I revived the French Empire and played one of the most intense games of HOI4 I ever fought. I don't have screenshots of some of the darker points of the war, but there was a period where I was at war with Germany, Italy, and Spain at the same time and the enemy was only a few spaces from Paris. Thanks to constant micro, superior divisions, and the fact that I conquered the British Empire several months before the German onslaught, I was able to come out ahead.
While it was a great game, there were a number of pretty severe glitches or oversights that I felt the dev team should fix before the next DLC. I have screenshots of some of the worst offenders, as well as the end result of the game, a Franco-American cold war:
1. Greece doomed to suffer from 0% stability: This happened when I puppeted non-aligned Greece. Poor Greece was stuck with the incompetent prime minister they start the game with, strangely without the George II national spirit. This minister, with his crippling stability debuff, is clearly meant to be a temporary figure who you replace in the opening moves of the game. So, if you get him back later in the game, there's no way to get rid of him.
2. Very bad guesses about Tsar Boris' death: If you read this event, it mentions how Germany's generic non-aligned leader (puppeted them after the Axis fell), the NKVD, and the United Kingdom are all possibly complicit in Tsar Boris' death. Problem is, at this point in the game, the United Kingdom no longer exists, communism (and ostensibly, the NKVD) is out of power in Russia, and Germany is just a client state of France. Not to mention that I was on fairly good terms with Bulgaria's faction (fighting alongside each other in the Axis war) for most of the game, including when this event fired.
3. Unification of Iberia without my consent: It seems like every ahistorical game, no matter what happens, communist Iberia will always spout up, and it's very annoying. Spain was my puppet, and I suddenly get an event that they've agreed to unification with communist Portugal. As Spain's puppetmaster, shouldn't I have been consulted about this? No? Instead, I had to deal with a war costing hundreds of thousands of French lives when Iberia inevitably declared war on me.
4. The "Anti" Bolshevik Accord: This one is more amusing than anything else, but a faction claiming to oppose communism is in fact a veritable internationale, as you can see on the right. Communist Turkey was the faction leader.
5. Verminous products of the Enlightenment: I love this description when applied to most other non-aligned nations, but as Napoleonic France, it's a bit of a head scratcher, as Napoleon rose to power because of the Enlightenment, and the Bonapartes would have certainly considered themselves to be of the classical liberal tradition.
6. The Franco-American Cold War: This was the end result. The United States is still at war with the Balkan Entente in a conflict that will probably never end, but at least most of Eurasia and Africa are at peace. I lead the Międzymorze, despite the fact that Poland has been lost for years.
These were the problems I had images for, but there were two other major problems that were far more severe than either of these:
7. The fall of Switzerland: As the Allies were a non-factor for the majority of the game, when Germany went on the warpath, most democratic and non-aligned nations joined Poland's Międzymorze, including Switzerland. I did not join the faction at this time, since I was afraid of being attacked from behind by communist Spain, which was in the Comintern, when the Soviet Union decided to take a bite out of eastern Poland. This was a mistake, since when Poland capitulated as the only major in the faction, Switzerland immediately got annexed by Germany in the peace deal, even though they were holding out pretty well. Realistically, the Swiss would never have surrendered like this. And this very nearly cost me the game, as the Germans were able to pierce a huge hole into my country that I miraculously managed to close after months of intense warfare.
8. Spain and Gibraltar: I puppeted the United Kingdom after I defeated them, but stupidly forgot to give myself Gibraltar. To my horror, in the middle of the war with the Axis, I noticed that Spain was justifying on the United Kingdom, no doubt to retake Gibraltar. Yet there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent this from happening. I would have done almost anything to placate the communist demands in order to avoid a three-front war, but the game doesn't let me order the UK to cede Gibraltar, and there was no way I could have annexed the UK fast enough and then returned Gibraltar to Spain.
Overall though, it was a fun game, and it was very rewarding to come out on top despite the fact that it seemed that I was at war with the game's mechanics more than any actual enemy. Let me know what you think!
While it was a great game, there were a number of pretty severe glitches or oversights that I felt the dev team should fix before the next DLC. I have screenshots of some of the worst offenders, as well as the end result of the game, a Franco-American cold war:
1. Greece doomed to suffer from 0% stability: This happened when I puppeted non-aligned Greece. Poor Greece was stuck with the incompetent prime minister they start the game with, strangely without the George II national spirit. This minister, with his crippling stability debuff, is clearly meant to be a temporary figure who you replace in the opening moves of the game. So, if you get him back later in the game, there's no way to get rid of him.
2. Very bad guesses about Tsar Boris' death: If you read this event, it mentions how Germany's generic non-aligned leader (puppeted them after the Axis fell), the NKVD, and the United Kingdom are all possibly complicit in Tsar Boris' death. Problem is, at this point in the game, the United Kingdom no longer exists, communism (and ostensibly, the NKVD) is out of power in Russia, and Germany is just a client state of France. Not to mention that I was on fairly good terms with Bulgaria's faction (fighting alongside each other in the Axis war) for most of the game, including when this event fired.
3. Unification of Iberia without my consent: It seems like every ahistorical game, no matter what happens, communist Iberia will always spout up, and it's very annoying. Spain was my puppet, and I suddenly get an event that they've agreed to unification with communist Portugal. As Spain's puppetmaster, shouldn't I have been consulted about this? No? Instead, I had to deal with a war costing hundreds of thousands of French lives when Iberia inevitably declared war on me.
4. The "Anti" Bolshevik Accord: This one is more amusing than anything else, but a faction claiming to oppose communism is in fact a veritable internationale, as you can see on the right. Communist Turkey was the faction leader.
5. Verminous products of the Enlightenment: I love this description when applied to most other non-aligned nations, but as Napoleonic France, it's a bit of a head scratcher, as Napoleon rose to power because of the Enlightenment, and the Bonapartes would have certainly considered themselves to be of the classical liberal tradition.
6. The Franco-American Cold War: This was the end result. The United States is still at war with the Balkan Entente in a conflict that will probably never end, but at least most of Eurasia and Africa are at peace. I lead the Międzymorze, despite the fact that Poland has been lost for years.
These were the problems I had images for, but there were two other major problems that were far more severe than either of these:
7. The fall of Switzerland: As the Allies were a non-factor for the majority of the game, when Germany went on the warpath, most democratic and non-aligned nations joined Poland's Międzymorze, including Switzerland. I did not join the faction at this time, since I was afraid of being attacked from behind by communist Spain, which was in the Comintern, when the Soviet Union decided to take a bite out of eastern Poland. This was a mistake, since when Poland capitulated as the only major in the faction, Switzerland immediately got annexed by Germany in the peace deal, even though they were holding out pretty well. Realistically, the Swiss would never have surrendered like this. And this very nearly cost me the game, as the Germans were able to pierce a huge hole into my country that I miraculously managed to close after months of intense warfare.
8. Spain and Gibraltar: I puppeted the United Kingdom after I defeated them, but stupidly forgot to give myself Gibraltar. To my horror, in the middle of the war with the Axis, I noticed that Spain was justifying on the United Kingdom, no doubt to retake Gibraltar. Yet there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent this from happening. I would have done almost anything to placate the communist demands in order to avoid a three-front war, but the game doesn't let me order the UK to cede Gibraltar, and there was no way I could have annexed the UK fast enough and then returned Gibraltar to Spain.
Overall though, it was a fun game, and it was very rewarding to come out on top despite the fact that it seemed that I was at war with the game's mechanics more than any actual enemy. Let me know what you think!
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