"Debbie Does America", a Choose Your Own AdventAAR!

[Actinguy]

Hey guys! I love HoI3 (even if it doesn't really work just yet), and love writing AARs...but I don't want to write an indepth one until 1.3.

So I came up with an idea...I'll do a basic gameplay/tutorial AAR as America in 1936...

...but YOU tell me what the tutorial is about!

Do you want to learn how to invade Canada?

How to team up with Hitler against Stalin?

How to get the Communists to win the election against FDR?

How to launch a nuclear missile against the Dominican republic?


No matter how crazy your idea, give it to me here! I'll check back in an hour and choose one at random (unless one is clearly so much more awesome than the rest).



This is not to say, of course, that I will "succeed"...or even pursue the goal in the best possible way. I'm still learning, but I figure this will be a fun way for all of us to learn about how to be completely ahistorical.



Let the suggestions commence!

 

[SovietAmerika]

I want ze Communist US, are they Democratic or Authoritarian?

 

[Actinguy]

We've tallied the votes and the results are in:

It's "Communist USA" by a nose!

That's right, folks, Communist USA wins by just one vote! Boy, I've never seen a closer election! :rofl:


Alright...I'm starting to play now. 1.2, with the following mods:

1) AI Improvement
2) The one where you can choose your head of government, etc (although this is NOT how I will get the communists in power)
3) Sexxicolors, because I'm colorblind and couldn't tell nations apart without it.

I'll be posting pics of how to get America to be communist...or, perhaps, my failed attempts to do so, which may be just as informative.

Thanks for the support, SovietAmerika! As for whether they'll be Democratic or Authoritarian...they'll definitely come into power democratically, but who knows what will happen after that?

I'm looking forward to this one!

 

[SovietAmerika]

My opinion is the national opinion, with 1 whopping vote XD. I'm a true dictator.

I hope Authoritarian really, Stalin needs a fellow buddy, gets lonely up in OTL Moscow 1936.

 

[unmerged(129139)]

Do it!

And then make America for the Americans and take all of North and South America!! With a militia horde! And then as a communist government help Hitler beat the SU!

p.s.
I've never played Crusader Kings but I read your butterfly ARR and all I have to say, is ​

 

[SovietAmerika]

Do it!

And then make America for the Americans and take all of North and South America!! With a militia horde! And then as a communist government help Hitler beat the SU!

p.s.
I've never played Crusader Kings but I read your butterfly ARR and all I have to say, is ​

Agreed, comrade.

 

[unmerged(117032)]

Subscribed. Eagerly awaiting an update.

 

[Actinguy]

Alright...so our mission here is to get the Communist Party elected into the US Presidency. I suppose the first question should be, how are they doing at the start of the game?

The FDR-led Democrats have a comfortable lead at 56%, with their main competition of course being the Republicans, at 35%. The Communist party is not yet at 1%. We have our work cut out for us!

So...my plan to turn Communist hinges on a two-part plan:

1) "A Car In No Garage and a Turkey In No Pot" - Put ZERO resources into consumer goods. My reasoning is two part. First, there is the dissent issue. If people are furious at the president because they don't have enough to survive much less thrive...and then someone comes along promising "to each his need...", that man is likely to get some followers.

Also, In my very first game, I wasn't watching production closely enough, and not providing enough resources to consumer goods (I was just "barely" under the "need" mark) saw the Democratic party completely disappear, with the Republicans getting 80% and Communists 20% roughly. Then I started meeting the needs and the Democrats came all the way back again. So, obviously the communists grow when the consumer needs aren't met. I'll just have to figure out how to get rid of the republicans after that.

2) Kiss up to the Commies. I don't know if this will actually have any effect on American communism, but worth a shot. I am aligning to Comintern at every chance, ONLY trading with Russia (I don't need trades at all, so it's just building relationship)...I also used my spies here. I have spies in Republican Spain "supporting ruling party" so that they'll (hopefully) win in the upcoming civil war. I'm also raising the threat of the United Kingdom and France, so that we drift away from the Allies.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: I also wanted to experiment with completely eliminating the American military. I've disbanded every unit (Army, Air Force, and Navy), so that I can rebuild it from scratch.

Note the zero supplies, reinforcements, and upgrades. This is what happens when you have no military. But with no needs there, and ignoring the consumer needs, we should have a military again in no time.

Stay tuned to see how the entire plan soon proved disastrous! :rofl:

 

[SovietAmerika]

This sounds awesome! I must see the glory, good luck Comrade.

 

[Myth]

Hehe, this should be quite interesting.

 

[unmerged(172097)]

Definitely looks like a good read, but why disband the entire military?

 

[Saluki77]

Once you turn the USA into the....erm...USSA, mod the allies and the axis together and have a reverse unholy alliance.

 

[unmerged(141369)]

Great idea! Let's see what happens when playing around with the engine, perhaps this improves our understanding of its behaviour.
Also, for the next vote, I request the establishment of a strong cavalry arm, of which at least one division should be named the "Rough Riders", preferably to be used in the Spanish Civil War

And comrade ioncannon11: Evidently, the dialectic dictates that disbanding the capitalist reactionary imperialist plutocrat crypto-fascist army is the second step to establishing the glorious progressive proletarian people-democratic Союз Советских Социалистических Американских Республик!

Right after starting to use firetruckloads of adjectives, of course...

 

[Actinguy]

Comrade: Thanks for the kind words about the Butterfly Effect! It's basically my favorite story I've ever written (AAR or otherwise)...which leaves me terrified to return to it, for fear that I'll screw it up.

Ion: This was something I'd been wanting to try for a while. Rather than try to reorganize the American military...what if I disbanded it all together, and rebuilt from scratch? There should be plenty of time, plus you get all that experience from building military units. It was going to be a seperate but combined experiment (along with turning the US Communist.) However...I soon found that you can't do both at the same time, as I'll show in my next update!

Saluki: Interesting idea! I don't know anything about modding though...AND since the purpose of this AAR is to experiment with the game engine, I don't want to do anything "outside" the game either. That said, if I DO get into Comintern, and then declare war on Germany and the UK, that should have the same result!

BlueAngel: HA...horses against tanks? I suspect that would be a rather short-lived American AAR! ;c)

 

[SovietAmerika]

So, are we having un update soon?

 

[Actinguy]

And so our lesson continues, in which we try to turn USA into a Communist country under the shadow of the Second World War.

First, let's look at some decisions that came my way.

I honestly wasn't sure about this one. I don't care about fascism one way or the other (in the context of this game, of course). So...if fascism was around...would it be taking votes away from democrats and republicans...or votes away from communism?

I ended up banning it, simply because I figured if you're a fascist in the 1930's, you're not going to vote for FDR OR the Republican. An "Anybody but" mentality, which could lead to you going communist.

Am I right? Who knows. Just a guess.

This one was much more obvious. I allow the communists to continue.

I also got a note about corruption in the police force. I didn't take a screenshot of it, and don't remember what my options were, but I take extreme corruption as a good sign. Things are getting bad out there with no consumer goods...people should be looking for an alternative soon.

And by September 1936...just nine months into my game...phase one of my plan was already complete:

The Democrat party was gone.

Unfortunately...this was when I discovered that disbanding my military with the intent of building a new one was seriously flawed.

With no consumer goods, there was no reason to work. My IC went down to ONE. Which means I couldn't build a single military unit.

But note that my consumer goods need has gone down to LESS than one. So I poured my entire IC into EXCEEDING the consumer goods need.

By September 1937, I had my full IC back. Interestingly, while the Democrats were coming back at that point, they still were second place to the Republicans...and the Communists were in third place.

Unfortunately, my game then crashed (my fault, not Paradox's.). So I'm going to start again, but with the following lessons learned:

1) Consumer goods ABSOLUTELY effects the elections. With zero consumer goods, the ruling party had zero support. Bringing it back started to bring back the ruling party...but not ALL the way.

2) Zero consumer goods leads to zero IC, which obviously doesn't work.

3) I think banning fascism was a mistake. Now that I think about it, the popup says that liberals want to ban fascism and conservatives want to ban communism. This makes me think that a growing fascism party would take away from Republicans, just as a growing communist party takes away from Democrats. So in this next try, I'm going to allow the fascism party.

So we begin again...the same spies and diplomatic strategy, but this time, we'll keep the military, and allow fascism to grow.

Stay tuned!

(And any tips/suggestions for growing the communist party are welcome!)