Road to 56 Persia

Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2017-06-23 04:27:28 UTC

Another #hoi4 #roadto56, this time as Persia - with 2 research slots, 5 total factories (4 civ, 1 mil), no navy, no resources except a bit of oil, civil war in focus tree, and so many penalties I have literally 139 spare manpower (not even enough for one company). On the other hand, focus tree seems pretty damn good.

To quote the game: Our society runs on nepotism, lines are replaced with bribes, generals are sons of the rich elite, we are led by fools and charlatans.

By December 1938 I managed to win civil war an New Persian Empire against monarchists and nationalized British-held oil fields. All that getting to 29 factories. Then I conquered Iraq and Afghanistan, while Saudis got all British and Independent Arab minors by events and wars.

I got event asking me to move capital to Isfahan, and sure, why not. That managed to completely fuck up my supply everywhere. It didn't just move it around, total supply went from 146 to 92, and I literally couldn't put my army (total supply use 97) anywhere.

This is the biggest bullshit I've seen hoi4 supply system do so far, so I edited save game to move my capital back. And then I did some testing - apparently maxing out my capital region supply's would increas my total supply to 537. Yeah, the system makes zero sense.

Well, I guess I'll be building infrastructure in capital now, before that I built it in frontline region which actually had infrastructure problems.

I fought Turkey guaranteed by Romania (with its puppet Bulgaria). Mod is quite poorly debugged, as midwar I got event by Turkey asking me to join their faction, and that's not even the first such silliness.

I couldn't push into European part of Turkey's faction, so I attacked Saudis instead. And then Soviets attacked me.
They were already at war with Poland which was already a draw with equal million of dead bodies on each side; as well as in Mongol-China war, also with about even losses, just half as much.

Well, if that's the case, I accepted invitation to Axis and WW2 it is!

A bit earlier Germany has "Kick Italy out of the Axis" focus, which can be followed by "War with Italy". Of course since this is vanilla-based faction system Italy just rejoined next month anyway after being kicked out. Kaiserreich just disables the whole thing, and makes it purely focus/event-based, and that's really the only way if you want to do cute things like this.

Soviet idea of fighting three front war wasn't really great, but then I had one of my armies just sitting next to Constantinople. Soviet war was frontline-less chaos, with encirclements, counterencirclements, divisions marching forward thousands of kms without any backup on assumption that any attempt to cut them can be answered by even more severe cut againsnt the cutters.

I think AI in 1.3 was more competent - it was really obsessed about keeping integrity of its frontline, which was exploitable, but this chaos? Is it good for them? Supply system was acting up too.

The game managed to crash twice, which was annoying, but not a huge deal.

I still have a bit of focus tree left - demanding Syria from France, and CB on Britain for Palestine, and then I can be the Saoshyant. I might as well do so - US is in civil war with Communists winning, so WW2 can end without US invasion.


Fun Turkey war. I need to rebuild simple terrain map mod, as guessing which tile is which terrain type is too hard.

Constantinople survived far longer than Moscow.


It was chaos of pockets and counterpockets. I'm pretty sure AI is worse than before.


Here's new AI fail. I put 3 divisions each on every border tile, then told it to plan attack.
In 1.3 it would say OK and move nothing since it's already balanced (or even if it was just more or less balanced).

Here it decided to reshuffle anyway. That burns equipment (since AI won't use strategic redeployment), causes massive delays, and if you want to autoassign new units to attack order, every new unit will now cause a reshuffle.

None of these problems existed in previous patch.

Somehow, they managed to make AI worse.


Poland and China got a good chunk of Soviet Union. Germany took most of Romania and Bulgaria, but I at least took the coastline.

I really ought to finish this map by cleaning up the Middle East, and maybe India too.

Not sure if it's mod or just new patch, but Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania etc. tend to overperform nowadays (assuming they fight, Czechoslovakia surrendered without a fight this time).

Mod giving Germany CB on Switzerland really fucks up France, as it makes Maginot Line meaningless.

Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2017-06-26 14:10:16 UTC

So for a quick finish of Persia campaign. I got German license for Medium tanks 2, and got Russian workers to start mass producing them. My tech is quite far behind, but I'm slowly catching up. Mod adds a lot of techs, but then it also adds some tech discount, so it about evens out.

I got Poland, Greece, Lithuania, and Latvia, finally getting to use tanks and planes (my army was really behind). France willingly gave me Syria, but Jerusalem focus doesn't even give event offering UK to resolve it peacefully, all I get is CB.

I ended up getting all Allies lands my tanks could reach. Then it's a choice of attacking China faction, or attacking the Axis. As China war would be rather boring, I'm going to go fight Axis. Awkwardly that includes Siam, Yunnan, rebel Norway, German-controlled South Sweden, as well as all of Continental Europe West of me - Albania, West Bulgaria, West Romania, Germany, Italy, Spain.

I can't really win the war, as I have literally zero ship technology. We don't know know how to build a galley. And we don't know anything about paratroopers. So it's going to be quite awkward waiting for the Allies.

What I like about the mod is that it gives a lot of extra resources by focus trees, making late game much nicer than vanilla / Kaiserreich. I'm still getting shortages, but they're not crazy shortages.
#hoi4

Post 3 - Originally published on Google+ on 2017-06-27 09:55:50 UTC

I went to war with the Axis. The attack initially didn't go as well as I planned, as I forgot to assign tanks to my divisions. That's what happens when I take a few days' break between sessions.

It was most severe bloodbath, with Axis losing 12M men of their initial 10M, and vicious fighting using every terrain feature like Sudetenland fortifications as well as waves upon waves of men to slow me down.

The key moment in war was when Axis Spain declared war of Colombia out of nowhere, making Communist US who guarantees all South America join the Allies. Seriously mod? And then Democratic Japan joined the Allies as well, not even sure how.

Well with everybody basically defeated I don't think there's much point continuing. Waiting years until I research ships and then naval invading UK, US, Sicily, and Japan sounds rather boring.
#hoi4 #roadto56

Norwegian Civil War and some fighting in the unusual place was rather welcome.
UK invaded Germany as AI obviously put all troops on player border.


Annoyingly they surrendered France to Allies not to me.


France fixed that soon enough and capitulated as soon as it lost Paris. With Rome fallen, Spain defenseless (they had half their army in Norway and half in Italy), and UK expeditionary forces destroyed, I can leave my enemies with a bunch of islands and call it a day.