Changes for Oranje Boven!

[Wceend]

In the current version of the Dutch focus tree, if you go monarchist, you are kind of railroaded towards the allies. This is fun if you play a historical game, but in an ahistorical game and either the UK changes ideology (other than monarchist, then you can just join their faction and the focus bypasses), or Germany opposes Hitler, you get stuck and cannot progress your focus tree. "Replace the Defeatist Government" requires you to be at war, but war comes either very late or even never if Germany goes with the Kaiser. You can bypass this if you are non-aligned, but the problem with that is you can never flip to non-aligned because the focus to do so (The Only Man in the Dutch Government) requires the aforementioned focus (Replace the Defeatist Government).

What I would like to suggest is that you can skip the "Replace the Defeatist Government" and "Go with Britain" if Germany does the "Revive the Kaiserreich" focus or even if you accepted the German demand to return the Kaiser. This way, you can join a monarchist Germany without having to join Britain, go to war, and then join Germany without getting stuck in your focus tree.

Another point (but less important one) is that you cannot take the "Develop the South" focus if you do not stick with the Allies. You should be able to do this if you just control Belgium and Luxemburg, so a non-aligned Netherlands that just conquered them can take it. Perhaps you should even be able to take the "Revive the Buffer State Proposal" without "Request Allied Favors". It could be something like the German "Rekindle Imperial Sentiment" focus, where Belgium and Luxemburg get non-aligned support and you can take a decision to unite the Low countries. But again, this is less important to me than my first point.

 

[Iskulya]

You're absolutely right on every point.

This has been brought up many times, since the release of Man the Guns, in fact. It's been a personal bugbear of mine. I think it should be continued to be brought up until some of these tweaks are made.

Netherlands has a really great focus tree; really the only thing that needs some tweaks is indeed the Monarchist path. It requires you to join the Allies, but if the UK does anything other than remain democratic it breaks it. It needs to be tweaked so that you don't need to join the allies at all. In fact, there are some curious things in the Oranje Boven tree, take the "Wilhelminism" focus.

By default, these are its effects:

But if Germany restores the Kaiserreich, it actually does something completely different...

Observant players will note that this conditions are actually impossible in actual play without the console. For the Netherlands to even be able to get to this point and take this focus, they will have to have joined the Allies, which then precludes them from joining the Central Powers.

I've been trying to draw attention to this since the week MTG came out. I don't really think many changes are needed.

1. Firstly, remove the requirement to join the allies. Just let that be avoided entirely and give the Netherlands the option of joining the Central Powers if it exists, and allow Wilhelmina to come to power without HOL needing to be at war first.

2. The addition of a new focus that lets Holland get claims on Belgium and Luxembourg. To make this even better, it could be implemented similarly to the new event we've seen with Bulgaria: Germany gets an event, and if they agree to it, occupation of Belgium and Luxembourg is automatically handed to Netherlands so they can form the United Provinces.

The Netherlands is a really fun country to play and the focus tree is very well designed, this issue not withstanding. Every player I've ever spoken with who is a fan of the Netherlands agrees that a non-Allied/Central Powers alternative to Oranje Boven is the way it should have been at launch.

PS. In my testing to make the screenshots for this post, I noticed something very interesting. The devs have stealthily introduced a change to Germany's focus that creates the Central Powers faction: when it is created Bulgaria gets an event inviting them to the faction. They must have done this when they updated the game to have the new achievements. A welcome tweak with BFTB imminent next week. If you play a Central Powers Germany game this weekend, you can get Bulgaria in it to tide you over for the real deal next week.

 

[Caeric]

To my knowledge forming the Central Powers has invited Bulgaria long before now. I'm quite sure it has done so since MTG at minimum

 

[Iskulya]

To my knowledge forming the Central Powers has invited Bulgaria long before now. I'm quite sure it has done so since MTG at minimum

You know what, you're right.

After seeing this post I reverted to 1.7.3(from April 2019) to check and it was indeed in the game then.

Has it really been so long since I did a proper Central Powers campaign? Evidently so.. Maybe I'll give it a run this weekend to tide me over until I can start an Ottoman campaign on Wednesday.