"Quick and dirty" optimal path through paranoia focuses

[Joshua Happytree]

Just a little table to sum up paranoia focus tree effects. Nothing fancy yet I hope it may save time for someone. The objectives were:

• Pass through Paranoia as quickly as possible
• Minimize or totally exclude gambles in exceeding 25 paranoia limit
• Use minimal PP investment in paranoia decreasing decisions
• If possible use only "Forge Satisfactory Production Reports" that do not add extra purges.

Table key:

• Paranoia columns
  • Start - paranoia at the start of the focus
  • Focus - how much paranoia the focus adds
  • Trials - if the focus ends in trials that reduce paranoia then how much the reduction is
  • Decisions - if we take decisions than for how much they reduce paranoia
  • End - paranoia when the focus ends
  • Decision - what decision we take
• Greyed out Focus A through D - you can put whatever focuses you want as long as they do not affect paranoia. That means not taking "NKVD Primacy" If you want you can go for it as well yet you'll need to balance it out with another PP investment into "Forging reports" decision.

There are two major paths I see and both can be fleshed out according to your preference. The first one never exceeds paranoia at the expense of spending more PP on one extra "Forge reports" decision. The upside to it is that you can do 105 days of focuses before you jump onto paranoia tree.

The second path uses as little PP as possible at the expense of taking one small gamble of exceeding 25 paranoia limit at the very end. And it also reduces the focuses before paranoia tree to just 70 days.

Comments:

• The table assumes you stay with Yagoda as the Head of NKVD. If you enact a paranoia reducing decision that kills Yagoda then both Yezhov and Beria will add one extra weekly paranoia.
• You can spend less days on focuses before you delve into paranoia tree in both variants yet it won't reduce paranoia and it won't save you PP on paranoia reducing decisions
• You can have more focuses before paranoia tree yet you'll need to make more paranoia decreasing decisions to balance them out
• The only focuses that truly decrease paranoia in paranoia tree are - "Behead the Snake" and "Centralization and Discipline". "Stalin Constitution" has negative net effect on paranoia and the rest of paranoia reducing focuses have zero net effect - whatever decrease you get from them you'll spend in weekly paranoia growth.

I used HoI4 source files to do the analysis and frankly speaking haven't done much in-game testing yet. So if you spot an error I'll be grateful for your corrections - I'm just beginning to learn what means what in HoI4 sources

 

[ComradeKroo]

Focus on eliminate paranoia asap is not the optimal way. Some Focus is very important early on, like stability, some extra PP, or how fast you get tech slots. If you focus only on paranoia path, you sure disable some important benefits.
I found that focus on Spanish civil war is quite good, give you ~100 army xp, or NKVD in the 3rd focus (first 105 days) which give +1 spy slot, is really good (though it give you 20 paranoia).

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Focus on eliminate paranoia asap is not the optimal way. Some Focus is very important early on, like stability, some extra PP, or how fast you get tech slots. If you focus only on paranoia path, you sure disable some important benefits.

The table is not a suggestion you need to start paranoia tree ASAP - you can do some focuses even beyond 70/105 days I put into the table. It's just you won't be able to do many and you'll need to pay extra PP to take paranoia reducing decisions. Or risk a Great Purge or multiple smaller ones.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

This is great- Thanks for sharing!

 

[Alvin mj]

Unfortunately, it looks like your tables need updating, but otherwise good work.

 

[AscendedAlteran]

"collectivization process" requires "secure the administration" so both have to be switched, otherwise good job

 

[Woland777]

"collectivization process" requires "secure the administration" so both have to be switched, otherwise good job

There is bigger problem, unfortunately. Finishing of Anti-Soviet Trotzkyist Center increases Paranoia by 1% per week, so it growths with 3% per week in total, not 2%.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

There is bigger problem, unfortunately. Finishing of Anti-Soviet Trotzkyist Center increases Paranoia by 1% per week, so it growths with 3% per week in total, not 2%.

I've only been playing the beta, and I also noticed that uptick in weekly paranoia towards the end of my purge focuses. I wasn't sure when it changed, so thanks for calling that out.

Due that extra ticking paranoia, I found I had to spend extra PP on purge decisions in the last several months before finally removing the paranoia spirit. Even so, this is still a great guide, as the sequencing of these focuses saved me from the really bad purge events. Just make sure you keep an extra 50PP in reserve for emergencies, and you should be fine.

 

[Zardoz100]

Could you upload the actual excel file? I'd like it to tinker with.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

There are two major paths I see and both can be fleshed out according to your preference. The first one never exceeds paranoia at the expense of spending more PP on one extra "Forge reports" decision. The upside to it is that you can do 105 days of focuses before you jump onto paranoia tree.

It's a good attempt, but you make a couple of mistakes in your sheet.

1) The "AntI-Soviet troskyist centre" adds 1 paranoia / week, which isn't in your numbers. That makes paranoia far less manageable.

2) You're looking at start and end in your spreadsheet, you need to look at it dynamically. E.g. your decisions exceed 25 paranoia for 4 weeks whilst doing the "Zinovyevite Terrorist Centre", etc.

It's a reasonable way through, but it doesn't at all remove the risk of RNG purge. I'd guess you've got a >80% chance of getting at least one RNG purge using your method, and > 50% of getting two. You actually need to be more aggressive and purge the Navy at least once if you want to avoid RNG cringe happening to, say, your captain of industry...

 

[sekelsenmat]

I tried to follow this and I found 2 problems so far following proposal 1 (I'm in the end of 36):

1> "Path of Marxism Leninism" takes 35 days, not 70, so I started my purge tree 35 days after the suggested date.

2> Something happens during "Zinovyevite Terrorist Centre", no idea what but Paranoia rises beyond the expected and you get an RNG purge. This can be avoided by using PP for the forge reports stuff.

It's a reasonable way through, but it doesn't at all remove the risk of RNG purge. I'd guess you've got a >80% chance of getting at least one RNG purge using your method, and > 50% of getting two. You actually need to be more aggressive and purge the Navy at least once if you want to avoid RNG cringe happening to, say, your captain of industry...

Won't it work with 0% RNG if you monitor the paranoia and use "forge reports"?

 

[Sarmatian]

I tried to follow this and I found 2 problems so far following proposal 1 (I'm in the end of 36):

1> "Path of Marxism Leninism" takes 35 days, not 70, so I started my purge tree 35 days after the suggested date.

2> Something happens during "Zinovyevite Terrorist Centre", no idea what but Paranoia rises beyond the expected and you get an RNG purge. This can be avoided by using PP for the forge reports stuff.




Won't it work with 0% RNG if you monitor the paranoia and use "forge reports"?

Forge reports has a cooldown, and increases consumer goods by 5%. You could use it early and then have it available once or twice more by the end, but early on, the paranoia is manageable, so it's not such a clear cut decision. If you use it later, chances are, you might get only one (or even none) opportunity to use it once more.

Inspect the navy is relatively safe. Even if you lose an admiral, who cares. The most important thing is to not lose the civilian industry guy, and some of the better generals.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Won't it work with 0% RNG if you monitor the paranoia and use "forge reports"?

What @Sarmatian said. Except it’s 2% consumer goods for forge reports, but yeah.

It’s virtually impossible not to have some form of RNG nerf that will end up with you being in an even worst situation than the horror that happened historically.

PS it’s all tedious as hell. But hey, many in the community seem to love to have these silly mini RNG game in game (battle for bosphorus and NSB are full of them), so whatever; I’m bored of complaining about how rubbish they are.

 

[sekelsenmat]

Ok, I tried again and there are even greater problems:

1> Already mentioned that the paranoia increases to 3 per week at a certain point
2> Large purge focuses have a 175 days wait times before you can take them, not 70 days like the spreadsheet suggests, so you end up with tons of time where you can take non-purge focuses with your paranoia increasing by 3 per week and no way to decrease it, so it seems impossible to avoid RNG.

What I don't like is when 2 good and historically important generals accuse each other, I like to assign my generals to the regions where they fought and don't want to be missing key generals. Also there are some nerfs like the airforce one which aren't marked as temporary so I'm afraid of taking them and ending up with a permanent nerf which can't be removed... The best purge events are those that give you a nerf for 365 days, so at least they are temporary.

 

[Xiziz]

Ok, I tried again and there are even greater problems:

1> Already mentioned that the paranoia increases to 3 per week at a certain point
2> Large purge focuses have a 175 days wait times before you can take them, not 70 days like the spreadsheet suggests, so you end up with tons of time where you can take non-purge focuses with your paranoia increasing by 3 per week and no way to decrease it, so it seems impossible to avoid RNG.

What I don't like is when 2 good and historically important generals accuse each other, I like to assign my generals to the regions where they fought and don't want to be missing key generals. Also there are some nerfs like the airforce one which aren't marked as temporary so I'm afraid of taking them and ending up with a permanent nerf which can't be removed... The best purge events are those that give you a nerf for 365 days, so at least they are temporary.

The airforce/navy ones are removed via decisions at the cost of pp. I assume all the ones that don't say they are temporary work this way. Probably made this way so you can not remove the temporary ones(usually affecting things that Hurt your buildup) instantly but makes you pay(pp) to remove the others.