Yesterday, I finished my first BBA game as Greece. I felt compelled to give a report here for two reasons: 1) I feel as if this could help the devs going forward 2) There weren't many things wrong with this game. For a starter, I played on historical, and the game did, somewhat, follow the historical track of events. It was finally satisfying to see an actual competent Soviet Union and having to race against the Soviets to reach some of the victory points. The end result of the game is below. This game was the most exciting and fun I've had in HoI4 in very long time, and that alone is enough for me to highly recommend BBA going forward. However, this DLC isn't without its issues. So, let's take a look at these issues:
1) AI - As always the AI was good, and bad. For the good, the AI seems to know how to handle encirclements better, as when the Italian Social Republic capitulated and left an Italia-pox across the Balkans, the Allies got to "cleaning" it very quickly (almost instantly). The Soviet AI seems to also to have improved a bit, but I haven't played enough games to have a more solid view of the new AI, so this could be an anomaly. For the bad, the AI seems to never really press its advantage. After I got my army encircled (we didn't make to Thermopylae quick enough) and thus deleted my army, the only thing stopping AI Italy from capitulating me was 2 British Raj divisions, which was apparently enough to convince ~50 Axis divisions not to press the attack. It wouldn't have been hard for them overrun what was left of my country and capitulate me, but they didn't; and as a result I was able to rebuild and retake my country.
2a) Italian Civil War Focuses - I found that the "Regino de Sud" doesn't do it's civil war focuses. Or at least not until the civil war is actually over. I found it weird that while the civil war was raging the AI doesn't want to do its civil war focuses. I highly recommend adding some extra conditions to some of the focuses that require that they are not in a civil war to do them. Or at the bare minimum, when the civil war starts, have the AI strategize and focus on completing their civil war branches.
2b) Italian Civil War leader - The Anti-Fascist council provided industry bonuses, which felt weird and the opposite of what an "Anti-Fascist" council would do. I highly recommend adding a "-0.10 Fascism Popularity" to the Anti-Fascist council at the start of the civil war for the Regino de Sud
2c) Italian Civil War popularity - I've seen the starting event for the historical civil war a couple times around these forums and Reddit. While the historical option is the Non-Aligned path, I feel as if the AI should be randomized on what ideology it seeks to pivot towards, with a factor increased for Communism and Non-Aligned.
2d) Italian Civil War Aftermath - Historically, the war took a massive toll on Italy's economy and in the elections after the war the communists got a large chunk of the vote and this trend upward of Communist support was only ebbed by CIA and economic support from the United States. I'd highly recommend that after the war, Italy and some other European majors get a national spirit, "Economic Devastation" that grants positive consumer factories and a daily communist popularity boost of +0.05. This way the historical communist wave concerns would arise in a historical game.
3) Research - With the added techs for both navy and airplanes, research (for me) is starting to get tedious. Devs have noted that they wanted us to "choose your research more strategically", but the increased amount of items to research is doing the opposite of that. Sure, I have to decide which is more important to me (either Air or Sea); but in a single-player game where the AI can't be trusted 100% to do their part in the war, the player has to be prepared in every theater of war. As a result, its common to fall insanely behind in certain areas of research and spend the late game playing catch-up with your allies on research. Furthermore, the new dual-purpose naval batteries don't show what batteries they unlock (Such as, which one unlocks dual purpose secondary batteries VS. which one unlocks dual light batteries). Words doesn't help, it would be more accessible if the tech actually showed which batteries were unlocked by the tech. In short, I highly recommend the devs lower the base research cost in certain areas to help player more quickly catch up or keep up.
4) Air Designer - I get that this still has kinks to iron out, but there are some issues I'd love to bring up. When assigning a role to the plane and you additional models, outside the main role; those don't show up on the stats on the designer (I believe that this issue has already been noted and a fix is incoming.) Beyond that, there is no way to have a multi-role fighter. I'd love to see for later models, the ability to assign the plane a multi-role status. Additionally, it is odd that air-to-air missiles are no where to be found tech (unless they're hidden away elsewhere) especially considering that almost every major began seriously experimenting with them towards the end of the war.
5) Peace Deals/Peace Conferences - For me the peace conference was the most...interesting part of BBA. I loved the competing and bidding system for peace deals as it means that if I'm playing a minor nation that doesn't have many demands, I can focus on getting what I want out of the peace deal. For example, as Greece I spent 6 turns bidding against the Soviet Union for Northern Epirus. Eventually, I got; but for way more than I wanted. If, I didn't have enough participation I probably wouldn't have gotten it. So it was fun in that way; but it was difficult to upgrade the ships I had seized and I highly recommend that when seizing ships, you also get the ship's design template as well, this way you can update it, otherwise all those Lvl 1 destroyers are going to get wrecked within a couple months into my next war.
In conclusion, for me the Italian Civil War needs the most work, but beyond that BBA is something that I would highly recommend. This game the best I've seen the Soviet AI perform in while, which I hope it continues to show going forward, which meant that I finally had a genuine race against the "Red Wave" on historical. I'll be starting my a-historical game tonight, so we'll see how the AI performs there. Overall, BBA is something that I highly recommend for most dedicated HoI4 players.
1) AI - As always the AI was good, and bad. For the good, the AI seems to know how to handle encirclements better, as when the Italian Social Republic capitulated and left an Italia-pox across the Balkans, the Allies got to "cleaning" it very quickly (almost instantly). The Soviet AI seems to also to have improved a bit, but I haven't played enough games to have a more solid view of the new AI, so this could be an anomaly. For the bad, the AI seems to never really press its advantage. After I got my army encircled (we didn't make to Thermopylae quick enough) and thus deleted my army, the only thing stopping AI Italy from capitulating me was 2 British Raj divisions, which was apparently enough to convince ~50 Axis divisions not to press the attack. It wouldn't have been hard for them overrun what was left of my country and capitulate me, but they didn't; and as a result I was able to rebuild and retake my country.
2a) Italian Civil War Focuses - I found that the "Regino de Sud" doesn't do it's civil war focuses. Or at least not until the civil war is actually over. I found it weird that while the civil war was raging the AI doesn't want to do its civil war focuses. I highly recommend adding some extra conditions to some of the focuses that require that they are not in a civil war to do them. Or at the bare minimum, when the civil war starts, have the AI strategize and focus on completing their civil war branches.
2b) Italian Civil War leader - The Anti-Fascist council provided industry bonuses, which felt weird and the opposite of what an "Anti-Fascist" council would do. I highly recommend adding a "-0.10 Fascism Popularity" to the Anti-Fascist council at the start of the civil war for the Regino de Sud
2c) Italian Civil War popularity - I've seen the starting event for the historical civil war a couple times around these forums and Reddit. While the historical option is the Non-Aligned path, I feel as if the AI should be randomized on what ideology it seeks to pivot towards, with a factor increased for Communism and Non-Aligned.
2d) Italian Civil War Aftermath - Historically, the war took a massive toll on Italy's economy and in the elections after the war the communists got a large chunk of the vote and this trend upward of Communist support was only ebbed by CIA and economic support from the United States. I'd highly recommend that after the war, Italy and some other European majors get a national spirit, "Economic Devastation" that grants positive consumer factories and a daily communist popularity boost of +0.05. This way the historical communist wave concerns would arise in a historical game.
3) Research - With the added techs for both navy and airplanes, research (for me) is starting to get tedious. Devs have noted that they wanted us to "choose your research more strategically", but the increased amount of items to research is doing the opposite of that. Sure, I have to decide which is more important to me (either Air or Sea); but in a single-player game where the AI can't be trusted 100% to do their part in the war, the player has to be prepared in every theater of war. As a result, its common to fall insanely behind in certain areas of research and spend the late game playing catch-up with your allies on research. Furthermore, the new dual-purpose naval batteries don't show what batteries they unlock (Such as, which one unlocks dual purpose secondary batteries VS. which one unlocks dual light batteries). Words doesn't help, it would be more accessible if the tech actually showed which batteries were unlocked by the tech. In short, I highly recommend the devs lower the base research cost in certain areas to help player more quickly catch up or keep up.
4) Air Designer - I get that this still has kinks to iron out, but there are some issues I'd love to bring up. When assigning a role to the plane and you additional models, outside the main role; those don't show up on the stats on the designer (I believe that this issue has already been noted and a fix is incoming.) Beyond that, there is no way to have a multi-role fighter. I'd love to see for later models, the ability to assign the plane a multi-role status. Additionally, it is odd that air-to-air missiles are no where to be found tech (unless they're hidden away elsewhere) especially considering that almost every major began seriously experimenting with them towards the end of the war.
5) Peace Deals/Peace Conferences - For me the peace conference was the most...interesting part of BBA. I loved the competing and bidding system for peace deals as it means that if I'm playing a minor nation that doesn't have many demands, I can focus on getting what I want out of the peace deal. For example, as Greece I spent 6 turns bidding against the Soviet Union for Northern Epirus. Eventually, I got; but for way more than I wanted. If, I didn't have enough participation I probably wouldn't have gotten it. So it was fun in that way; but it was difficult to upgrade the ships I had seized and I highly recommend that when seizing ships, you also get the ship's design template as well, this way you can update it, otherwise all those Lvl 1 destroyers are going to get wrecked within a couple months into my next war.
In conclusion, for me the Italian Civil War needs the most work, but beyond that BBA is something that I would highly recommend. This game the best I've seen the Soviet AI perform in while, which I hope it continues to show going forward, which meant that I finally had a genuine race against the "Red Wave" on historical. I'll be starting my a-historical game tonight, so we'll see how the AI performs there. Overall, BBA is something that I highly recommend for most dedicated HoI4 players.
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