Well of course, what else are you going to do in historical but be a German lackey?
Alternative history becoming too invasive?
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Well of course, what else are you going to do in historical but be a German lackey?
That's not being neglected, as you can no doubt tell by seeing how Japan and Germany had both of their historical paths improved, and the historical element of playing as Japan was improved by making China more interesting. Germany is more unique, too, with MEFO bills and SS divisions - an example of how a new gameplay element (decisions and missions) made the history-based content design broader and more interesting. That, too, fit the theme of the expansion, which emphasised Japan, China, and (to a lesser degree) Germany. You can't complain that they didn't add anything for the UK or for France in an expansion not involving them. Even then, you've got small, relevant historical details like the women in the workplace decisions.
Personally, I feel Paradox has improved a lot in that regard when it comes to DLCs; there's a lot more interesting historical stuff in general added by WtT than TfV or even DoD, which I feel failed in a number of ways - particularly for India in TfV and Czechoslovakia in DoD. I don't, however, feel like this is a zero sum game like you do, but it does come to the point where the historical things I'm interested in seeing added to China - and believe me, I made a list - are almost entirely flavour decisions and events out of my own personal knowledge.
There's only so much that can be done in terms of historical additions in events, decisions (something completely new as of WtT, mind you!), and focuses. Some of it you could definitely argue is ridiculous: Switzerland has exactly 0 forts built on its borders, for example, and the invasion of Iran doesn't really exist at all right now except for a focus that never happens.
However, in cases like that, the best thing you can do is to make a suggestion of the specific thing you'd like added, post it in the right forum, and hope. Don't make an angry point about alt-history taking over HOI4, and don't blame them for having bad priorities. Of course they won't listen to your suggestions if that's the case, that's only natural. Instead, be specific about the reasonable things you'd like to see added, especially if it pertains to an upcoming or recently released DLC. The devs aren't perfect, and while they do plenty of research and put lots of thought into the game, they can't think of everything. Making events and decisions for flavour - even focuses, in many cases - is a quick job. Make posts and threads about that rather than trying to convince Paradox their whole method of developing their own game is wrong.
1. I'm not angry.
2. It's their job to develop their games. There has been vast amounts of discussion on this forum pre and post release, there are plenty of people suggesting things. You can't take one thread and be like "well looks like nobody has suggestions." That's disingenuous and lazy.
3. Paradox is literally making alternate history their flagship. The release trailer for the new expansion highlights the Second American Civil War, no historical content. That's backwards priorities while so much historical content remains undeveloped.
I have to say seeing that trailer just finally put the nail in the coffin for me. I'm done with this company and game. I've said that a lot, only going back to it because there wasn't anything comparable. But I mean it this time.
Lots of people in this thread are pretty belligerent, though, which unfortunately colours everything that falls within it. And, though I've looked through the Suggestions subforum, unfortunately plenty of it is either non-specific, vague, or overreaching. Of course, there are also plenty of good suggestions and I can tell you from experience, Paradox does add them in. As for the trailer, it's a trailer, I can't really care much for it. Compare it to CK2's recent Holy Fury trailer, which highlights additions to pagan characters, when the developer-stated main thrust of the expansion is to make Crusades more historical and interesting.
It's factual that Paradox has been adding more and more good historical content to the game, and in this regard WtT is a marked improvement over previous DLCs. I can only imagine that trend will continue.
The problem is that many people, including devs, think that alt-history should incorporate everything from "what if Barbarossa was a success" to "what if Luxembourg conquers the world" and "what if monarchy makes a global comeback or the Permanent Revolution is a success in the 30s" If that's one's premise, sure, the game is quite consistent in its content development, and all I can say is that it's a shame there's no competition in this field, aside from pure wargames like Gary Grigsby.
I'm not nearly ready to give up on Paradox yet but I'll agree with this. The competition is micromanagement hell and completely unintuitive. I've always had my eye on WiTE but I'm not willing to spend that much on a game that it'll take days just to learn how to read the UI.
The Luftwaffe was bleeding planes and pilots faster than the RAF (which actually had net gains). Even in the darkest days, the Luftwaffe was bleeding harder than the RAF and the RAF had fresh forces in Scotland and Northern England that could be rotated in if relief had truly become necessary.
And say what you will about the effects of losing the BEF, but nobody surrendered in WWII just because their forces were defeated outside of home soil (even Japan faced the occupation of some territories HOI considers core, not to mention the loss of not just their army, but also their navy and air forces, neither of which Britain faced). This supposes that the British people are more inclined towards surrender than anyone else in the war.
The UI in WitE is not bad, nor are the game mechanics. What is daunting is the sheer scope of it. It takes a very long time to play through an entire game.
The problem is that you aren't really creating interesting scenarios, assuming all else is equal. This is the key point--Assuming all else is equal. A big problem is that the AI is dumber than a box of rocks and frequently hides severe balance problems by playing horrifically.
Just to use a few examples from the recently added focus trees:
1. Japan invades the Soviets with Germany: Soviet Union pretty much dies in-game, assuming all else is equal. The Axis coasts to victory due to having so many resources/supplies.
2. Japan goes Communist: ??? Who knows. It's not even clear what Japan's role is supposed to be when they do this; if they join the Soviets, they're just going to throw more troops on the front line, or worse draw the Soviets into some war with the allies.
3. Japan goes Democratic and joins the allies: The Axis loses, probably in France, because they ignore Japan completely and pour everything into Europe.
The point is that you are creating so many 'choices', but they end up being bland. The one exception to this is France going Communist if Germany goes Monarchist, but this is equally null and void because France starts out with a grand total of 6 military factories, meaning Germany will always mulch it with disgusting ease before anyone can help, especially without the UK's assistance.
Alternate history is only cool in the context of a videogame if it provides a challenge, which isn't happening. A lot of the 'alternate history' content suffers from this content, and no steps seem to be being taken to address it.
Unfortunately the game is already too hard for a lot of people, or they just want to play out their fantasies without having to learn the game, considering an even easier difficulty setting was just added.
Compared to HoI4 I think that the WitE UI is absolutely horrible.
- Not a single mouseover tooltip with information anywhere ( when I learn a new pdx game I can spend hours just reading tooltips before unpausing ).
- Quite a few places where you have to watch a video to realize that "Oh that piece of text in the unit details is actually a button you can click".
- Many functions in the game ( like split+merge ) can as far as I am able to tell only be performed by key combinations, not buttons, so as a new player the only way to figure out you can even do this is either online or reading through the list of all possible key combinations.
- No explanation what stuff like deliberate or quick attacks actually do or how the movement rules work ingame, or rules like max 3 units per tile. Hours of painful trial and error or to go online to guides are your options.
- Huge lists of stats, units and leader skills. 0 explanation of what the gameplay impact of any of them are.
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Hungary can be quite interesting but is just most interesting with historical focus off, I like having Slovakia and all of my former territories back.
That is also alt-history. Playing Hungary completely historical is just not that interesting because you are rather weak. As a real 'greater Hungary' or Austria-Hungary you are a great-power.
It's like becoming Emperor after starting as Duke In CK2.
So much of history is based on chance that even if you could simulate all the facts history would never play out as it did in that simulation.
Big Issues like the Yalta Peace order not working should be fixed. We need realistic option for Germany to make peace with the UK - without having to Sea Lion, maybe akin to the Chinese-Japanese peace event.
But there is no "legal" basis to claim that implementing more historic accuracy over alt-history should happen. When I bought this game I knew I would get a PDX Sandbox where I can do crazy stuff, like become German Emperor as Sweden like in EU4 or reform paganism as in CK 2.
Reforming Austria Hungary is just the same thing in HoI4. It's not that alt-history takes completely over but development time is more and more spent there where the money is made.
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If this is the case you are failing to explain why there were discussions in cabinet and peace feelers coming from London in June and July 1940, if the degree of confidence was as you described. It is not 'the British people' you need to worry about. They are not making foreign policy, and what they knew was controlled through press censorship by the Ministry of Information. The key group is the elite that makes foreign policy and breaks governments. In the Conservative party that also means Imperial preservation and a very large slice of anti socialism coupled with the maintenance of the status quo, all looking doubtful if war continued. If a deal was cut that involved the withdrawal of German forces from western Europe then the MoI could have easily had it portrayed as a victory.
I think you underestimate the profound sense of shock in June and July that existed in Whitehall and Westminster The whole British strategic position had collapsed. Britain had no allies, and France had collapsed in a way so swift that no-one expected. The German war machine had swept through the allies' defences with relative ease and looked impossible to beat, and threatened the bombing (and possibly poison gas bombing) of London and other major cities. The Royal Navy's strategic position had been wholly outflanked on both sides, with the loss of Norway in the north and France in the south. And, finally, what was Britain fighting on for? Such factors as these were enough to convince a considerable number of mainstream Tories in particular that peace with Germany was desirable, and we know at least that some form of deal was formally presented and attainable along with various feelers being put out the other way.
They opposition to peace held the cards when it came to more effective political operators: Churchill and his radical Tories, Eden and his young Turks and the entirety of the Labour and Liberal parties were against it. In the end they held the key levers of power in the coalition government, and although Vansittart was no longer at the FO he was 'Diplomatic Advisor to the Government' and had been strongly opposed to appeasement and Germany for quite some time, representing a strand even in Halifax's own ministry that were against any form of deal; not only as they felt it would not stick, but also because it would undermine the long-term international British position.
In HOI4 terms, the succession of political crises that struck the British government from the fall of Norway until the end of the Battle of Britain are woefully treated. Chamberlain goes whether Britain is doing marvellously or disastrously and that is about all. But here is the first real option for the Germans to declare victory (assuming realistic war aims rather than global conquest) so it is more than simply parochialism. If you take the original outcome as your most likely option - for argument's sake as you have to start somewhere - then the infliction of losses and the gaining of VPs and whatnot by the Germans should shade the probability of Britain coming to terms if the Germans offer them (a player decision of course). This does, though, open the wholly different can of worms of 'who is the player representing?' The national leadership, some sort of mystical force of national interest? In other words what does player agency represent and how far should it be able to affect what is in the national interest of a country.
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On the contrary, I've had quite a few interesting games playing small countries and doing what I can to help out the AI. Some of them can become rather irritating, like when your few specialized divisions you spent years building are left for dead because the AI decided to switch front priorities or banzai charged all their org and strength away and the front collapsed. Others were quite rewarding, like when my Canadian strat bombers obliterated German industry right when they were making headway in Russia.
I get that a lot of people play this game for a power trip, but there's really a lot of fun to be had with a more limited scope, which is why I get so frustrated with topics like this because overall the game is pretty close to what I want it to be.
I had loads of fun with that I was talking more about casual players. I have a lot of friends who are not so good at game mechanics. They do well with a major power but, with minors where you have to weigh decisions more carefully they are not good or having fun
people aren't liquid assets that can be applied to any place in developement, if your historical researchers are busy and your event writers are not, you are paying people to do nothing. might as well let them use some of their current research to write some alt-history stuff.
Being the easiest route to 50 factories might have something to do with it, but alternate history is fun also.
So what you're trying to say is that how you want to play the game objectively has more possiblities for fun and that anyone that doesn't play like that just never tried it and/or hasn't grasped how fun it can be, and are just playing the game for a power trip.
I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but that is literally the only meaning that sentence equates to for me.
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