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True. @Bullfilter's Turkey remains the most grim and miserable dystopia on the board by quite some way.

Er...your own AAR has the US constantly undergoing financial meltdown, every moderate or reformer dead or disgraced and the world stuck in 1937 forever.:confused:

Worse than a world-straddling Fascist conglomerate? :confused: S.I.T.H. aside, I’m not sure they’re that much worse than Tiso & Tuka!

SITH could be worse if the being running it genuinely was entirely focused on hurting people. The things the east german secret police manged to do with absolute power and no oversight...

Likewise, Turkey could be waaay worse too but thanks to forum rules and paradox gameplay, they're fairly benevolent autocrats...and in that universe the Germans, Japanese and even British are way worse.

PS: But if the dubious accolade of 'most grim and miserable dystopia' is up for grabs at the next YAYAs, then TT will take any votes on offer :D

I would like to remind everyone that the CKII and EUIV forums exist, the former relies upon horrific familial depravation as a game mechanic and the latter requires any and all up and coming powers to colonise the world and enslave millions of people, and both encourage holy war, outrageous discrimination and bloodlust that would be difficult to pull off in HOI without nuking the world, because those games last for centuries.:eek:

Need I remind you that just in my own limited work, I managed to depopulate large swathes of Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East because one man decided he was God's Chosen and attempted to wipe Islam off the face of the Earth. Using nothing but early medieval tech.

In one lifetime.

Seriously, these games are dark creatures if you stop to think about any of the AARs on the board.

In any case, such a world is vastly preferable to the Axis hegemony we see evolving here. Hitler and Mussolini, but competent?? I shudder to imagine...

It's difficult to say how a dictator of Germany in that time period could have done much better than Hitler really, except for the obvious don't commit genocide and believe in magic stuff, given the shockingly bad hand the country had. Absolute power is one thing but any leader would have had to contend with the realisation that either they were going to to conquer all of europe, die trying or be obliterated by the soviet union within two decades. Germany didn't really have many options.

Mind you, they still picked most of the worst choices in otl so competent leaders could help a bit. Economy is still going to collapse though.
 
It's difficult to say how a dictator of Germany in that time period could have done much better than Hitler really, except for the obvious don't commit genocide and believe in magic stuff, given the shockingly bad hand the country had. Absolute power is one thing but any leader would have had to contend with the realisation that either they were going to to conquer all of europe, die trying or be obliterated by the soviet union within two decades. Germany didn't really have many options.

Mind you, they still picked most of the worst choices in otl so competent leaders could help a bit. Economy is still going to collapse though.

By "competent" I'm really thinking more about the fact that, due to being run by a skilled human with way too many computers at his disposal, the Axis will likely establish proper world domination rather than being crushed by the Allies and Comintern as in OTL. There may be an economic collapse on the horizon, but even so I fear the consequences of Hitler et al being in charge of the whole world, particularly in those terms best discussed in other forums...
 
By "competent" I'm really thinking more about the fact that, due to being run by a skilled human with way too many computers at his disposal, the Axis will likely establish proper world domination rather than being crushed by the Allies and Comintern as in OTL. There may be an economic collapse on the horizon, but even so I fear the consequences of Hitler et al being in charge of the whole world, particularly in those terms best discussed in other forums...

At least we can find comfort in knowing it never could have happened really.
 
Some excellent arguments about what is more dystopic, but none on what makes a place slate-grey miserable while also being dystopic (which to my mind is worse). Probably belongs in it's own thread so I won't derail this further, except to say;
Er...your own AAR has the US constantly undergoing financial meltdown, every moderate or reformer dead or disgraced and the world stuck in 1937 forever.:confused:
This may be heresy, but there is quite a lot more to the world than the United States.
Z3wSg01.gif



Back on topic I saw this and had to reply
I've got to see about getting another computer set up and running so I can actually run the game so that it's not completely a glorious string of Axis victories.
Once again I tip my hat to you and stand agog at the effort you are putting into this. Quite aside from the amazing art and photo finding the shear logistics of running the game continue to amaze me. Good work indeed.
 
This may be heresy, but there is quite a lot more to the world than the United States.
But on the other hand, there is quite a lot more to history than 1937. :p
 
This may be heresy, but there is quite a lot more to the world than the United States.
Z3wSg01.gif

There's also war-torn spain, shitty Italy and occasionally the Commonwealth.
 
There's also war-torn spain, shitty Italy and occasionally the Commonwealth.
You are forgetting Zeppelins and Sea-Planes racing across the Atlantic to deliver teams to the World Cup. How anyone could consider that a dystopia I've no idea.
Z3wSg01.gif
 
You are forgetting Zeppelins and Sea-Planes racing across the Atlantic to deliver teams to the World Cup. How anyone could consider that a dystopia I've no idea.
Z3wSg01.gif

Of course it's a dystopia, it has airships. How can any true englishman not recognise that?
 
By "competent" I'm really thinking more about the fact that, due to being run by a skilled human with way too many computers at his disposal, the Axis will likely establish proper world domination rather than being crushed by the Allies and Comintern as in OTL. There may be an economic collapse on the horizon, but even so I fear the consequences of Hitler et al being in charge of the whole world, particularly in those terms best discussed in other forums...

At least we can find comfort in knowing it never could have happened really.

Some excellent arguments about what is more dystopic, but none on what makes a place slate-grey miserable while also being dystopic (which to my mind is worse). Probably belongs in it's own thread so I won't derail this further, except to say;

This may be heresy, but there is quite a lot more to the world than the United States.
Z3wSg01.gif

Hey now, I'm working on trying to get there to be some level of "crushing" and whatever. I'm even trying my best to remove some of the more over the top violations of what should be occurring (I just realized what Hess does for Germany... ugh. Stand by for a flight of his to go awry).

Back on topic I saw this and had to reply

Once again I tip my hat to you and stand agog at the effort you are putting into this. Quite aside from the amazing art and photo finding the shear logistics of running the game continue to amaze me. Good work indeed.

It's really quite fun, else I wouldn't do it. Had I had your insight (and significant amount of the reading that I've done since then) beforehand, I might have gone a tad different in the directions or introduced some of the difficulty factors earlier.

If I ever finish this set, I intend to run something of a similar effort from the US, and when things kick off "take charge" of some combatant nation's militaries so as to keep things like the Spanish Civil War going for a few years, and maybe some sort of level of stalemate in China, etc.

But on the other hand, there is quite a lot more to history than 1937. :p

Indeed. That's why I did 80 chapters covering 1936 first.
DYAEiOu.gif

There's also war-torn spain, shitty Italy and occasionally the Commonwealth.

You are forgetting Zeppelins and Sea-Planes racing across the Atlantic to deliver teams to the World Cup. How anyone could consider that a dystopia I've no idea.
Z3wSg01.gif

Of course it's a dystopia, it has airships. How can any true englishman not recognise that?

This whole parry and reposte has been excellent, and has got to be the most replies I've received in between posts ever.
 
Wait, this is an AAR? I thought this was a visual dictionary?
 
So the show is on the road now!

Indeed it is! Just a few more housekeeping posts about research (these sorts of posts might come along in dribs and drabs from here on out, nothing like the year-long sagas that they have been) and a last expansion post and then I'll be onto the real events!

Amazing effort you put in the AAR, very well done. It is always enjoyable to look at neatly organised and presented OOB graphics.

After all of the work I put into the Hungarian, Italian and Japanese OOBs, I'm kinda disappointed in my German one... the next one will look better, and cleaner. Promise.

Wait, this is an AAR? I thought this was a visual dictionary?

ARR you sure?

Comments like these make me ecstatic... and cause me to laugh. Now, I'm showing that this will be post 875, which means that if five more posts come, I'll have a top of page billing for my Germany R&D post!
 
Comments like these make me ecstatic... and cause me to laugh.

Not very helpful when you want a question answered but for pure joy related services, we oblige.
 
Not very helpful when you want a question answered but for pure joy related services, we oblige.

Well, for that I sincerely thank each and every one of you. Come on! just three more posts! This update is burning a hole in my pocket!
 
Well, for that I sincerely thank each and every one of you. Come on! just three more posts! This update is burning a hole in my pocket!
Wait till it gets to just 1 to go and the complex games theory around trying to engineer someone else accidentally posting at the top of the page.
DYAEiOu.gif
 
Well, for that I sincerely thank each and every one of you. Come on! just three more posts! This update is burning a hole in my pocket!
Clearly, the solution is to have the German science directorate develop heatproof pockets. :p
 
so this is the final post to take you to the beginning of the page or am I just screwing things up?