mini majors

[Axe99]

if you do, please upload it in the workshop and let me/us know somehow! I love challenging gameplay!

Will do . My main ambitions are to mod naval stuff in, but the aim is basically to tweak things to how I want it, and that will generally veer towards historically plausible where it's fun and I can, so it'll mean minors will be challenging to play. If they're already challenging in the base game, though, more the better .

 

[Denkt]

I think the problem for a aspiring major is population because you can only recruit a very small portion of the population non core provinces.

but look at the numbers they actually produced: no more than a few hundred for each country

During peace time countries do not tend to have massive stockpiles of weapons. Many of the minors that had decent weapon industry was conquered early on. How many modern weapon you can build depend on your access to the needed resources and as a minor you access are limited. Also how many weapons you need depend on your army size and minors tend to have smaller armies then majors.

And this is ignoring the fact that in many cases the weapons they did produce were partly license-built or based on foreign designs.

Everyone used alot of license, even majors.

Just because you can research stuff in the game don't mean you can build them, try build a tank as a country who lack iron for example.

 

[Letti Jim]

France is mini major too!

 

[Viktor_Vertex]

I'm curious about Venezuela, which is HOI3 had a 110 oil province. In HOI4 you get factories in exchange for resources, I don't know the exact math but I'd reckon that they would have quite a big boost in factories just from selling oil alone, therefore having an industrial backing to make a strong army, perhaps even stronger than Brazil ?

 

[FOARP]

During peace time countries do not tend to have massive stockpiles of weapons.

What I said was true even of Hungary (total tank construction, all home-developed models - ~500) and Romania (total aircraft construction, all home-developed models - ~400).

The idea that either country was capable of building a major-power-beating war machine (which is what a mini-major implies) just doesn't float.

But never mind, you'll still be able to blob out as Albania and conquer the world in HOI4. Let's just not pretend anything like this could ever have happened historically.

 

[Denkt]

Nobody could conquer the whole world historically.

And as I said the problem minor nation face is a lack of resources.

But a lack of resources did not stop minors from developing some advanced weapons. Sweden for example did build dual purpose automatically loading 152 mm guns which are in service even today. Meanwhile Germany did not even have dual purpose guns.

 

[FOARP]

Nobody could conquer the whole world historically.

And as I said the problem minor nation face is a lack of resources.

China has vast resources, her real shortage was industry.

 

[Denkt]

China has vast resources, her real shortage was industry.

For many of the european nations, resources are a larger problem, Finland don't even seems to have any resources at all.

 

[Viktor_Vertex]

Nobody could conquer the whole world historically.

Define "conquer".
Are these possible ?
Military occupation ? Nope.
World spanning commonwealth ? Maybe
Establishing democracy/fascism/communism as a dominant world political system ? Very much possible, just not very likely/easy.

 

[Denkt]

Define "conquer". Military occupation ? Nope.

This is what conquer the world useally means

In the game you can most likely do world conquest as any country, or atleast with most of them.

 

[Aries666]

Well to be honest maybe I should remove Canada from the pool because they are a superpower

Only because of their armoured moose cavalry

 

[Paladino]

I'm curious about Venezuela, which is HOI3 had a 110 oil province. In HOI4 you get factories in exchange for resources, I don't know the exact math but I'd reckon that they would have quite a big boost in factories just from selling oil alone, therefore having an industrial backing to make a strong army, perhaps even stronger than Brazil ?

At least for tungsten it was 5 for each factory, saw this on the 2nd WWW if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Viktor_Vertex]

This is what conquer the world useally means

In the game you can most likely do world conquest as any country, or atleast with most of them.

My apologies, edited my post so its more clear now.



Yeah, Albania world conquest by Marco Antonio was quite funny. In my WC games in HOI 3 usually the greatest problem when taking on Majors is that you lack named leaders, effectively making your troops 10-30 % less effective directly, and even more so since enemy commanders will pick tactics that counter yours...

 

[Denkt]

HOI3 ai was so scripted it was blind which is why countries can make such conquest.

 

[Czert]

im curious about the Arabs if they count as a regional power ?

well, at that time the did have anythink to resemble heavy industry. so no chance.

 

[Orlunu]

The simple fact is that very, very few countries in the world produced, or even had the capacity to produce, the weapons of modern war (modern tanks, aircraft, warships, artillery). Even China did not produce any tanks or aircraft during the game period. The classic response here is to say "they could have had they wanted to", but China clearly did want to have such weapons.

Best China produced a couple thousand aircraft in the first half of the '40s, many of which were transports and so on, ofc, but several hundred were combat aircraft, including several of their own designs and variations, ranging from obsolescent to best in the theatre. They also produced tanks and armoured cars, but I've been unable to find numbers.

They also produced enough small arms and munitions that they were exporting a significant proportion despite outfitting their own army of over 200,000 men.

On top of that, Best China extracted several million tons of coal a year, churned out a few million tons of iron and steel, mostly from their own raw materials, but they imported as well, a similar weight of petrochemical fuel, only a few tens of thousands of tons of aluminium and a couple thousand tons of rare metals, sadly. Had a population of about 30 million, and an absurd wealth density compared to anywhere else in mainland Asia. If you're looking for a reason that Japan was able to still field war materiel after nearly a decade of fighting a war with hardly any natural resources, factories, or trading partners, Manchukuo's the answer.

It's probably the best example of a mini-major that you could get in the period, particularly with its own proto-satellite state in Mengjiang and the great number of White Russian cossacks who swore themselves to service under Emperor Pu'yi. Sadly, Paradox forgot that it existed. Oh, well, at least they're great with mod support, so we can fix the mistake.

 

[Number 7]

Poland could become very very respectable as a mini major if they aren't wiped off the map in '39. Historically they produced quite a lot of good equipment (invasion of poland had hundreds of polish tanks and planes) and held out for nearly as long as France managed to hold out for.

 

[FOARP]

Best China produced a couple thousand aircraft in the first half of the '40s, many of which were transports and so on, ofc, but several hundred were combat aircraft, including several of their own designs and variations, ranging from obsolescent to best in the theatre. They also produced tanks and armoured cars, but I've been unable to find numbers.

EDIT: Oh yeah, well, Manchuria isn't exactly what most people would call China per-se. More just an extension of Japan's war industry.

 

[reashot]

When I get this game I'll immediately play as Turkey.

I just hope that there's a special quest & event for all the other minor powers so there's actually an incentives for choosing them ya' know? Like the "Refah incident" where Turkey can choose to join whether the Axis or the Allied to avenge the sinking or build weapon factories or whatever.

Spoiler: My 2 cents

When I play strategy games usually I avoid "major powers" like the plague. Why? Because its too easy. Back when I play Victoria II (still do BTW) I played as the Prussian first & you know what happened? I conquered the world!...... No, not really, but I was the undisputed ruler of the world #1 in the great power list too. After that things start to get to boring & I decided to play as a minor power & what'chu know, I actually like playing as them better than the major powers.

 

[Mannstien]

How about Czechoslovakia, they had a good arm's industry, maybe see if you can get into the Axis before AH decides to ask for part of your land than start gobbling up the Empire again?