Hearts of Iron IV

[Solmyr]

Which is a bit weird because HoI4 Turkey is Kemalist.

[grumbler]

Had a lot of fun with a recent run with the Kaiserreich mod.  I had played a fair amount as the US in a previous run, but not much happened.  In this run, I used the "avoid the civil war" mod and had a lot of fun figuring out how to avoid the war, and then lots of wars broke out all over the place.

An amusing flaw in the mod was that countries are arbitrarily limited in the number of divisions they can raise, based on their mobilization level.  Since raising mobilization levels depends on the number of factories one country has compared to its nearest rival, the US was able to make a ton of factories and thus not mobilize very much, keeping the army small.  As a result, my US had far more ships and aircraft than it could possibly use (even arming my allies, puppets, and misc other countries to the teeth via lend-lease).

Still, it was the only HoI game I have completed to date.  It never really got boring, even if I was a spectator (who created ironclad blockades) a lot of the time.  I'd recommend the mod to anyone who is still (for some reason) interested in the game.  In fact, I may do a Germany play (I did that once before and was having fun until Paradox wrecked my save with another save-wrecking update).

[Syt]

(I did that once before and was having fun until Paradox wrecked my save with another save-wrecking update).

In Steam you should be able to revert to previous patches using the betas functionality in the game's properties.

[celedhring]

Kaiserreich is superfun. Only way I play HoI4 nowadays.

[Razgovory]

Kaiserreich is superfun. Only way I play HoI4 nowadays.

Yeah, it's a hoot.  I actually like it better than the vanilla game.  My current game as Fascist Russia has Europe divided between me and the socialists in Britain, France, and Italy while liberal democracy flowers in China and Japan.  Next game I'll try would be France.  Having a red Napoleon over run Europe sounds like fun.

[frunk]

World Ablaze is a decent mod as well, although I haven't played in a few months.

[grumbler]

(I did that once before and was having fun until Paradox wrecked my save with another save-wrecking update).

In Steam you should be able to revert to previous patches using the betas functionality in the game's properties.

Alas, I was unable to do that for the update involved.  I can't remember why (maybe the KR mod had also been updated and wouldn't work with the older version of HoI).

[Syt]

Oh, good point. I forgot that you can't revert to previous mod versions  from rge workshop.

[garbon]

In the upcoming dlc, Poland will have an option to construct an off map nuclear reactor that will give them one nuke per year.

[Tamas]

See this why Kasierreich is the best way to play this game. Its full of silly premises from the getgo and it's alt history to boot so you are not annoyed with the events unfolding having no basis in reality, like it also happens with vanilla.

[FunkMonk]

TNO is the gold standard for HoI4 mods.

[Razgovory]

I have recently played the worst HOI4 mod: The New Order Last Days of Europe.  It takes place in an alternate reality where the Germans won WW2 and decided to destroy the Mediterranean, the Congo, and most of West Africa.  They built a dam in the strait of Gibraltar creating more salting land  to live on at the expense of destroying the economy of every port city in the Mediterranean.  There is also a huge lake in the middle of Belgian Congo, though I don't know why.  Much of West Africa is just blacked out because apparently the Luftwaffe just drops bombs on random villages in Africa.

The stupid geography changes aren't even the bad part.  The game revolves the weakest aspect of HOI4, peace.  If a big war breaks out it goes nuclear and the game ends.  That's probably realistic but very boring.  Instead it's mostly about decisions, events and focuses.  There is a very simplistic economy model that isn't interesting or intuitive.  I have no idea what the goals are in this mod let alone how to achieve them.  My guess is that you are supposed to just sit around until Nazi Germany collapses.  Sitting around for 40 years waiting for an event to fire isn't exactly interesting game play.  But even that isn't the worst part.

You know how in vanilla HOI4 you get a few flavor events like the Hindenburg crash or Amelia Earhart circumnavigating the globe? TNO has a whole bunch of these and they are very long and very poorly written.  The developers say that their mod is narrative driven which might be code for "how to annoy and bore Raz at the same time".  At one point I was clicking on Focuses to see what they did and the flavor text called me a "Liberal Pussy"  I honestly think that some the people who made this game are actual fascists and the bizarre evil that the Nazis have wrought upon the world is actually the world they want to live in.

On the Bright side, I have also found the best mod for HOI4.

[Razgovory]

TNO is the gold standard for HoI4 mods.

I had just written a terrible review for that.

[FunkMonk]

On the Bright side, I have also found the best mod for HOI4.

[garbon]

Meanwhile in the latest dev diary for HOI:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi4-devdiary-tank-designer.1470406/

Before closing, I would like to note a few things on the subject of giving feedback. When I first started at Paradox, the direct line between community and developers was a major plus for me, because I liked the idea of talking to the community without having to run every post past three different marketing departments first. However, this kind of direct community access comes at a heavy cost for us. As many of you have noticed, we have gotten a little sparse in these forums in the last few months, or even years. The reason for this is that often we do face a debate culture that is not enjoyable to take part in, where it is taken as a given that the devs are either lazy or incompetent and where everything we do is viewed through that lens. Not only is it incredibly demoralizing to spend months of your life creating something, only to see the people you made it for tear it to shreds, it is also a debate that gives no one anything. We aren't paid to wade through pages of abuse to find a few nuggets of useful feedback, and so that feedback is not acted on. A lot of you have access to sources in languages we don't speak or have studied some detail that we weren't aware of. Such feedback is very useful - just a few weeks ago someone sent me a plan of the Turkish railways in 1936 taken from an old Turkish book, so I was able to use that to update the Turkish railway setup at game start.

We're not looking for fawning adoration (although we will certainly accept it) or a forum in which our decisions can't be discussed with a critical eye. We want to have your feedback, but there is no point to it if it can't be delivered with a minimum of respect for each other. If you want to have a forum where developers are willing to go and answer your questions, then it is also your responsibility to build a place where we feel welcome, and where we can disagree in a productive and professional manner. It costs you nothing to assume that we were acting in good faith. None of us wake up in the morning and go to work in order to do a bad job.

I entirely get that the forums have become quite the cesspool at times - which is a startingly contrast to the endless fanboism previously seen at Paradox.

I do wonder though is it all a cultural change of the posters or have Paradox's priorities fallen out of sync with fans.