute victory had not been achieved, but I was hardly in a position where mass desertion of division-sized formations seems merited.
The other problem I have with this is that things feel highly deterministic at times. The civil war must start in 1946 when, in truth, it could have begun as early as 1945, if the Treaty of Varkiza had not been signed, or perhaps never if the events at Litochoro had not taken had not taken place. What’s weirder is that, though the war begins in early 1946, the player doesn’t receive his influx of troops from Tito or the USSR until mid-1947, meaning that your first year of war is really just you sitting a lot and maybe taking Kozani if you feel daring.
In truth, it seems to me that the political situation in Greece would be better represented by a system similar to that which Kaiserreich employs with Russia. The actions of a Greek player or AI could guide the fate of the country and steer it towards or away from a civil war. And if the civil war does begin events could better simulate the rise in popular dissent and partisan activity that occurred prior to the efforts to engage in conventional warfare undertaken by the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in the autumn of 1947, which is when the ground war becomes interesting in-game anyway.
I admit that this would be a lot of work for a very small part of the overall game. And, indeed, It’s not an immediate priority, nor is it something that needs to be fixed right this second. But it is something that would be nice to see at some point in the future. Anyway, for what its worth, those are my thoughts.
Also, on an unrelated side note to all of this, I’ve noticed weird glitch a few times where the Comintern dissolves completely and then reforms with the Democratic Republic of Greece in it, which accidentally causes World War III once Greece is admitted to NATO. This happened while I was playing as Greece and another time, in another game, where I was playing as Nationalist China. I’m not really sure what triggered it but it seemed bizarre enough to be worth mentioning.