Huh? The four year plan is a national focus selection that has no bearing on how you use political power. If you want to suggest choosing that tree over Rhineland, well an argument can be made but this ignores the fact that the sooner you get Hess and Bormann as as duo, the less bonus you get in political power.
Not generally a good idea, because the research penalties are so high. Really do not see what that has to do with what first political power moves are.
Wrong. 4yp timing is entirely dependent on how you use your pp. Unless you either juggle all your early industry techs, or take free trade or krupp with your first 150 pp, you will not complete 1936 industry in time to begin 1937 industry before 4yp completes. In that case you would have to take 4yp as your 5th focus instead of 4th. You dont take 4yp
over rhineland, you pick it after rhineland (unless youre doing very late rhineland games), because there arent many good focuses to pick before it. In competitive games it is more likely than not to see a Germany focus order be Rhineland into Tank Treaty into the industry tree.
Taking 4YP second focus is, as I stated above, actively shooting yourself in the foot. Your industry will be far behind a properly industry rushing Germany. Which, I didnt think was necessary to say because it is blindingly obvious, but it seems that I must, is a good idea. Industry is the one tech folder that no matter your country and strat, you always rush approximately 1 year ahead of time and more if you have research bonuses. Your inability to see the scale of the war and how industry plays in it is not anyone else's problem.
Political power is useless huh? How do you thibnk you get free trade (export focus is better given the number of materials that get exported) Hire Schact, or move to war economy.
War economy is nice, but that 150 political power is better spent on Schact (later Funk [the mic build bonus), export focus/free trade. Using poltical power to get Goebbels provides a short term gain. Rememer you can typically get 50 percent war support from Spanish Civil War and aces.
Finally, you do not use that three extra ministers to get war ministers, but things mentioned above, not to mention Guderian or Krupp or MAN to help speed up research, which is vital.
My contention was nowhere stated that any and all political power is useless. Rather the opposite. That political power is a means to an end. Having more of it is of less use than whatever else you could be doing if you are not spending it efficiently. Spending pp now to gain more pp later is enormously wasteful. PP now is worth more than pp later. And no, you are not using the later pp to do more important things than you were doing with the pp now. Ramping up your eco is the most important thing you could be doing with your opening moves, not delaying your eco in order to save up for taking high command before you need them.
War eco now is worth more than war eco in a year. It is 150 pp worth it unless in a year you were going to have gotten total mob anyway. Which enables you to delay GWE or outright ignore it in favor of IWE which provides a better payout anyway. Goebbels is the long term play, not the attache. Because they attache will invariably cost you more than 100 pp if you keep it a while, and when it goes away you lose the 10 ws. Goebbels also provides you with 6 stab over the long term. The xp gain from the attache is nice, but completely unnecessary. If you play out the civil war well, you will have all your templates ready, xp boosted tech going, and 500xp banked with any more incoming being wasted. Ace spam is usually banned in mp, but sure in sp you need neither attache nor early Goebbels to get War Eco, even if you do delay Rhineland till the second Sino-Japanese War, as is done sometimes in mp to screw the Allies. That just makes early war eco worth more, not less.
And no, export focus is not better. The research, construction, and production bonuses from Free Trade are vital in mp. Only in sp, where the ai is braindead and doesnt trade favorably within its faction is Free Trade not viable.
You are using the extra pp to get high command, not the things above because if you hadnt wasted time on getting the pp, you already have had the above earlier. You are actively delaying your early game build up which will seriously hamper you in the long term. And by not leaving room for Canaries, you are even worse off. Hes the most important of all the possible ministers you could have hired. Tech theft and collab governments are so much more brokenly op than anything else you could buy with your extra pp.
