Probably my new least favorite dlc and patch.
Air Designer - its fine, I guess? It lacks a lot of components it really should have and you can't make distinction between different historical plains because of it. Balance is bad but I'm sure that will be fixed with a few patches, the lack of flavor or components to make planes distinct from one another I doubt.
Ait Wing Overhaul - pretty awful, its like having a spider in a corner and shooting it with a gun to kill it, sure AI doesn't overcrowded airports now but that was always a minor issue to me. Not being able to make small stacks of nav's or transport plains is unrealistic and irritating. Playing as a any minor where you have a small airforce but several zones is a exercise in pain.
Peace Conferences - with the new hotfix its ok, the inability to finish off nations in peace deals is still game breaking though, like literally its creating so many rump states the game slows down to the point of being unplayable.
Occupation Laws Changes - its more historical which I like, civilian should not just outperform everything in ~2 years. However for so many achievements requiring large conquest as minors the additional losses under all laws is very painful. It feels like a good change when I played a major but I think it will make minors irritating to play.
Switzerland - I played fascist path its not fun. You don't get any research slots and are stuck at 3 forever. You also end up hitting like 70% fascist but still cant flip gov type, and when you join the war your army and industry is a complete joke because you just don't have any. I haven't tried the other too so I wont critique although there is only 1 possible research slot on democratic which again feels like a mistake.
Ethiopia - I did fighting Italy without international help it was quite fun, really back and forth some interesting missions and focuses and eventually pushing the Italians back. Post Italian war though its kind just pain you only start with 2 and I think your capped at 3 research slots. Which again is horrible because you cant do anything interesting at that point no time for anything but industry and infantry equipment.
Italy - I did historical with Mussolini. I thought it was fine not much different then pre patch tbh. The war in Ethiopia is harder but I still easily won it before they could get a gov in exile and just ignored some missions to raise compliance and focused on Italy itself. I think the boost you get and the country modifiers make you a bit weaker than you where before the patch, don't know how I feel about that in terms of game balance but from a historical perspective its not bad. Hoped it would be more fun but it was still fine.
Balance of Power - Pretty boring in Italy, seems more important in non-historical though so maybe that's just me. Switzerland as the player you just want it to go to the other side bit better still pretty uninteresting. Ethiopia's is actually good serious consideration of if I could give up military bonuses to get better future potential and meaningfully impacted focus tree.
Overall maybe 3/10? Some of the focus trees are good but the game overall feels worse mainly due to the stuff introduced in the patch. Airplane designer needs a lot of work balance + more flavor and components. Air rework needs to be reworked.
