So I've got to the point where I've "finished" my first proper HoD game (Okay, it's only 1917, but I feel like a new one now). So:
Overview
So, I started out as Prussia. The lack of the immediate excuse to fight Austria meant I concentrated solely on the economics (State Capitalism was a necessity, but I've always favoured that at the start anyway) and the influence. Got an alliance with the UK that ended up lasting the entire game. Getting the industry going early on was slow, but I liked it. It was a nice challenge. The only early game crisis was between the UK and the USA over British Columbia. I backed the UK just to see what would happen and the US conceded defeat.
Next up I went about trying to form the NGF peacefully. Luxemburg, Denmark and Hanover were easy enough to sphere but Saxony took me until about 1950 (by alternating my influence between Austria's spherelings so it kept moving to others to block me on those). After I'd grabbed Saxony, I formed the NGF which made the influence micromanagement much less of a pain. I don't remember the dates that well but in about 1855 Garibaldi's redshirts overthrew the government in the Papal States and Italy formed from Sardinia Piedmont. Two Sicilies was a Great Power and had been for about 3 or 4 years but Italy formed from S-P and T-S remained separate, which I think was a bug as surely T-S should have just led Italy instead? Italy wasn't even a GP due to this. At this point, the Great Powers were: UK, France, NGF, USA, Russia, Austria, Ottoman Empire, Two Sicilies. Italy declared war on TS (which was allied with Austria) to try and unify the peninsula but the UK protected Italy when Austria attacked and it ended up in a bloody stalemate after about 5 years.
The next major event was the American civil war. I watched this one with interest. The CSA was losing when Mexico declared war on the USA for California, taking advantage of the US being distracted. This was good. The civil war white peaced and Mexico was eventually driven back though and accepted a white peace. At this point I unlocked Nationalism & Imperialism and declared war on Austria. A brief struggle ensued but I won quite easily and it admitted hegemony. I immediately then attacked France and also won strongly. Both times my detailed armies were relatively evenly matched with their standing army counterparts but completely obliterated the mobilised reserve stacks that appeared later. The land combat changes made the fighting a lot of fun though. After France had used Belgium to circle around me I then grabbed Belgium into my sphere and allied them to stop that happening again. So I formed Germany (didn't feel like going for Greater Germany) in about 1862. Nicely ahead of history
.
By this point I had switched to interventionist and my economy was rolling along nicely. In 1865 the first major crisis happened when Hungarian nationalists were backed by the UK. Austria gave in within about 20 days, before any other power had even picked a side, and so the nation of Hungary (which was actually larger than what was left of Austria itself) appeared overnight. I do think that could do with some working on.
Around 1880 Italy declared war on Two Sicilies again and after a bitter struggle eventually succeeded in annexing it and moving up to rank #6. The Chinese Empire also civilized so the Ottoman Empire finally lost its Great Power status.
The Ottomans though had twice fought and defeated Egypt and basically had the entire middle east back under their control, which was much better than I had expected.
I was the first nation to get Colonial Negotiations and so immediately started going for Mauritania (further I could reach from my naval bases). The scramble was ok, but forming dominions was obviously the only way to get vast swathes of land under my control. I had an intense race with Italy over Waddai that in the end made me dominionise the entirity of my other colonies (I grabbed Bas Congo off France in a short war so expanded from there too), while Italy had already done that with Somalia and South Sudan/Kenya areas. This got up to about level 25 but a crisis never started because Romanian nationalists were continually trying to secede from Austria and Hungary despite never getting any actual support, which started a cooldown. That's something I hope can be fixed. In the end I won solely due to Italy running out of CP just before I did. Dutch Africa was also a surprise, although they dominioned every single state they got until the last one (Zambia), too. This meant that Britain got almost nothing while France was the one and only country not to have dominioned all its states (excluding the little bits Britain got and Italian West Morocco).
Austria, Italy, the Ottomans, China and Japan were jostling over the bottom 3 GP slots quite a lot (Austria was the only one never to lose it) and when Italy briefly lost it I rapidly sphered and allied them so when they regained it I had two GP allies by about 1880.
Having already constructed the Kiel and Panama canals I declared war on Egypt to add them to my sphere (the influence race was a nightmare with everyone banning each other). During this war a crisis started over Polish independence that had my two allies (Italy and the UK) against Austria, France and Russia. Due to my war I couldn't take part, which I found immensely frustrating, as it went right up to a war and Italy got absolutely demolished. As soon as I had defeated Egypt I built the Suez canal and declared war on France to cut it down to size in an attempt to rescue Italy. Sadly for the Italians it was already too late, and Austria took Venetia back while France grabbed Piedmont. After some immense battles I finally broke the French and proceded to attempt to punish them by occupying as much of their territory as possible to create the conditions for a rebellion. Sure enough, after I cut them down to size & humiliated them too for good measure, anarcho liberals took over, and then were immediately toppled by a communist rebellion.
That did make me smile. Sadly Jacobins took it back to a democracy soon afterwards, but the effect of destroying France for a good decade had been achieved. Sadly, this brought an unintended consequence. My heavy use of subsidies had brought my economy toward a standstill, and the collapse of the French market sent such a shockwave across the Global economy that countries everywhere were thrown into recession. Seeing my now horrific losses I tried to liberalise my economy (I had -5% tarriffs, but I ended all subsidies). This didn't work either, and I was losing up to £1000 per day even when I removed the tariffs. Small countries began to default, but this steadily got bigger (Khiva, Colombia, Portugal) for example. The French market wasn't the only one which had been destroyed either, as the Italian obliteration in the Great War over Poland had seen them exchange hands between communists and finally reactionaries and had them ranked as low #70. In a desperate attempt to kick start my economy, in about 1893 I started the second Great War when I backed Polish independence from Russia. An entente of Russia/Austria/France/Persia formed up against Germany/Britain/Hungary (my new second GP ally), with the Ottoman Empire (rank #9) also allied with both me and Hungary. The Netherlands, Belgium (but Belgium wasn't called in due to a separate truce) and Denmark were also in my sphere while Italy was still in its constant civil war and Spain had been racked by rebellion for over a decade so neither were relevant.
This horrific war ended with brutal losses for all sided. Austria was torn apart by me and Hungary while the severely weakened France was an easy victory. Russia on the other hand took a massive effort to defeat, although I captured St Petersburg early on as Russia and Persia had launched a combined invasion of the Ottoman Empire, which overwhelmed the Ottoman forces while me and Hungary were busy fighting Austria. Eventually I was able to send an army to turn back the Persians at Konya but that was rather too little too late. The war ended with the cutting down to size of France, the cutting down to size + Hungarian annexation of Austrian West Galicia from Austria and the cutting down to size of Russia, plus independence of Russian Poland (which immediately annexed Krakow when I brought Krakow out of the Russian sphere during a later war.
This still didn't fix my economy though, and realising this (and being so far ahead in prestige terms) I decided to deliberately ramp up my spending. In 1905 I finally defaulted on over £2.5 million of debt (mostly to myself) but only dropped to #2 in prestige. I'd begun to finally see signs of recovery in 1901 but was in such debt by that time that I pressed ahead anyway. This default finally brought the long recession to an end and global growth resumed soon afterwards.
After this, periodic wars to cut France down to size to stop it ever being a threat, which usually also involved cutting Russia down to size (I'd gone way past the infamy limit a long time ago) were the norm. I liberated Bohemia-Moravia from Austria and freed South Tyrol to return it to Italy and also liberated the United Baltic Provinces from Russia. In the most recent war (to free the United Baltic Provinces in 1916) France and Russia proved a significantly harder challenge to overcome and also had the USA on their side (not Austria in that war though) and the USA obliterated my navy, much to my dismay. The USA were the only country to match my military score so I peaced out early when Russia gave in without enforcing a cut down to size on France (which had also annilihated one of my four armies on the western front after I'd had to remove one army to deal with American landings at Hamburg). The Eastern Front was still relatively successful but of course as always the Russians just kept on coming. I had 3 armies on the eastern front (of lower quality - No tanks or aircraft) and would use battle score while often sending one back for reinforcements then exchange it on the front to win the wars.
The last war makes me think that the final 20 years could see a possibly changing dynamic (I might not be able to win all wars so easily anymore) but as war is the only thing left to do my interest has waned somewhat. The Ottomans haven't lost any land whatsoever, Italy is its roughly historic lands. I would post a screenshot of the whole map but I have no idea where it saves those things =P.
Bugs
Most of these are fairly minor, I had no CTD's or anything severe.
Positives
Plus many other things I can't remember right now.
Negatives
Suggestions
Most of these are about the Dominion system.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on HoD. This thread ended up being somewhat bigger than I'd expected it too. Oops. =P.
Thanks for reading (if you didn't skip it all ;P)
Overview
So, I started out as Prussia. The lack of the immediate excuse to fight Austria meant I concentrated solely on the economics (State Capitalism was a necessity, but I've always favoured that at the start anyway) and the influence. Got an alliance with the UK that ended up lasting the entire game. Getting the industry going early on was slow, but I liked it. It was a nice challenge. The only early game crisis was between the UK and the USA over British Columbia. I backed the UK just to see what would happen and the US conceded defeat.
Next up I went about trying to form the NGF peacefully. Luxemburg, Denmark and Hanover were easy enough to sphere but Saxony took me until about 1950 (by alternating my influence between Austria's spherelings so it kept moving to others to block me on those). After I'd grabbed Saxony, I formed the NGF which made the influence micromanagement much less of a pain. I don't remember the dates that well but in about 1855 Garibaldi's redshirts overthrew the government in the Papal States and Italy formed from Sardinia Piedmont. Two Sicilies was a Great Power and had been for about 3 or 4 years but Italy formed from S-P and T-S remained separate, which I think was a bug as surely T-S should have just led Italy instead? Italy wasn't even a GP due to this. At this point, the Great Powers were: UK, France, NGF, USA, Russia, Austria, Ottoman Empire, Two Sicilies. Italy declared war on TS (which was allied with Austria) to try and unify the peninsula but the UK protected Italy when Austria attacked and it ended up in a bloody stalemate after about 5 years.
The next major event was the American civil war. I watched this one with interest. The CSA was losing when Mexico declared war on the USA for California, taking advantage of the US being distracted. This was good. The civil war white peaced and Mexico was eventually driven back though and accepted a white peace. At this point I unlocked Nationalism & Imperialism and declared war on Austria. A brief struggle ensued but I won quite easily and it admitted hegemony. I immediately then attacked France and also won strongly. Both times my detailed armies were relatively evenly matched with their standing army counterparts but completely obliterated the mobilised reserve stacks that appeared later. The land combat changes made the fighting a lot of fun though. After France had used Belgium to circle around me I then grabbed Belgium into my sphere and allied them to stop that happening again. So I formed Germany (didn't feel like going for Greater Germany) in about 1862. Nicely ahead of history
.By this point I had switched to interventionist and my economy was rolling along nicely. In 1865 the first major crisis happened when Hungarian nationalists were backed by the UK. Austria gave in within about 20 days, before any other power had even picked a side, and so the nation of Hungary (which was actually larger than what was left of Austria itself) appeared overnight. I do think that could do with some working on.
Around 1880 Italy declared war on Two Sicilies again and after a bitter struggle eventually succeeded in annexing it and moving up to rank #6. The Chinese Empire also civilized so the Ottoman Empire finally lost its Great Power status.
The Ottomans though had twice fought and defeated Egypt and basically had the entire middle east back under their control, which was much better than I had expected.
I was the first nation to get Colonial Negotiations and so immediately started going for Mauritania (further I could reach from my naval bases). The scramble was ok, but forming dominions was obviously the only way to get vast swathes of land under my control. I had an intense race with Italy over Waddai that in the end made me dominionise the entirity of my other colonies (I grabbed Bas Congo off France in a short war so expanded from there too), while Italy had already done that with Somalia and South Sudan/Kenya areas. This got up to about level 25 but a crisis never started because Romanian nationalists were continually trying to secede from Austria and Hungary despite never getting any actual support, which started a cooldown. That's something I hope can be fixed. In the end I won solely due to Italy running out of CP just before I did. Dutch Africa was also a surprise, although they dominioned every single state they got until the last one (Zambia), too. This meant that Britain got almost nothing while France was the one and only country not to have dominioned all its states (excluding the little bits Britain got and Italian West Morocco).
Austria, Italy, the Ottomans, China and Japan were jostling over the bottom 3 GP slots quite a lot (Austria was the only one never to lose it) and when Italy briefly lost it I rapidly sphered and allied them so when they regained it I had two GP allies by about 1880.
Having already constructed the Kiel and Panama canals I declared war on Egypt to add them to my sphere (the influence race was a nightmare with everyone banning each other). During this war a crisis started over Polish independence that had my two allies (Italy and the UK) against Austria, France and Russia. Due to my war I couldn't take part, which I found immensely frustrating, as it went right up to a war and Italy got absolutely demolished. As soon as I had defeated Egypt I built the Suez canal and declared war on France to cut it down to size in an attempt to rescue Italy. Sadly for the Italians it was already too late, and Austria took Venetia back while France grabbed Piedmont. After some immense battles I finally broke the French and proceded to attempt to punish them by occupying as much of their territory as possible to create the conditions for a rebellion. Sure enough, after I cut them down to size & humiliated them too for good measure, anarcho liberals took over, and then were immediately toppled by a communist rebellion.
That did make me smile. Sadly Jacobins took it back to a democracy soon afterwards, but the effect of destroying France for a good decade had been achieved. Sadly, this brought an unintended consequence. My heavy use of subsidies had brought my economy toward a standstill, and the collapse of the French market sent such a shockwave across the Global economy that countries everywhere were thrown into recession. Seeing my now horrific losses I tried to liberalise my economy (I had -5% tarriffs, but I ended all subsidies). This didn't work either, and I was losing up to £1000 per day even when I removed the tariffs. Small countries began to default, but this steadily got bigger (Khiva, Colombia, Portugal) for example. The French market wasn't the only one which had been destroyed either, as the Italian obliteration in the Great War over Poland had seen them exchange hands between communists and finally reactionaries and had them ranked as low #70. In a desperate attempt to kick start my economy, in about 1893 I started the second Great War when I backed Polish independence from Russia. An entente of Russia/Austria/France/Persia formed up against Germany/Britain/Hungary (my new second GP ally), with the Ottoman Empire (rank #9) also allied with both me and Hungary. The Netherlands, Belgium (but Belgium wasn't called in due to a separate truce) and Denmark were also in my sphere while Italy was still in its constant civil war and Spain had been racked by rebellion for over a decade so neither were relevant.
This horrific war ended with brutal losses for all sided. Austria was torn apart by me and Hungary while the severely weakened France was an easy victory. Russia on the other hand took a massive effort to defeat, although I captured St Petersburg early on as Russia and Persia had launched a combined invasion of the Ottoman Empire, which overwhelmed the Ottoman forces while me and Hungary were busy fighting Austria. Eventually I was able to send an army to turn back the Persians at Konya but that was rather too little too late. The war ended with the cutting down to size of France, the cutting down to size + Hungarian annexation of Austrian West Galicia from Austria and the cutting down to size of Russia, plus independence of Russian Poland (which immediately annexed Krakow when I brought Krakow out of the Russian sphere during a later war.
This still didn't fix my economy though, and realising this (and being so far ahead in prestige terms) I decided to deliberately ramp up my spending. In 1905 I finally defaulted on over £2.5 million of debt (mostly to myself) but only dropped to #2 in prestige. I'd begun to finally see signs of recovery in 1901 but was in such debt by that time that I pressed ahead anyway. This default finally brought the long recession to an end and global growth resumed soon afterwards.
After this, periodic wars to cut France down to size to stop it ever being a threat, which usually also involved cutting Russia down to size (I'd gone way past the infamy limit a long time ago) were the norm. I liberated Bohemia-Moravia from Austria and freed South Tyrol to return it to Italy and also liberated the United Baltic Provinces from Russia. In the most recent war (to free the United Baltic Provinces in 1916) France and Russia proved a significantly harder challenge to overcome and also had the USA on their side (not Austria in that war though) and the USA obliterated my navy, much to my dismay. The USA were the only country to match my military score so I peaced out early when Russia gave in without enforcing a cut down to size on France (which had also annilihated one of my four armies on the western front after I'd had to remove one army to deal with American landings at Hamburg). The Eastern Front was still relatively successful but of course as always the Russians just kept on coming. I had 3 armies on the eastern front (of lower quality - No tanks or aircraft) and would use battle score while often sending one back for reinforcements then exchange it on the front to win the wars.
The last war makes me think that the final 20 years could see a possibly changing dynamic (I might not be able to win all wars so easily anymore) but as war is the only thing left to do my interest has waned somewhat. The Ottomans haven't lost any land whatsoever, Italy is its roughly historic lands. I would post a screenshot of the whole map but I have no idea where it saves those things =P.
Bugs
Most of these are fairly minor, I had no CTD's or anything severe.
- Some newspaper articles reference events without actually writing the article. For instance, when Belgium became a Great Power, there was an article about it that just said ___STR_0_0 or something like that.
- During the scramble for Africa, sometimes I would click on a state and it would say it was too far from the nearest naval base when I went to upgrade it (if in a race). If I then upgraded another state and went back it would allow me to upgrade it. If I didn't have another state to click I would have to randomly click lots of provinces until eventually when I clicked there it would work. Most irritating. I did have screenshots of this but I forgot to upload them via steam so I lost them. Oops.
- At the "pick a country" screen, it says the USA is rank #10 and a secondary power while the Netherlands is rank #8 and a Great Power. Obviously this isn't true when you start. The Netherlands couldn't be allied with due to not having two great power allies when I sphered it despite it not being allied with anyone and me only being allied with the UK too. I just used yesmen as this was obviously some sort of bug but I hope it can be fixed.
Positives
- Land combat rework. These changes were fantastic. Previously I found wars relatively mundane in V2. Now the building armies requires a lot more thought and smashing the French was a lot of fun.
- Fast occupations. Link to the above, this made wars a lot more fluid and dynamic. No more splitting into 20 stacks of 3 either.
- Opportunistic AI. I mentioned Mexico declaring war on the USA during the ACW in my overview, but this was just one of a number of times where the AI sensed a weakness and seized at the opportunity. That wasn't the only example either. Belgium declared war on France (after I'd cut France down) to acquire Champagne and would have been successful if the Austrians hadn't rescued the French. Poland annexing Krakow as soon as I had Russia distracted was another example that I noticed.
- The AI actually makes amphibious assaults. While the UK doesn't do it all that often, it has certainly been known to and thus cannot be ignored. But even powers who share a border with you might try and sneak an army around you. Russia did it to me by landing at Kiel during one of our wars, I was just mousing past from the Western Front to the Eastern Front and suddenly noticed, much to my horror.
- Crises. These are a great way of getting wars between the Great Powers. I was expecting Ottoman dismemberment due to what I'd read but the Ottomans haven't lost any and only a couple of crises where Greece was forced to back down due to the UK/German/Hungarian alliance being much stronger than the French/Austrian/Russian alliance.
- Naval limits. NO MORE DREADNOUGHT SPAM. Having to actually think and plan ahead with your navy, while also doing a lot more navy research, is great. It's no longer something you can completely ignore. And if you don't pay enough attention and find yourself at war with the UK or the USA late on... well... that's some expensive scrap metal at the bottom of the ocean.
- Colonising. In general the new colonisation method is a lot better at simulating an actual scramble. Competition is much fiercer and you really feel like you are "rushing" to get as much done as soon as you can. A much more rewarding experience.
- Being able to see why the AI will or won't accept something.
- Industry being a nice challenge to start up, and making you really need State Capitalism at first to get it going. Much more interactive, much more rewarding.
- Synergy bonus. Woo!
- Capitalists reserving the last two factory spots for late game factories. Although I did briefly have to switch back to SC in order to build a Tank factory, the Aircraft factories were already built and plenty of Telephone factories and radio factories also exist.
- Having to really think about what you research. The commerce and naval tabs really do matter now.
- The Global economy in general being less prone to bizarre sudden crashes due to wars and big fluctuations. I know mine collapsed when two GP markets were both crushed but at least I could understand why this happened. It was realistic.
- Rebellions being something you really have to actually worry about. I've had a couple of minor communist rebellions but also two or three major rebellions that required multiple armies to defeat. France, Italy and Spain have had much more major rebellions. As have other countries. And you don't need to have lost a war for them to win either.
- Other parts of the world being much more active and interesting. Bolivia was carved up in South America between Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina. Dai Nam and Siam both expanded in Asia. China after forming and became a hotbed of crises and influence battles between Japan, the UK and Russia. Guangxi was a particularly strong replacement nation even though Yunnan and Nationalist China merged back into 'China' proper.
- Newspapers. These are quite nice for immersion, even if I don't read that many of the articles. Every now and then something catches my eye.
Plus many other things I can't remember right now.
Negatives
- Dominions. These are far from the game breaking experience some people have made out, but they certainly are a problem. I'll talk about this more in the suggestions section.
- Not being able to ally with spherelings due to them being allied to other Great Powers. This was particularly bothersome for me with the Netherlands and also later on with Switzerland.
- Colonial Points. While the instant spam of dominion making in 1836 was only vaguely annoying, the mass dominionisation in order to free up CP during the actual scramble was a lot more upsetting. I get that this was kinda how it was intended but I didn't really enjoy seeing the Dutch advance through a multicoloured jigsaw puzzle.
- Strange AI wargoals. When a Portuguese dominion had a revolution, Portugal called the UK in and it promptly annexed part of Mozambique instead of helping Portugal restore order. The UK also grabbed part of Peru (as did France, but I used Free People to get rid of the French presence). Mexico adding a wargoal to humilate the USA was another. It would have gained California if it wasn't for that.
- Falling behind in colonial races due to not automatically upgrading.
Suggestions
Most of these are about the Dominion system.
- To prevent the instant creation of dominions in 1836, make it so dominions require Nationalism and Imperialism before they can be made.
- For real dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand), make a requirement that every core has to be COLONISED before they can be released. Doesn't matter who by (so if the US had grabbed a bit of Canada, Canada could still be released). This would stop the horrible looking cases of British controlled inner Australia.
- For real dominions, make it so 75% of the cores have to be owned in order for that dominion to be released. This fixes the Goa -> India issue.
- A "cooldown" period before you can make a dominion. The Netherlands would not instantly make Namibia a dominion. It would consolidate first. I suggest that a state has to be owned for at least 5 years, maybe 10, before it can be be released as part of a dominion. The actual number of years can be worked out by cleverer folks than I in order to make it well balanced. Either this or a certain percentage of your culture has to be there. That'd probably be better actually. Just something to stop you instantly creating a dominion as soon as you create the protectorate of Bas-Congo.
- Only Great Powers can release dominions. Why is Portugal releasing dominions when it can't have them in it's Sphere of Influence and thus loses their market? Either that or some method where secondary powers still gain first access to their dominions markets.
- Any country which gets sphered instantly loses any alliance with another Great Power. This solves the not being able to ally your sphereling issue.
- Please make it so you can set states to automatically upgrade during colonial races. A warning when you're low on Colonial Points would also be useful.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on HoD. This thread ended up being somewhat bigger than I'd expected it too. Oops. =P.
Thanks for reading (if you didn't skip it all ;P)
