Critique of NSB and unchecked ahistoricity, case study of Poland//Shift Anastasia and Pavel to Russia//

[Joshua Happytree]

Compared to HoI 3, HoI4 is less of a sandbox because of focus trees

1. Never played HoI3 so I can't compare Though the more Google.Sheets I create on HoI4 the more I want to try HoI3 Honestly.
2. FTs are uber-mana out of nowhere so it's really difficult to see the problem here. You don't want to use/abuse it in SP? Take a less efficient path and make the game more challenging. I'd understand it as applied to MP yet IMO that's no more than a tiny additional layer of complexity. Guilty as I am - I never play MP myself - yet the way I understand MP you oughtta be able to minmax as a pre-requisite for entering an MP game. So if you can minmax combat stats vs IC vs available manpower vs target terrain vs starting CIC/MIC vs XP vs starting tank designs and plane RnD vs DIV composition then minmaxing FT is a cakewalk.

1. New Focus trees are the MAIN selling point of multiple DLC (DoD, TfW, BftB).
2. Mods prove that the Clausewitz engine can support extended FTs for nearly all tags.
3. Mods can be unreliable, what if the Modder abandons it or needs a time to update after a new version?

1. Why do you think wide user audience do not enjoy new FTs? It seems FTs generate a hell of stickiness yet my guess would be it's the cheapest thing in terms of dev resources.
2. Again FTs are no more than free mana. In SP you can give as much of it as you see fit through command line. Or you can edit FTs yourself in text files so what's the problem?
3. Pavel, Anastasia or whatever you call it are just placeholders for free XP, RnD or free whatever. I'd agree PDX needs to improve how much immersion players get from it. Yet I'd cut some slack as it's no easy job to make FTs immersive to both "native" people with in-depth knowledge of the political history of some specific country and a wider audience that has no idea about it and does not plan to spend days and days on researching one. IMO PDX has found a sweet (selling) spot here. May be they're not perfect at it now but they are definitely trying and not without success. Let's wait.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Did anyone raise any objections to the focus

I guess PDX is the least offender here. You should speak to Creative Assembly or Xbox Game Studios employees about voluntary firing themselves (and leaving them and their families homeless and without medical coverage and their kids without education) since their game settings are in - oh, no - the periods of human history that were based on slave economy

 

[Taniwha]

I guess PDX is the least offender here. You should speak to Creative Assembly or Xbox Game Studios employees about voluntary firing themselves (and leaving them and their families homeless and without medical coverage and their kinds without education) since their game settings are in - oh, no - the periods of human history that were based on slave economy

Yes, well done, exactly the point I was making, thank you so much.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Yes, well done, exactly the point I was making, thank you so much.

You're welcome. Though this government body was not mentioned in "1984" yet I'd like to nominate you for the Head of the Ministry of True History. People should not distract themselves with a frivolous liberty of learning the history that actually happened. They should only know the history the way it should have been even if it didn't in reality. Lest this undesired freedom may tease them into committing a thoughtcrime.

 

[Indyclone77]

@Arheo there's a lot of very bad faith criticism of the game and the team, but there are times when the devs do dodge some very important questions.

One thing I asked before the last expansion was released, and I never got an answer for: how many people made the discussion to include a focus based on a plan to ethnically cleanse Poland's Jews- sorry, to send 'settlers' to Palestine and Madagascar.

Was the focus deliberately based on that plan, and if so how is it not in violation of Paradox's stated policies about the depiction of war crimes and the persecution of minorities?

Or is not based on that plan, and if so who came up with a completely unrelated colonisation scheme that so closely maps to the one proposed in real life?

Did anyone raise any objections to the focus? Were any Jewish people asked if they were comfortable with it?

I haven't bought the expansion because I was so horrified by the dev diary where you discussed that focus, and when I asked about it no one responded.

...


Yes, yes, I know that lots of people will want to let me know they oh so respectfully disagree. But I am asking this question politely and in good faith, and I would appreciate an answer from someone from Paradox.

The Maritime and Colonial League pursued numerous colonial ventures including Madagascar while others proposed to use it as a deportation site for European Jews yes. Both of these are facts and one doesn't negate the other that different groups had different ideas for it

The in-game focus harkens to the legacy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Benyovszky and his ties with Madagascar as a foundational stepping stone towards it. It is not intended to be representative of Jews being deported to Madagascar.

 

[L'Afrique]

I think people pointing to previous HoIs as "more historical" are missing the forest for the trees. I'll point to my own "stomped by the wehrmacht" home country France here. France has been a gimped clownshow in every HoI iteration. Fewer tanks, less industry, etc etc. In reality France had a fantastic army. France + BEF could have absolutely merced the world's greatest traffic jam in the Ardennes and changed history if they showed more initiative.

But they didn't. And thing is, that's good. AI Germany will never pull off a stealth move like that, so it needs to be able to just brute force it. If you aren't France or Germany, you kinda want AI Germany to get Big, not get stalled and repeat WW1. And if you are France, you want beating Germany to feel like an accomplishment. The real Ardennes offensive was a shock. As a player you know it's going to happen so you could win every time.