What is (and will be) the point to play as Allies ?

[Secret Master]

So, how will you determine that you "outproduced" the world?

To outproduce the world, add in 190 base for Brits, ~20 for France, 40 Brazil, ~30 China, 18 Mexico, 32 Canada, 30 Australia, 8 NZ, 17 south africa, 20 Chile, 44 Spain, 25 Portugal, 25 Turkey, 13 Venezuella, around 1254. IMO, later is not doable, IF neutrals do mobilize their economy, which they tend to do.

Just a preview of a screenshot to hold you over until I gather some data in the save game. I think I did it.

 

[Magnus Imperator Rex]

damn, that's a lot of IC.

IIRC, the U.S. produced about 50% of the world's GDP by 45.

has a US player ever lost by invasion in MP?

 

[frolix42]

If I played as UK, US or SOV in HoI3, I would feel that whatever I could do in game would have little significance, since my AI "partners" could win just fine without me in the end.

Given the fact that HoI3 was not the most exploit-free game, once the player understood and read how to use exploits the player had to gimp themselves and not exploit in order to have a challenging game, even as Germany.

My favorite in HoI has always been the USSR and my USSR campaigns generally weren't complete until my AI "partners", the UK and USA, were Communist. Playing as the USA or UK, after beating Germany, conquering the USSR is reasonably challenging. And of course there is the challenge of beating Germany by 1943 or sooner.

I never thought that playing as an easier nation in any Paradox game was inherently pointless. That being said, there are certain nations I loathe playing as in certain Paradox Games. @Karmapowered is entitled to his preference of nations to play as.

 

[mursolini]

Just a preview of a screenshot to hold you over until I gather some data in the save game. I think I did it.

For sake of preserving hype, I think you didn`t, as the world by this stage should produce ~1500 to 1700 effective IC.

Given the fact that HoI3 was not the most exploit-free game, once the player understood and read how to use exploits the player had to gimp themselves and not exploit in order to have a challenging game, even as Germany.

My favorite in HoI has always been the USSR and my USSR campaigns generally weren't complete until my AI "partners", the UK and USA, were Communist. Playing as the USA or UK, after beating Germany, conquering the USSR is reasonably challenging. And of course there is the challenge of beating Germany by 1943 or sooner.

I never thought that playing as an easier nation in any Paradox game was inherently pointless. That being said, there are certain nations I loathe playing as in certain Paradox Games. @Karmapowered is entitled to his preference of nations to play as.

Remind us, what is challenging about beating Germany by start of 1942 as USSR?

Germany is (only?) challenging in 1944 scenario. USA, GB are not challenging at all. France, Poland (on VH) are challenging, so is Romania and Hungary. Italy is fun and relaxing game.

 

[frolix42]

Remind us, what is challenging about beating Germany by start of 1942 as USSR?

There is nothing challenging about any video game.

At least not since Billy L. Mitchell beat them in 1982, so there is no point in anyone playing video games since then.

Germany is (only?) challenging in 1944 scenario. USA, GB are not challenging at all. France, Poland (on VH) are challenging, so is Romania and Hungary. Italy is fun and relaxing game.

I think the 100% subjective, self-aggrandizing post above runs counter to the fact that not everyone's game experience is universal.

In HoI4:

• I want some starts to be interesting and accessible for brand new players.
• I want some starts to be interesting and challenging for players that have 2000+ hours.

Maybe @podcat and the rest of his team are working hard like Christmas Elves to make these two dreams come true. In any case, I hope the two statements above don't turn out to be mutually exclusive. In this respect Paradox is helped by the fact that their games (not including Stellaris) are by default based around starts that are of asymmetrically difficulty. I think it's interesting that a noob and a pro can both potentially play the same game, with the same rules and handicaps, and be equally challenged. And I don't think it's a game design flaw if Billy Mitchell feels his skills are less than 100% challenged when playing as the United States.

 

[phantomrider]

Just a preview of a screenshot to hold you over until I gather some data in the save game. I think I did it.

How long in this game will it be before (or if) the USA runs out of resources to support this amount of industrial capacity? I haven't played vanilla HOI3 in awhile but I know in DWI (II) there is a downside to getting too much industrial capacity (usually rares are limiting) as Germany at least.

 

[CaptRobau]

I think a big issue that makes the Allies a bit too powerful is that all sides, unless event driven, go for unconditional surrender. The Axis were not at all like that. Their goals were always much more defined:

• Germany wanted to stop his invasion of the Soviet Union at a line between Archangelsk and Astrakhan (White Sea and Caspian Sea), as more would be too much to control
• Italy was happy with dominating just the Mediterranean
• Japan wanted a quick victory over the Chinese and some new puppets in Northern China, but China escalated the war and didn't want peace
• Japan's goal with the attack at Pearl Harbor and in Southeast Asia was to thoroughly shock the US and the Allies and force them to sign a negotiated peace that would give the Japanese some colonies/puppets

Much of the early war was shaped by the defeat of France and the establishment of Vichy France. Knocking out the French, allowed the Axis to even have a chance in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Otherwise the war would've been over even sooner. HOI4 needs to really allow the Axis to force members of the Allies out of the war to make both the Allies and the Axis as fun as they could be. Some suggestions:

• If Great Britain loses its entire army in France, instead of managing to evacuate a substantial number soldiers at Dunkirk and other places, then there should be a serious possibility of a British surrender. Even more so if in the following months the Axis manage to tear into the Royal Air Force or Navy. The British are a defiant folk, but that was in large part because they felt safe on their island. This would be less the case without an army and not at all without an air force or navy. If the defeat is thorough enough and the USA is not in the war, I'd even say that a general Axis-Allied peace would be in the cards. In the case of a German invasion, their should be the possiblity of a Vichy France-Free France like split.
• Japan needs to be able to get Northern China from the Nationalists in peace talks. Chiang-Kai Shek didn't want to sign a peace, but that's not because the Japanese weren't asking for one. For example if there is no Xi'an incident. In that case the KMT might want to keep their focus on eradicating the communists and uniting the country and biding their time with the Japanese until that's been achieved.
• South Africa should be able to not declarat war when Poland is invaded. There was a large enough pro-German feeling in the country that neutrality/involvement hung in the balance.
• Canadian involvement was assured by the time of Poland, but it wasn't as clear cut around the time of Munich. It should be possible for Canada to remain neutral at that time.

 

[mursolini]

There is nothing challenging about any video game.
At least not since Billy L. Mitchell beat them in 1982, so there is no point in anyone playing them since then.

I think the 100% subjective, self-aggrandizing post above runs counter to the fact that not everyone's game experience is universal.

Tell us your of experience, but spare your humour.

In HoI4:

• I want some starts to be interesting and accessible for brand new players.
• I want some starts to be interesting and challenging for players that have 2000+ hours.

Maybe @podcat and the rest of his team are working hard like Christmas Elves to make these two dreams come true. In any case, I hope the two statements above don't turn out to be mutually exclusive. In this respect Paradox is helped by the fact that their games (not including Stellaris) are by default based around starts that are of asymmetrically difficulty. I think it's interesting that a noob and a pro can both potentially play the same game, with the same rules and handicaps, and be equally challenged. And I don't think it's a game design flaw if Billy Mitchell feels his skills are less than 100% challenged when playing as the United States.

You seem to confuse the experience of players with faction starting position.

 

[Secret Master]

You honestly believe that the US can out produce the entire rest of the world? You're insane.

This is the United States of Planned Economies!

Introduction

The question posed by this thread is whether the United States can outproduce the world. In order to undertake this experiment, I took control of the USA and followed a few simple rules.

1) No CGM
2) Capital ships in the build queue will be finished before the war starts (but not necessarily right away).
3) I will not raise threat on anyone to get laws early.
4) I will not game factions to join the war early.
5) I will trade with the world via autotrade (no starving the Axis).
6) I will not occupy IC or resources (turned out to be moot; see below).
7) I will buy or sell supplies as needed (turned out to be moot; see below).
8) No manipulation of dissent to change politics or engage the "Prepare for War" decision.

This is a production test, so the US will only defend its shores. It will not fight at all except to protect convoys (turned out to be moot; see below) or defend its currently held bases. Per other production tests I've done, occupying enemy territory and resources, even a little, can throw off results.

Also, since we are not trying to test whether or not the US can reach specific military production targets, I will just build IC, supplies, or anything else I deem necessary.

Short version:

I achieved this level of production before resources were exhausted:

Moot Points:

Before going any further, we need to talk about what IC investment to the tune of 1505 effective IC does to the game. First, it turns the US into a net importer of raw materials. This severely hurts the Allies, as it cuts them off from their usual supply of rares, energy, and steel. Britain found itself losing to the Axis in the Med and India even before Japan declared war.

But even more important, if the US is a net importer, Japan won't declare war because the US ends up importing resources from even Japan and Germany. In this game, thanks to the insatiable desire of US IC for resources, the US is desperately trading with everyone it can. And since US flagged convoys are moving German and Japanese coal to US shores, the blockade against the Axis powers is only halfway ineffective. Hitler's war ends up being partially financed by US dollars.

The result of this is that I had to manually declare war on Japan using the noneutrality cheat on January 2nd, 1942, just to see what US IC looks like under maximum laws. I didn't even have enough threat to DOW without noneutrality thanks to how the war was turning out.

Building IC

Aside from the initial ships in the queue at game start, I purely built IC the entire time. It is a very boring way to play. That being said, it takes a long time to get construction practicals up. Normally, I might cook some other stuff that I need to get initial practicals in place, but since IC is the only thing I care about, that's all I built. I eventually reached a 71% cost and time reduction in construction practicals, but most of that reduction didn't kick in until 39.

The reason is because the New Deal sucks out a ton of IC into consumer goods. I used a consumer goods reducing minister until 39 to cut this cost, and then switched to a resource minister and started monitoring my trades heavily (keeping resources up). The US does not have an IC minister you can appoint under FDR's government, and I wasn't going to manipulate my politics using dissent. (There is a spare IC minister somewhere; a vice president I think.)

The lack of threat throughout this particular game (and I'm not raising it myself) makes it harder to get better production in place even after the New Deal is removed. A lot of US IC is tied up in bad laws; but once the floodgates open in late 1939, you can produce tons of IC.

One further problem with US laws is consumer goods orientation; while it has advantages, once you get past 600 IC or so, the boost you could hypothetically get from heavy industry emphasis outweighs the extra consumer goods. But since I can't turn communist, it's a moot point.

Resources

As you can see in the above picture, the US is 24 hours away from a national crisis of coal. While there is plenty of coal (and in HOI3, energy more or less means coal, since you can't trade hydroelectricity or nuclear power to other countries that are across oceans in 1936), most of the world's coal is either tied up in the war or consumed by other countries. I reached 1505 IC, but it is not sustainable.

But resource numbers in January of 1942 only tell part of the story. It turns out that sucking all the world's resources towards the United States screws, well, everyone. Part of the problem is that the US ends up importing everything. Rares are the first thing she needs to import, but good relations with the Soviets and Britain can help cover some of that. But eventually, coal takes the lead. And the US sucks up all the free coal in the world, even from the Axis, as time goes on.

But that means a ton of smaller minors are more or less starved for energy. And eventually, even majors like Britain start to feel the hurt as they mobilize their economies.

The problem is acute. When I totaled up the IC of various powers, I thought some countries seemed to be a bit low (Australia, New Zealand). It turned out that several Dominions and other minors had low IC because they couldn't fuel anything. The world of HOI3 really depends on trade (good), but when the US just buys every damn thing and never exports a single unit of raw materials, the system crashes. Canada and Hungary and Romania were fine, but some minors had less effective IC than base IC even at full economic mobilization.

This actually helped me achieve my goal, as it lowered the IC bar a tad.

World IC

Calculating world IC was kind of a pain in the arse (I'm not doing it again, either). Part of the difficulty, aside from tag switching to every damn country, is that it's always in a bit of flux. Between occupations, resource starvation, and ministers, in a month it can swing back and forth considerably.

By my count, the world had a total of 1476 IC. But this figure is derived from Japan occupying most of India, a stalemate in Barbarossa that stopped well short of Leningrad, a UK that is starving for resources (both lost convoys and lack of resources), and a Soviet Union that has just had its special decisions expire. Some specific numbers:

GER 350
SOV 288
ITA 123
Japan 207
ENG 150
Sweden 35
Canada 56
Romania 57
Hungary 47
Switzerland 21

I would like to point out another little detail. The Soviet Union had a hard time enacting better laws this time when the war started. Barbarossa started significantly later than usual for some damn reason, and even after it started, the Soviets didn't have enough money to get their laws into gear when it started. I'm not entirely sure why the Soviets had so little money even after the shooting started, but someone might argue that economic problems nerfed Soviet IC to lower levels than it should be. But in reviewing other save games, SOV IC seems roughly on par with what it should be.

I do wonder what the weird threat levels have done to the IC of other countries, though.

Conclusion

The game's economy is not really designed to handle the kind of economies of scale that come into play under these circumstances. We've seen how the game's edges fray when I've run other production tests, but I think this test shows just how interdependent the world economy is in HOI3.

Given resource limitations, a more reasonable sustainable amount of IC would probably be around 1000 effective IC, depending on how effectively you can stockpile rares and energy. (After the energy crash on January 4th, the effective IC of the USA in the above game is 992, with a continued deficit of 136 rares per day even at the level.)

I do think that, despite the relatively short-lived nature of the IC production peak, that this test demonstrates that in HOI3, the USA can outproduce the entire rest of the world for a very brief amount of time. To say that the USA in HOI3 can outproduce the rest of the world is not an insane statement to make, even if the strategy that leads you to a point where the US can outproduce the world is not optimum for winning the game.

 

[Alliegorical]

This is the United States of Planned Economies!

Introduction

The question posed by this thread is whether the United States can outproduce the world. In order to undertake this experiment, I took control of the USA and followed a few simple rules.

1) No CGM
2) Capital ships in the build queue will be finished before the war starts (but not necessarily right away).
3) I will not raise threat on anyone to get laws early.
4) I will not game factions to join the war early.
5) I will trade with the world via autotrade (no starving the Axis).
6) I will not occupy IC or resources (turned out to be moot; see below).
7) I will buy or sell supplies as needed (turned out to be moot; see below).
8) No manipulation of dissent to change politics or engage the "Prepare for War" decision.

This is a production test, so the US will only defend its shores. It will not fight at all except to protect convoys (turned out to be moot; see below) or defend its currently held bases. Per other production tests I've done, occupying enemy territory and resources, even a little, can throw off results.

Also, since we are not trying to test whether or not the US can reach specific military production targets, I will just build IC, supplies, or anything else I deem necessary.

Short version:

I achieved this level of production before resources were exhausted:

Moot Points:

Before going any further, we need to talk about what IC investment to the tune of 1505 effective IC does to the game. First, it turns the US into a net importer of raw materials. This severely hurts the Allies, as it cuts them off from their usual supply of rares, energy, and steel. Britain found itself losing to the Axis in the Med and India even before Japan declared war.

But even more important, if the US is a net importer, Japan won't declare war because the US ends up importing resources from even Japan and Germany. In this game, thanks to the insatiable desire of US IC for resources, the US is desperately trading with everyone it can. And since US flagged convoys are moving German and Japanese coal to US shores, the blockade against the Axis powers is only halfway ineffective. Hitler's war ends up being partially financed by US dollars.

The result of this is that I had to manually declare war on Japan using the noneutrality cheat on January 2nd, 1942, just to see what US IC looks like under maximum laws. I didn't even have enough threat to DOW without noneutrality thanks to how the war was turning out.

Building IC

Aside from the initial ships in the queue at game start, I purely built IC the entire time. It is a very boring way to play. That being said, it takes a long time to get construction practicals up. Normally, I might cook some other stuff that I need to get initial practicals in place, but since IC is the only thing I care about, that's all I built. I eventually reached a 71% cost and time reduction in construction practicals, but most of that reduction didn't kick in until 39.

The reason is because the New Deal sucks out a ton of IC into consumer goods. I used a consumer goods reducing minister until 39 to cut this cost, and then switched to a resource minister and started monitoring my trades heavily (keeping resources up). The US does not have an IC minister you can appoint under FDR's government, and I wasn't going to manipulate my politics using dissent. (There is a spare IC minister somewhere; a vice president I think.)

The lack of threat throughout this particular game (and I'm not raising it myself) makes it harder to get better production in place even after the New Deal is removed. A lot of US IC is tied up in bad laws; but once the floodgates open in late 1939, you can produce tons of IC.

One further problem with US laws is consumer goods orientation; while it has advantages, once you get past 600 IC or so, the boost you could hypothetically get from heavy industry emphasis outweighs the extra consumer goods. But since I can't turn communist, it's a moot point.

Resources

As you can see in the above picture, the US is 24 hours away from a national crisis of coal. While there is plenty of coal (and in HOI3, energy more or less means coal, since you can't trade hydroelectricity or nuclear power to other countries that are across oceans in 1936), most of the world's coal is either tied up in the war or consumed by other countries. I reached 1505 IC, but it is not sustainable.

But resource numbers in January of 1942 only tell part of the story. It turns out that sucking all the world's resources towards the United States screws, well, everyone. Part of the problem is that the US ends up importing everything. Rares are the first thing she needs to import, but good relations with the Soviets and Britain can help cover some of that. But eventually, coal takes the lead. And the US sucks up all the free coal in the world, even from the Axis, as time goes on.

But that means a ton of smaller minors are more or less starved for energy. And eventually, even majors like Britain start to feel the hurt as they mobilize their economies.

The problem is acute. When I totaled up the IC of various powers, I thought some countries seemed to be a bit low (Australia, New Zealand). It turned out that several Dominions and other minors had low IC because they couldn't fuel anything. The world of HOI3 really depends on trade (good), but when the US just buys every damn thing and never exports a single unit of raw materials, the system crashes. Canada and Hungary and Romania were fine, but some minors had less effective IC than base IC even at full economic mobilization.

This actually helped me achieve my goal, as it lowered the IC bar a tad.

World IC

Calculating world IC was kind of a pain in the arse (I'm not doing it again, either). Part of the difficulty, aside from tag switching to every damn country, is that it's always in a bit of flux. Between occupations, resource starvation, and ministers, in a month it can swing back and forth considerably.

By my count, the world had a total of 1476 IC. But this figure is derived from Japan occupying most of India, a stalemate in Barbarossa that stopped well short of Leningrad, a UK that is starving for resources (both lost convoys and lack of resources), and a Soviet Union that has just had its special decisions expire. Some specific numbers:

GER 350
SOV 288
ITA 123
Japan 207
ENG 150
Sweden 35
Canada 56
Romania 57
Hungary 47
Switzerland 21

I would like to point out another little detail. The Soviet Union had a hard time enacting better laws this time when the war started. Barbarossa started significantly later than usual for some damn reason, and even after it started, the Soviets didn't have enough money to get their laws into gear when it started. I'm not entirely sure why the Soviets had so little money even after the shooting started, but someone might argue that economic problems nerfed Soviet IC to lower levels than it should be. But in reviewing other save games, SOV IC seems roughly on par with what it should be.

I do wonder what the weird threat levels have done to the IC of other countries, though.

Conclusion

The game's economy is not really designed to handle the kind of economies of scale that come into play under these circumstances. We've seen how the game's edges fray when I've run other production tests, but I think this test shows just how interdependent the world economy is in HOI3.

Given resource limitations, a more reasonable sustainable amount of IC would probably be around 1000 effective IC, depending on how effectively you can stockpile rares and energy. (After the energy crash on January 4th, the effective IC of the USA in the above game is 992, with a continued deficit of 136 rares per day even at the level.)

I do think that, despite the relatively short-lived nature of the IC production peak, that this test demonstrates that in HOI3, the USA can outproduce the entire rest of the world for a very brief amount of time. To say that the USA in HOI3 can outproduce the rest of the world is not an insane statement to make, even if the strategy that leads you to a point where the US can outproduce the world is not optimum for winning the game.

This only proves that HoI3 was far from perfect. I thought we were discussing HoI4.

And even so, this is so strange an experiment (no US player is ever going to spend the first six years of the game content to only "defend the coast") that it's practically meaningless.

 

[alanschu]

And even so, this is so strange an experiment (no US player is ever going to spend the first six years of the game content to only "defend the coast") that it's practically meaningless.

You're right. They will likely do more to press their advantage even more.

 

[Secret Master]

This only proves that HoI3 was far from perfect. I thought we were discussing HoI4.

Except that karma, to whom you were responding, was responding to derpybeagle, who was in turn talking about his experience in HOI3.

So, I naturally assumed that you were claiming that it was insane to outproduce the world in HOI3.

And even so, this is so strange an experiment (no US player is ever going to spend the first six years of the game content to only "defend the coast") that it's practically meaningless.

How is it meaningless when you claim it is insane to think that the US can out produce everyone? Your claim was simple: it is insane to think the US could outproduce everyone (and I assumed you meant HOI3 for the reasons I mention above). My test is designed to demonstrate that, however briefly, it is possible for the US to outproduce the entire world. I even made it clear in my post that I didn't pursue any offensive operations so as not to spoil the test results. After all, mursoloni already pointed out that conquering the world's IC would let the US outproduce everyone (even if you just annex a couple of majors). I also didn't spoil my test by building 12 STR and then bombing the Axis powers into the stone age to kill their IC.

We're not talking about winning the game; we're assessing the merits of your statement regarding US production. I only need about 400 or so IC to win the game easily as the US (abusing the AI means you can work harder to win with far less IC). I don't even know what I would do with a sustainable IC of around 900. I suppose I could Lend-Lease even more, but I'm sure as hell not giving the Soviet Union 300 IC a day just to let them defeat Germany super fast. (If I could establish safe Lend-Lease lines, I suppose I could arm Chiang's nationalists and run Operation Unthinkable from both east and west.

You're right. They will likely do more to press their advantage even more.

You're right.

And that's just trying to reach silly historical production targets, not actually building units that fight at high efficiency.

 

[alanschu]

And that's just trying to reach silly historical production targets, not actually building units that fight at high efficiency.

Ahahahah those stockpiles!

 

[HeilLoki]

Heck, I've seen Italy pulling off an successful invasion of the UK, when I played as Japan. Somehow the italian AI managed to push the british out of the Mediterranean and didn't stop there.

Just sayin'

 

[Caesar15]

This makes me wonder, in terms of industrial capability at the end of the war, how much of the worlds industrials power would belong to the U.S?

 

[frolix42]

This makes me wonder, in terms of industrial capability at the end of the war, how much of the worlds industrials power would belong to the U.S?

I've heard many times that the United States accounted for 50% of the world's GDP at the end of WW2, though that is probably apocryphal.

 

[Axe99]

HoI defines itself as a grand strategy game that attempts to simulate the World War 2 conflict.

In HoI3, I have always been playing as Axis powers, GER or JAP, not because of some morbid fascination for those regimes, but because I had the knowledge beforehand that the game would be loaded on purpose for the Allies, in order for their AI to always win without player intervention.

Now one could argue that, in a "historical" simulator, this is indeed what should happen, since it is what did happen historically. However, such an argument discards a bit too quickly the fact that HoI also remains a game, and as such should present some kind of challenge to the player. That's what I think at least.

If I played as UK, US or SOV in HoI3, I would feel that whatever I could do in game would have little significance, since my AI "partners" could win just fine without me in the end. FRA or CHI are somewhat of an exception, since both powers got nerfed to impotence compared to their historical counter-parts, so simple survival with these powers could be seen as challenge enough.

Ideally, whatever side the player joins in game should get disavantages enough so that victory isn't guaranteed without proper actions of the player.

So my question is, what is the point for you to play as Allies (by convenience, I will include SOV here) in HoI3? By extension, I would be interested in knowing what will be the point of doing so in HoI4 ? I realize that it should be more of a sandbox game, but that it also will have less foreseeable conclusions is only an assumption for me at this point.

I'm late to the thread here, and there's so much going on in these forums that I'm not going to read the whole thread, but given that in HoI3 Germany was buffed to high heaven and far, far easier to win with than either the UK or the USSR, I'm not sure you have a lot to worry about . In HoI3 I played the Allies (except the US - although the US was still harder to win with than Germany) for a challenge, I played Germany if I wanted to have it easy! I also saw the German AI take and hold Europe on many occasions (this is with me playing as an allied minor) - where without my intervention (or even with) there was no leading a successful invasion. Japan and Italy, of course, are challenging, although the weak naval AI means you have to play by your own house rules not to decimate the USN.

Note that in my games, I limit myself in certain ways to not exploit the poor 'ole AI. If you don't limit yourself once you know what you're doing, then there's very little challenge at all playing as anyone.

On your broader point, if the sides line up historically, then Germany is at a strategic disadvantage that really can't not be in the game and it still be a WW2 game. The challenge for Germany is to knock out the Soviets (likely to be easier in HoI4 than it probably was historically, just like it was easier in HoI1, 2 and 3). Do this, and in-game I'd expect that'd help them get the strategic resources they need to make a fight of it. Beyond that, it comes down to the challenge provided by the AI. I'm hoping that HoI4 makes Germany more challenging, but I suspect it'll still be a good deal easier than it was historically.

So, on the original topic, I play as China, France, Italy or the UK for a challenge, Japan and the USSR for a bit of a challenge (as the German AI isn't quite good enough to make good on its advantages - although I found Barbarossa a good deal easier to win as Germany than the USSR) and Germany and the US if I want to explore mechanics or go on a rampage. However - in HoI4, with the more sandbox nature of it all, I'm hoping that difficulty can be a bit more dynamic as countries line up differently diplomatically.

 

[that-guy-is-it]

UK: managing a global empire, trying to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy while defending colonial holdings in the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia. Lots of fighting on land, in the sea and in the air. You are everywhere at once, and you need to do well in all fields, you can't just specialise in, for example, land combat.

Soviet Union: building defenses and a strong army, then trying to fend off the Axis invaison, fighting to turn the tide and eventually take the fight to Germany. I love the transition from being the underdog to overwhelming the Germans. Also, as another person said, it offers a great deal of freedom. You have plenty time until the Germans invade in '41 (probably less certain in the more dynamic HOI4), and you have a strong economy, lots of manpower and a huge landmass. Plenty of room to try all sorts of things.

France: self-explanatory: do your utmost to hold ground, then when/if you fall, you can switch to playing as the British, Russians, Americans or some other allied country.

I've never played as the USA, so can't speak for them.

USA: Spreads Freedom and Democracy. With Sniper-rounds to the head.

That is how I play the US at least. Take out the Axis and let the AI do the work while I do other stuff, to influence WWII to my liking without being limited.

 

[misterbean]

Holy IC, Batman, that is a lot!