Do I want to be neutral?

[Thrake]

I've just started my first real hoi game (Greece). I started by enacting the decision to decrease neutrality. I thought: that would be a good first step towards being able to declare war against Albania (easy land grab and easy 1st war, I thought). Clever, eh?

Well, not so. I'm stuck at ~13ish neutrality. My spies are actively working on revealing to the world Albania's meaniness and how benevolent of me it would be to get them out of the political scene (improving threat with spies) but after years, it's just at like 1.5 threat (my understanding being I need them to have more threat than my neutrality). So now it seems that it will take forever to get them at 13 threat, and that in fact it might have been a bad move to abandon neutrality.

Are there any reasons to keep high neutrality? Most political decisions seem to be unlocked at low neutrality.
Low neutrality doesn't seem to help me much for waging war as probably only major nations will farm threat, and I'm in no position to oppose them (by picking Greece, I thought I was a bit away from the main theater while I could try to get some of the Balkans/Middle East under my enlightened rule in small scale wars before enventually really being involved in one side of the war).
I was also wondering if I could get to declare faster on Albania too, either through even lower neutrality, or higher threat.

 

[PlatinVelvet]

If i understand it correctly, you should have a better chance if you increase threat on a major that is close to you.
In your case probably Italy or UK should work well, depening on if you want to join Allies or Axis.

Also note that in 1939 italy will simply annex albania via decision, if you didnt manage to declare war till then. (http://www.hoi3wiki.com/Annexation_of_Albania)

 

[Thrake]

I want threat not to toy with diplomacy, just to be able to declare war. Being able to declare against Italy or UK would just got me dead in no time. I don't really want to be involved in Allies/Axis either for now as I guess it will forcefully draw me to war (world war that is), which I have no intention as of yet (and as far as I know, if I get declared by a member of Axis/Allies, I can still join anytime their ennemies). Thanks for Albania, good to know... Oh well, I was planning my evil doings on Bulgaria too, so that might have to be my first pick then.

 

[StanCollins]

I want threat not to toy with diplomacy, just to be able to declare war. Being able to declare against Italy or UK would just got me dead in no time. I don't really want to be involved in Allies/Axis either for now as I guess it will forcefully draw me to war (world war that is), which I have no intention as of yet (and as far as I know, if I get declared by a member of Axis/Allies, I can still join anytime their ennemies). Thanks for Albania, good to know... Oh well, I was planning my evil doings on Bulgaria too, so that might have to be my first pick then.

You don't have to DoW Italy just because you raised their threat. You raise the threat of Italy to get your neutrality down so you can DoW Albania.

 

[marxianTJ]

Basically what's happening, is that you are waging a concerted propaganda campaign against Albania, but nobody is buying it because Albania has at *most* 1 division of troops most likely and poses no threat to Greece what so ever lol.

Some other much bigger country though, well they could be threatening You don't have to declare war on your highest threat - just get them to scare your people into declaring war on whomever you want They're SURELY in league with those evil dastardly so-and-so's!

I would also warn against raising threat on minors purely to annex them - because once you make them your highest threat, and you defeat them, you'll find that your neutrality will go back up again slightly, and you will also be unable to declare war on anybody else until you get somebody else to be as threatening as they were previously (which can put some kinks in your plans depending on how belligerent you want to be).

Neutrality, in terms of the game, is mostly a bad thing, worse laws, more consumer good need

Historically speaking, Greece had just had (in the aftermath of WW1) a major war with Turkey - a really interesting campaign if you're not familiar with it.

Furthermore, in case you are unaware, in 1940 (historically October) Italy will almost always present Greece with an ultimatum demanding military access to your territory. If you refuse they will attack you. Unless you're already at war with Italy or in the Axis. Historically, this would've made Greece a de facto Axis state - but in game terms things are a bit more flexible

 

[Kovax]

Lower Neutrality means less consumer goods demand, so more IC available for military production. Against a human player, lower Neutrality means that you're more vulnerable to attack, but in a game with just you and the AI, the other countries will never attack without being specifically scripted to do so under certain conditions, but will just about always attack if those conditions are met.

In GRE's case, lower Neutrality will not cause an early DoW by your enemies, and no amount of Neutrality will protect you from Italy's demands when it's time for it to happen according to the scripts. In a single-player game, lower Neutrality is simply "better".

 

[Thrake]

You don't have to DoW Italy just because you raised their threat. You raise the threat of Italy to get your neutrality down so you can DoW Albania.

Oh, I see, thanks for pointing out my misunderstanding.

Basically what's happening, is that you are waging a concerted propaganda campaign against Albania, but nobody is buying it because Albania has at *most* 1 division of troops most likely and poses no threat to Greece what so ever lol.

But... They're so evil. They even steal grammies handbags

Some other much bigger country though, well they could be threatening You don't have to declare war on your highest threat - just get them to scare your people into declaring war on whomever you want They're SURELY in league with those evil dastardly so-and-so's!

I would also warn against raising threat on minors purely to annex them - because once you make them your highest threat, and you defeat them, you'll find that your neutrality will go back up again slightly, and you will also be unable to declare war on anybody else until you get somebody else to be as threatening as they were previously (which can put some kinks in your plans depending on how belligerent you want to be).

Neutrality, in terms of the game, is mostly a bad thing, worse laws, more consumer good need

Historically speaking, Greece had just had (in the aftermath of WW1) a major war with Turkey - a really interesting campaign if you're not familiar with it.

Furthermore, in case you are unaware, in 1940 (historically October) Italy will almost always present Greece with an ultimatum demanding military access to your territory. If you refuse they will attack you. Unless you're already at war with Italy or in the Axis. Historically, this would've made Greece a de facto Axis state - but in game terms things are a bit more flexible

Thanks for the historical background. I have just annexed Bulgaria. I was thinking of my next step, and who I wanted to align with. I wanted to sign an alliance with Rumania at first to secure my position for now, but trade deals/access/guarantee along with good relationships (120+) aren't enough for even a non agression pact ("impossible"). Is diplomacy in vain out of trade deals?

Lower Neutrality means less consumer goods demand, so more IC available for military production. Against a human player, lower Neutrality means that you're more vulnerable to attack, but in a game with just you and the AI, the other countries will never attack without being specifically scripted to do so under certain conditions, but will just about always attack if those conditions are met.

In GRE's case, lower Neutrality will not cause an early DoW by your enemies, and no amount of Neutrality will protect you from Italy's demands when it's time for it to happen according to the scripts. In a single-player game, lower Neutrality is simply "better".

So... No matter how threatened the ennemy could be, it won't try to stop me if it's not scripted to? Now that's disapointing compared to others Paradox games flexibility but I can live with it. At least, it should be more satisfying in terms of warfare than the others franchises.

 

[marxianTJ]

Well... You can *sometimes* get an alliance offer to work, but factions trump alliances - you may at best secure the neutrality of a third party. Say you form an alliance with Hungary, and then declare war on the Axis, of which Hungary is a member, you'll ensure that Hungary doesn't attack you, but they won't aid you against their own faction.

You can *sometimes* get "offer alliance" to work if your nations have great relations and very similar ideologies in charge - but it's rare. Basically all you can do at the diplomacy screen that works with some regularity is buying production licenses from the people in the nearest faction, trading, and declaring war.


The AI *will* attack you if your threat level gets too high. Particularly America - if you are the highest threat to the US by mid 1941, there is a chance 1 of 2 things will happen: 1. the USA will join the allies extraordinarily early, due to their neutrality being greatly reduced. 2. They won't join the allies and will simply declare war on you.

If you are particularly belligerent before the outbreak of WW2, the UK will also tend to declare war on you.

It all depends on how much threat you generate - if you can manage to keep your threat relatively low, the probability that the AI will randomly declare war against you is fairly low, but if you start becoming peoples' top threat - before they become too busy with a world war to intervene, you need to slow down or you're entering very risky territory lol.

 

[Kovax]

The problem with alliances is that THEIR neutrality also has to be really low (25 or less) before they CAN accept, and there's no guarantee that they will do so even if they can.

This seems to have been a response to the problem where countries would spam alliance offers to all and sundry, so Poland would be allied to Italy and/or Hungary when GER triggered "Danzig or War". The resulting silly combination of Germany being both allied to and at war with several countries broke the game on a frequent basis. Brute-force solution: make alliances outside of factions almost impossible.