Paradox Interactive Games Thread

[lfromnj]

I find Canada with the first dlc a solid beginner nation now. Safe and easy to manage and you can focus on a breakthrough army with either say Marines to island hop, a medium industry to get tanks , or mechanized with the research boost .   I find the current German AI has struggles to fully mop up Greece so you can go with mountaineers. Previously you had to either sacrifice manpower or industry but now you can get plenty of factories and enough manpower to focus on more special troops.

[Alben Barkley]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army! Also got an achievement: "We don't really like statistics: As the Soviet Union under Stalin, conquer Germany while suffering less than 1 million casualties total." I don't think it was even close (looked it up, I took about 300k casualties compared to about 30 million for real life USSR, or about 8.6 million only military)... Hell they were barely any tougher than Poland this time!

[DaleCooper]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army!

Is that Heart of Iron 3? I bought that a year ago and have been too tired to play it ever since.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army!

Is that Heart of Iron 3? I bought that a year ago and have been too tired to play it ever since.

Looks like Hearts of Iron 4.

[DaleCooper]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army!

Is that Heart of Iron 3? I bought that a year ago and have been too tired to play it ever since.

Looks like Hearts of Iron 4.

I think that was the one I bought. I did attempt to play it for a few minutes but it was too complicated.

[Alben Barkley]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army!

Is that Heart of Iron 3? I bought that a year ago and have been too tired to play it ever since.

Looks like Hearts of Iron 4.

I think that was the one I bought. I did attempt to play it for a few minutes but it was too complicated.

It is HOI4. It seems more complicated than it is. There is a fairly steep learning curve compared to most games but once you get it down, it's tons of fun. It's basically a WW2 simulator/sandbox you get to play around in. Basically infinite ways to challenge yourself to change the course of the war, or you can just do a fairly faithful simulation.

[DaleCooper]

My best USSR game yet. I took out Germany by 1937! Actual war only lasted a couple months! And I just used the starting army!

Is that Heart of Iron 3? I bought that a year ago and have been too tired to play it ever since.

Looks like Hearts of Iron 4.

I think that was the one I bought. I did attempt to play it for a few minutes but it was too complicated.

It is HOI4. It seems more complicated than it is. There is a fairly steep learning curve compared to most games but once you get it down, it's tons of fun. It's basically a WW2 simulator/sandbox you get to play around in. Basically infinite ways to challenge yourself to change the course of the war, or you can just do a fairly faithful simulation.

That sounds right up my alley, to the point where I wonder if it was made explicitly with me in mind. The only issue is that I can't handle games more complicated than Final Doom, and even that's pushing it.

[Alben Barkley]

The Last Romanov!

I put "Anastasia" on the throne of Poland and this lowly impostor has now grown to greatness, uniting the Slavs and reclaiming Russia. Taking Poland from a minor nation surrounded by two superpowers with only 40 rather weak divisions, low manpower, and just a handful of factories and planes and practically no navy at the start into a massive superpower in its own right, with cores on the defeated former Soviet Union and a greater industry and manpower than Germany. I even took Iran for good measure.

Poland may not exactly be a starter nation, but if you pull it off you can snowball into an absurdly large and powerful nation. The only time I won as Poland in the past (on Ironman mode with achievements on anyway), I sold out to the commies rather than defeated them, and even then just barely defended myself from Germany. Now I can easily take out the Nazis just like I did the Bolsheviks!

[DaleCooper]

I'm going to have to play this game.

[Alben Barkley]

Update: Germany, Japan, and Italy all defeated. Germany annexed (along with Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) and Italy puppeted. This is the first time I've beaten them all AND the USSR in the same game as Poland. (I did it before in a France game which I took all the way to 1948 for achievements; usually I stop before WW3 breaks out.) I now have 820 factories, 18.15 million manpower, and 346 divisions.

I'm going to have to play this game.

If you're going to, I'd recommend following along with some YouTube guides to start. I was going to recommend ScumpyDawg, whose videos helped me start out, but I just checked and he appears to have deleted all his videos! That's a shame. Bitt3rSteel is pretty good too though and he's still active.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Update: Germany, Japan, and Italy all defeated. Germany annexed (along with Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) and Italy puppeted. This is the first time I've beaten them all AND the USSR in the same game as Poland. (I did it before in a France game which I took all the way to 1948 for achievements; usually I stop before WW3 breaks out.) I now have 820 factories, 18.15 million manpower, and 346 divisions.

I'm going to have to play this game.

If you're going to, I'd recommend following along with some YouTube guides to start. I was going to recommend ScumpyDawg, whose videos helped me start out, but I just checked and he appears to have deleted all his videos! That's a shame. Bitt3rSteel is pretty good too though and he's still active.

Have you ever managed to conquer Ireland in this game?

[Alben Barkley]

Update: Germany, Japan, and Italy all defeated. Germany annexed (along with Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) and Italy puppeted. This is the first time I've beaten them all AND the USSR in the same game as Poland. (I did it before in a France game which I took all the way to 1948 for achievements; usually I stop before WW3 breaks out.) I now have 820 factories, 18.15 million manpower, and 346 divisions.

I'm going to have to play this game.

If you're going to, I'd recommend following along with some YouTube guides to start. I was going to recommend ScumpyDawg, whose videos helped me start out, but I just checked and he appears to have deleted all his videos! That's a shame. Bitt3rSteel is pretty good too though and he's still active.

Have you ever managed to conquer Ireland in this game?

Many times as Monarchist or Fascist Britain. Now I'd be more interested and impressed with the reverse though!

[DaleCooper]

I'm going to have to play this game.

If you're going to, I'd recommend following along with some YouTube guides to start. I was going to recommend ScumpyDawg, whose videos helped me start out, but I just checked and he appears to have deleted all his videos! That's a shame. Bitt3rSteel is pretty good too though and he's still active.

I don't know. I'm pretty opposed to YouTubers, but I might make an exception.

[Alben Barkley]

One of my proudest games yet, defeating the Axis as FRANCE by the end of 1937!



To do this, oppose Germany remilitarizing the Rhineland right at the start of the game. With RNG (and possibly the position of your troops, I had more luck it seemed when I didn't put them right on the German border but on a fallback line slightly behind it), the following will happen: Britain will refuse to help you, Germany will refuse to demilitarize, this will start war with Germany and also a civil war in France. Sounds terrible right? WRONG!

The civil war only involves a few divisions in Northern France and is quickly dealt with. Then you can turn all your attention to Germany. Simply defend the Maginot Line with a few weak divisions and begin pushing northward with your best divisions. The challenge is you will have low manpower, low supply, and zero public support for the war and your government. However, you do have a bigger army than them, and ultimately that should be enough to break them. It also helps if you create the "Little Entente" faction and invite Czechoslovakia and possibly Poland into the war, spreading the Germans thin. You can also get the British to join your faction despite their earlier refusal to help you. This also called Italy into the war for me; I took some of my Maginot troops and put them on the Italian line and simply held until I was done mopping up Germany. Then I turned attention to Italy, and they broke much easier than the Germans (with the help of Yugoslavia this time). Mussolini was deposed and the Italian government split in two, ending the war and fascism before Christmas 1937! (Germany capitulated in June.)

The only problem is I didn't have quite enough war score to take ALL of Germany, despite doing pretty much everything (all I saw the British do was a failed naval invasion of Konigsberg, ironically the one German city I couldn't take). This prevented me from getting an achievement with this run! Oh well, I guess I could do it again knowing what to do now. It was a very fun and satisfying game regardless. And I thought capping the Germans early as the Soviets was good!

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

One of my proudest games yet, defeating the Axis as FRANCE by the end of 1937!



To do this, oppose Germany remilitarizing the Rhineland right at the start of the game. With RNG (and possibly the position of your troops, I had more luck it seemed when I didn't put them right on the German border but on a fallback line slightly behind it), the following will happen: Britain will refuse to help you, Germany will refuse to demilitarize, this will start war with Germany and also a civil war in France. Sounds terrible right? WRONG!

The civil war only involves a few divisions in Northern France and is quickly dealt with. Then you can turn all your attention to Germany. Simply defend the Maginot Line with a few weak divisions and begin pushing northward with your best divisions. The challenge is you will have low manpower, low supply, and zero public support for the war and your government. However, you do have a bigger army than them, and ultimately that should be enough to break them. It also helps if you create the "Little Entente" faction and invite Czechoslovakia and possibly Poland into the war, spreading the Germans thin. You can also get the British to join your faction despite their earlier refusal to help you. This also called Italy into the war for me; I took some of my Maginot troops and put them on the Italian line and simply held until I was done mopping up Germany. Then I turned attention to Italy, and they broke much easier than the Germans (with the help of Yugoslavia this time). Mussolini was deposed and the Italian government split in two, ending the war and fascism before Christmas 1937! (Germany capitulated in June.)

The only problem is I didn't have quite enough war score to take ALL of Germany, despite doing pretty much everything (all I saw the British do was a failed naval invasion of Konigsberg, ironically the one German city I couldn't take). This prevented me from getting an achievement with this run! Oh well, I guess I could do it again knowing what to do now. It was a very fun and satisfying game regardless. And I thought capping the Germans early as the Soviets was good!

Can you try to defeat the Axis as Canada?

[Alben Barkley]

Can you try to defeat the Axis as Canada?

I have, but it’s a more conventional game where you side with the Allies, do D-Day landings, etc. Best I’ve done as Canada is lead the charge to defeat the Axis and turn West Germany into the Canadian Occupied Zone after a few years of war and a long build-up to it. I haven’t crushed them early and completely dominated them in the peace conference like you can as the French and Soviets. Reason is Canada starts out super weak and until recently it wasn’t even really possible to build them into a decent power with both manpower and industry, which still takes time to do. They’re still a minor power and start out as a British puppet (though in my Canadian game I broke free of Britain and joined a faction with the US).

The game is not the most realistic thing in the world, to say the least (we’re talking about a game in which I put “Anastasia” on the Polish throne and took over Germany and Russia, to say nothing of my games playing as the Pope… I’m sure you’d love those!). But it does roughly reflect the balance of power in the real world in 1936, easter eggs and gimmicks aside. So probably not possible to create a superpower Canada that steamrolls everybody without exploits. Not that a classic Allies game isn’t fun and rewarding in its own way, and Canada’s a fine country for that.

Although, I did beat the US as fascist Canada, but only with German help. Also the US is weak at the start. Maybe a little weaker than we were in real life for game balance reasons, but it’s also true we didn’t have a huge standing army and were isolationist.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Can you try to defeat the Axis as Canada?

I have, but it’s a more conventional game where you side with the Allies, do D-Day landings, etc. Best I’ve done as Canada is lead the charge to defeat the Axis and turn West Germany into the Canadian Occupied Zone after a few years of war and a long build-up to it. I haven’t crushed them early and completely dominated them in the peace conference like you can as the French and Soviets. Reason is Canada starts out super weak and until recently it wasn’t even really possible to build them into a decent power with both manpower and industry, which still takes time to do. They’re still a minor power and start out as a British puppet (though in my Canadian game I broke free of Britain and joined a faction with the US).

The game is not the most realistic thing in the world, to say the least (we’re talking about a game in which I put “Anastasia” on the Polish throne and took over Germany and Russia, to say nothing of my games playing as the Pope… I’m sure you’d love those!). But it does roughly reflect the balance of power in the real world in 1936, easter eggs and gimmicks aside. So probably not possible to create a superpower Canada that steamrolls everybody without exploits. Not that a classic Allies game isn’t fun and rewarding in its own way, and Canada’s a fine country for that.

Although, I did beat the US as fascist Canada, but only with German help. Also the US is weak at the start. Maybe a little weaker than we were in real life for game balance reasons, but it’s also true we didn’t have a huge standing army and were isolationist.

What do you do in the game if you play as somewhere like Mexico? Or say Sweden?

Actually a country that it seems it would be fun to play as if the events mirrored reality would be Finland.

[dead0man]

Can you try to defeat the Axis as Canada?

I have, but it’s a more conventional game where you side with the Allies, do D-Day landings, etc. Best I’ve done as Canada is lead the charge to defeat the Axis and turn West Germany into the Canadian Occupied Zone after a few years of war and a long build-up to it. I haven’t crushed them early and completely dominated them in the peace conference like you can as the French and Soviets. Reason is Canada starts out super weak and until recently it wasn’t even really possible to build them into a decent power with both manpower and industry, which still takes time to do. They’re still a minor power and start out as a British puppet (though in my Canadian game I broke free of Britain and joined a faction with the US).

The game is not the most realistic thing in the world, to say the least (we’re talking about a game in which I put “Anastasia” on the Polish throne and took over Germany and Russia, to say nothing of my games playing as the Pope… I’m sure you’d love those!). But it does roughly reflect the balance of power in the real world in 1936, easter eggs and gimmicks aside. So probably not possible to create a superpower Canada that steamrolls everybody without exploits. Not that a classic Allies game isn’t fun and rewarding in its own way, and Canada’s a fine country for that.

Although, I did beat the US as fascist Canada, but only with German help. Also the US is weak at the start. Maybe a little weaker than we were in real life for game balance reasons, but it’s also true we didn’t have a huge standing army and were isolationist.

What do you do in the game if you play as somewhere like Mexico? Or say Sweden?

as Mexico you can invade the US or start taking over Central Amercan countries until the US decides they don't want you to.  Sometimes it's the first country, sometimes they'll let you get away with a few.  It's a game, so if you're good (or play on an easy setting) you can actually beat the US.

I don't know if I've ever played as Sweden, but I'd imagine you could join with the Allies, the Fascists or the Commies or maybe some 4th way.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

I'm currently playing a Byzantium run rn in EU4, and oh my God, the absolute feeling of satisfaction of the Roman reclamation of the Empire is unbelievable.

[lfromnj]

Can you try to defeat the Axis as Canada?

I have, but it’s a more conventional game where you side with the Allies, do D-Day landings, etc. Best I’ve done as Canada is lead the charge to defeat the Axis and turn West Germany into the Canadian Occupied Zone after a few years of war and a long build-up to it. I haven’t crushed them early and completely dominated them in the peace conference like you can as the French and Soviets. Reason is Canada starts out super weak and until recently it wasn’t even really possible to build them into a decent power with both manpower and industry, which still takes time to do. They’re still a minor power and start out as a British puppet (though in my Canadian game I broke free of Britain and joined a faction with the US).

The game is not the most realistic thing in the world, to say the least (we’re talking about a game in which I put “Anastasia” on the Polish throne and took over Germany and Russia, to say nothing of my games playing as the Pope… I’m sure you’d love those!). But it does roughly reflect the balance of power in the real world in 1936, easter eggs and gimmicks aside. So probably not possible to create a superpower Canada that steamrolls everybody without exploits. Not that a classic Allies game isn’t fun and rewarding in its own way, and Canada’s a fine country for that.

Although, I did beat the US as fascist Canada, but only with German help. Also the US is weak at the start. Maybe a little weaker than we were in real life for game balance reasons, but it’s also true we didn’t have a huge standing army and were isolationist.

What do you do in the game if you play as somewhere like Mexico? Or say Sweden?

Actually a country that it seems it would be fun to play as if the events mirrored reality would be Finland.

The DLC for Finland/Sweden is coming this fall. There are mods that do it as well of course. Historical focus trees almost always lead to the Soviets declaring war on Finland.
The base game for  Sweden/Finland is decent but the only real choice is to go Fascist so you can generate wargoals on Norway/Denmark and form the Nordic Union.

I don't know if I've ever played as Sweden, but I'd imagine you could join with the Allies, the Fascists or the Commies or maybe some 4th way.

You could play as any of those 3 but Allies would be boring as its a small country with regards to population so you can't form Scandinavia. With the generic focus tree Fascist > communism. Communism just gives you political power which is pretty abundant late game while fascism gives you 7% extra manpower. Which is basically a quadruple to triple of what you would have without it until you really start boosting those conscriptions.

[DaleCooper]

I'm considering playing this game over the holiday but I am having trouble motivating.

[Alben Barkley]

Just did another early war with Germany run as France. This time I left Britain out of it, which made it a bit more difficult but did mean I didn't have to deal with Italy and I got the achievement for absorbing all of Germany into my faction. I have to say, it was pretty satisfying to see Germany's first three victims -- Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France -- beat up on them before they could ever embark on their evil campaign of conquest.

I'm considering playing this game over the holiday but I am having trouble motivating.

Watch this video and follow along if you need a place to start:

It does require all the DLC through "No Step Back" however. But you can pay 5 bucks to try out the DLC for a month.

[Devout Centrist]

Would recommend you guys give The New Order and Darkest Hour a try. Both are great mods for Hoi4.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Would recommend you guys give The New Order and Darkest Hour a try. Both are great mods for Hoi4.

I second this.
Also, I have recommendations for groups to play in The New Order, if anyone is interested.

[Alben Barkley]

My new favorite strategy in HOI4 is to go "No Further Appeasement" as the UK. Basically you kick out Chamberlain as soon as he takes office, replace him with Churchill, puppet the Netherlands to establish a foothold on the European continent, and declare war on Hitler ASAP. I had the Nazis toppled and Italy puppeted by February 1940, months before France fell or Churchill took office in real life!

VERY satisfying. Helps to request forces from all the UK's puppets if you're going to do this btw. That actually gives you the second largest starting army in the game behind only the Soviets and saves you a ton of manpower.