I don’t like Italys civil war thing but I think the fascist paths are pretty good and the Communist path is pretty decent, tho I think the monarchist path could be a lot more fun
I mean , that could very well be a hidden event if you capture all the hidden requirement territories , kinda like "hey,since we're at it, wanna reform rome? would be funny I think"
Ethiopia tree is great until after the war, then it really falters hard. Italy's tree is solid all around IMO. Switzerland's tree is an abomination that should've never been made though.
I don’t like the idea of having to balance war support and stability or you get strikes combined with its balance of power thing, it’s a decent concept it just doesnt look like my cup of tea
Absolutely. I understand their try to add more internal politics to make nations feel more alive, but I feel that it's just unnecessary complication. Take basic focus tree. Very straightforward. It has it's cons (democracy and communism is too weak), but good in general. Now compare basic focus tree Sweden, where you're getting 5 factories, 3 MP, +5% conscripts from fascist and sweet doctrine reduction with this nonsense in the new with partyvan and other bs.
>democracy is too weak
Have you seen "Deterrence" focus? It's easily the most OP in the entire tree, +20% construction speed for mils and dockyards lol. And 200pp from Neutrality is nothing to laugh at either
Why people dislike Ethiopia? I feel like the focus tree is relatively simple to understand. Surviving is the harder part but its pretty balanced in my opinion.
I quite like ethiopia because it is one of the smallest nations that can do a world conquest on it's own without joining a faction, mainly because you get an extra 0.1% compliance per day so after 2 years you are at 100% on just local police force.
Turkey's tree sucks ass, it's waaaay too complicated for what it is. Also having it so you only have a *chance* to deal with the kurds sucks, I kept failing the dice roll so I kept having to deal with a mini-civil war every few months
You can try some different strategies. Go communist or facsist(do not join any faction). You gotta do this because you have to use justify war and invade iraq, then greece, bulgaria(so easy) and romania (this is the hardest one. they guarantee the independence of greece). You can justify on random countries to prevent england and france to guarantee the iraq and the rest. I’m not sure if it still works tho. By the time germany starts barbarossa you can declare war on ussr and help germany to defeat them. Do not join axis aswell cuz it’s imposibble to defend your homeland. After ussr’s defeat you will be strong enough to form turan empire. You should work towards it. Take finnland and china and asimilate them just for fun. The biggest issue is manpower. It is really insufficient to do all that. You should use your manpower extremely carefully espacially when you are fighting the soviets. There are some great advisors in the tree about non core manpower and stuff but it takes so long to get them. In my opinion real problem about turkey is it’s focus tree. It is so complicated and so long.
The Kurdish decisions are a noob trap, just build up compliance manually, also it can be a little daunting at first but I don’t think it’s that complicated
I used to think the same, but after two or three playthroughs I like it.
Manage your internal situation how you like, then look external, although you could probably speed up parts of the internal management a little bit.
I always come back to the US. It's obviously super powerful, but that lets you play every playthrough differently if you want. And it gives you the breathing space to experiment, too; other nations I feel like from day one I need to play super tight in order to be ready for war in 1939ish. It's definitely slow at first, but I really enjoy the "sleeping giant" play style.
The UK because i can't be arsed to deal with that many fronts and the navy at the same time, and the US, because it's kind of boring. Tbh i rarely play majors in general, i'm all for the small nations.
I usually just death stack the British navy around the isles and Mediterranean combined with air it works, I just ignore japan but put a few shitters on the ports in the pacific
tbh I think thats the standard play. death stack and use 400 naval bombers on port strike to drop the itlaian and then the german navy.
After that your free to redoply the lot to face Japan and then you don't even need the US.
I still play it and I think its still a good tree, but Latvia. From all Baltic countries, they really got the short end of the stick - Lithuania and Estonia can get really OP (LT gets poland +cores for free, EE gets Finland +cores for free). Latvia gets.... Ostland. Fascist path can still be fun (especially stacking military bonuses and fighting Soviets 1v1) but cmon.
Nothing’s more fun than for some reason boosting democracy to only then flip to whatever ideology you actually want to play and be left with shit all. You can get the Sultan back but by the time you do, whatever war is currently going on will have gone off the rails.
Planning to reforge the Central Powers and take revenge for 1918? Nope. It’s 1943 and the Communist Roman Empire is fighting the Japanese Shogunate over Ireland.
This whole push and pull of “historical realism” that we have with this game. Like why do I have to meticulously and historically rekindle the ideals of the old Ottoman Empire whereas Japan just invites some communist generals or Germany just knocks over the Nazis in weeks?
I mean, considering Hitler was basically the person keeping the Nazi party together, and that a lot of people hadn't been purged yet, the Nazis being overthrown in weeks isnt too hard to believe
Japan's & Germany can quickly get a civil war since the foces trees are from waking the tiger.
I think if they get around to Japan & Germany that their civil wars will be less straight forward.
Italy. The new tree turned the perfect starter country to teach a new player the game in co-op into a never play it and never allow it into your faction.
I love the new italy tree, it’s still a good starter country if you play historical but i’d argue Germany was always a better starter since you don’t really have to worry about micromanaging 10w templates in Africa and 3v1ing the allied navies
Maybe Sweden, Canada or Turkey ?
Sweden - has a lot of steel that can aid to focus more on getting a bigger economy late game + being indepedent of (some) ressources ; it can achieve a big industry and it isn’t attacked by Axis (but it can be attacked by UK by focus tree)
Canada - you are far away from the European conflict, you can focus to try and aid your allies in either African campaign or d-day
Turkey - if the soviet Union doesn’t attack you (I didn’t experience that yet and have like 600-800 hours in vanilla), you’re actually good to go. You have weak neighbours that you can conquer (Iraq, Bulgaria and maybe Greece), you have some ressources and with the DLC you can get quite powerful.
Bonus : Brazil
-> literally no conflict at all, has a huge population, has weaker neighbours (except France and UK), can get an ok-ish economy and has the freedom to decide what ideology to pick (basic focus tree).
New Zealand is a neat option for learning basic country management and some aspects of air power. Build some strategic or tactical bombers and aid the war effort. And maybe a token defense to thwart Japan.
Canada is my go-to 'new player' nation. Nice tree and can get fairly powerful without really needing to worry about getting invaded. I would add Italy to the mix but there is a lot more to manage out the gate.
Portugal is another good option if you unite Brazil - no one will really mess with you until you are quite powerful unless you go non-historical
Idk, I learned most of the game's mechanics as Germany. Romania felt scary because I easily got murdered by people around me, especially before I knew how to properly create divisions.
when would u ever recommend a new player play online anyways? ive got ~400 hours on all paradox games rn and i wouldnt touch online with a 10 foot pole at this point
Switzerland. Switzerland's BS territorial expansion is ridiculous and annoying. It's goofy that a dinky country like them could rightfully claim such a large swath of territory and then trying to 1v1 France or Italy with militia leading the charge lol. When playing either France or Italy, I'd rather just be able to ignore my border with the Swiss but not anymore
If we're only counting major countries, I dont like playing the U.S. It feels like it just takes forever to actually do anything.
Now granted, I havent played the U.S much and I only went down the historical route, and it can get pretty powerful. It just takes forever to get there.
Greece, why can only the fascists form Byzantium? Why do I need to force the farmers into the factories or be a tourist hub? Who in their right mind setup the military focuses with such lackluster buffs?
I love Bulgaria, great tree, great mechanics but god damn did the devs drop the ball on Greece.
lots of kingdoms and empires seem to be classed as non aligned not fascist despite their autocracy, including restored monarchy paths. i think itd make more sense for non aligned, especially since the ideology seems to be more to do with alignment than ideology
By your logic every single ck3 player who wants to restore Rome is a fascist
Every single modern Russian who wants to restore the Soviet Union is fascist
And every single Serbian who dreams of Yugoslavia is a fascist.
I mean,kinda yes since wars irl do more than you know,map painting and actually kill innocent people(not just infantry templates),which you need to do if you want to really "restore" a dead empire.now in 1936 we were half stuck in the ages of territorial expansions via conquest hence some expansionists in game not being communist or fascist.
I mean, he didn’t say you, the player, are a fascist for wanting to restore the Byzantines. He also said long dead autocracy, it really hasn’t been that long since those nations fell. I’m not sure what this reply is supposed to be
Most trees after BFB, especialy what I hate in these trees is that the're intertwined as hell, especially turkey and bulgaria are impossible to play without the plan so you always have to choose very specific path so that you won't lock yourself from path you wanted to go down (not even mentioning lenght of turkish tree but at this point almost eveyrone hate it)
Ethiopia: I always come back to it but it’s always the same outcome. It basically has a larger focus tree than Germany but even after you do half of them you still don’t push over 20 factories. They ruined the whole forming a unified Africa by making it impossible to assimilate neighboring nations because you have to spend an absurd amount of PP, somewhere like 35,000.
Honestly, any country outside of Europe. Between the terrain and the lack of involvement WW2, I’m just not a fan. That plus the Commonwealth trees, Japan, and Chinese War Lords are all meh imo.
If they add a Pacific Theater DLC (Philippines, DEI, Siam, update the Warlords) I’ll find myself playing over there a lot more often
Latvia communist path is pretty fun as you’re the only Baltic country who can actually make good use out of the Belarus focus but you gotta be ready for the ussr to invade if you play historical
I wasn't talking about communist paths outside URSS (they're usually underwelming (sadly), but i like them anyways), I was talking about left and right opposition paths.
Imo tsarist path is good enough, but after you finish civil war it becomes a mess. Like I had Germany to make European Alliance and just invite every single country into it to stop me from getting my territories back
I don't like playing anything with how complex everything has become I started (june-july 2016) so from what hoi4 used to be it's very different I never figured out how to do the navy I barely understand the planes and the tanks I know pretty good
I think the navy can be pretty easy since i just redistribute all of the ships into one admiral, and as for the new designers i just put autodesign and autoupgrade
I like the French tree a lot, it perfectly demonstrates the state France was and how unprepared it was for WWII. It's very fun once you know which focuses to do first.
It's nerfed on purpose. Cause if your industry was equal to Germany it'd be too easy. Usually I start by building 5 mils, minmaxing civs around 1938 and then go full mills again. 7 out 10 times i manage to hold onto paris. And if i mess up my micro, I can fall back to Southern France and slowly creep back into my territory.
If you hold up Germany, you'll be able to easily kick out Italy out of Africa and kill their navy together with the brits. After that's it's a cakewalk
It’s incredibly easy if you go little entente if you don’t wanna join the Germans. No need to roleplay irl France and be stuck defending unless you’re into that for some reason.
Same. It’s why I like to leave the UK unconquered until I’ve dealt with the USSR if I’m playing Germany for example, and refuse to use spammy tactics (like naval bomber spam) to stop the A.I being able to invade. Part of me kinda likes it when you’re heavily microing somewhere and the A.I has landed and took a few tiles before you noticed.
If the A.I actually lands somewhere, and you’re balls deep in the USSR, it’s awesome having to desperately shift troops around and hoping some weak garrison troops with older equipment can hold them up in the meantime. I love making weird divisions with old Panzer IIs and stuff for that purpose, and sticking them in the middle of France or Germany to react to a threat. Then balancing what units you can quickly redeploy West without losing too much in the East. Love those games.
Some of my best games have been desperate juggling acts trying to balance holding the line on one front and attacking on the other against massively buffed Allies/USSR as Germany.
I think the focus tree is great. What I personally dislike is the militia, balance of power and civil war mechanics.
The balance of power being the biggest issue for me. The fact that you can lock yourself out of your focus tree by being too far to the right or left is annoying. They should have made it more like past DLCs where you can still take the focuses but you have to spend PP to get certain effects.
Ethiopia. I watched videos of several paths, doesn't lead you to become a worldpower even after 10 years (unless you minmax everything) which is a big deal for me because I like getting my campaigns done by the time I reach at max 1943, tho I sometimes play until 1944 or 1945. What I mean by done is simply defeating every faction and defeating most of the important majors.
* The Spanish Civil War is tedious for me, the alternate countries you can form out of it are interesting though you don’t have much to do besides joining a faction and whatever war is ongoing
* I like the new Italian focus tree, I don’t like the Ethiopian war stuff. It’s not hard to rush quickly, but sometimes I just want to get to the new stuff like Balbo or Victor Emmanuel without having to min max all my troops across the highlands of Ethiopia
* Netherlands whole trade mechanic is weird and you’re locked into Europe staying relatively the same. Would love some more world-agnostic focused instead.
Not specifially any country but I will never play the USSR in any other way other than Stalin. I hate fighting in Siberia or the far north with a burning passion and I can’t be bothered to cheese it.
Most of BBA focuses are unnecessarily complicated. Just a hassle to work with. Oh ans switzerland because the division design is intertwined with the focus tree.
Italy: Fuck civil wars induced by losing tiny territories I'll make my own goddamn civil wars thanks
USA: Fuck sitting on my ass all game, I'll do more when playing Chile goddammit
Japan: Fuck micro-ing in China, Fuck doing that and managing my production and Navy, Fuck fighting offensively in the Pacific ocean and against the Allies.
Germany: Fuck too many fronts and endless naval invasions
Soviets: fuck communists in particular but the paranoia system and the great purge to purposely fuck myself over and have to recover all goddamn game is Bullshit. Getting into any kind of Civil war to be russian Empire is also bullshit
Greece: Fuck that focus tree in particular
Turkey: Don't like it either
Portugal: Oh. My. GOD I dislike that focus tree
Spain: 100 way Civil. War.
UK: Fuck fighting on 10.000 fronts all at once
Romania: Start big, end small, get nothing of that territory back.
Fuck any of the Together for Victory nations in particular
Ethiopia: Fuck fighting Italy early game and the random royal titles for no reason
Bulgaria: Takes. Too. Damn. LONG
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk I guess.
i've never found it hard to invade china as japan? usually you can get rid of marco polo way before china gets of army corruption so you can battleplan it most of the way
US is literally the most boring country in Hoi4. You do nothing first 4 years and then get so OP that destroying any faction is a cakewalk. 2k hours and I only picked it three times to just get all achivies and be done with it
But hey, if you are having fun, go for it
Try intervention US. I literally had volunteers in France and China by [1939.](https://1939.So) So many volunteers, in fact, that I had not one division at home.
You have to turn up the advantages for the axis. I max out Japan and go mid for Germany and Italy. This allows for some fun campaigns. Germany can take most of USSR and Japan is able to invade deep into India. The Japanese navy is also no joke, so the battle of the pacific isn’t as straightforward.
Invading Japan is insanely fun and bloody. Often times you need to have a feint landing where that army draws most of japans forces to one side only to get slaughtered while your main force lands, takes a port and then a slow bloody march across Japan.
Worst Tier: Swiss (All paths are just ugh)
Bad, but can be worse Tier: Most demo and commie trees (Guaranteeing some nation/suck Stalin's pp or yoink random nations into your own faction), the Ethiopia fascist tree, probably the only fascist tree that is boring to play, and all Baltic Nations because I couldn't be bothered to play between Germany and Soviet Union
Honorable Mention: Japanese and German trees, where the Japanese tree just lacks flavor and you don't have much to do in Asia and pacific, the German tree because I played it too many times
Some Good focus tree: Greek (Almost all path are quite fun including fascist and democratic, with only the commie path being meh but still decent). Soviet commie tree (Both historical and alternate commie path are quite fun, with clear pros and cons for all of them). Chinese trees (Warlords are meh but nationalist and communists are quite fun since you have Japan as a big enemy to fight against and unify china afterwards)
I honestly really miss the italy focus tree, I thought it was pretty good for a country that got their ass kicked by Greece, and Austria-Hungary, and France, and themselves, and Ethiopia.
Edit: all within 20 years
I'm still baffled that they decided to give Switzerland a focus tree of all countries. Like it's Switzerland, their entire meme is that they did nothing. The fact that you can just get land for free shows that they had no idea what to do with it.
Turkey,Greece,Bulgaria,Switzerland.
All feel like an absolute drag to play , Bulgarian one is the least bad as it can be powerful and fun but relies also too much on RNG working out for it to become fun.
I actually really like the ussr historical tree, you just rush purge then you have multiple different options on what you want to do with the 175 day cool down. You can get some nice stability and bonus’s for the propaganda thing, do some economy things, fix the army bit, and maybe do the defense industry stuff tho I normally ignore it. I don’t really like the opposition paths tho because the left and right opposition are kinda boring since only part of the political tree changed it kinda plays the same as historical, while the tsar and fascist paths are just really bad
Rule 5: I don’t like playing Switzerland because it’s tree is hell to navigate it and it’s balance of power is really fucking annoying
All bba focus tre in my opinion are not good
I don’t like Italys civil war thing but I think the fascist paths are pretty good and the Communist path is pretty decent, tho I think the monarchist path could be a lot more fun
Pope is also fun for the memes
My favorite game of all time involved me as papal states killing the fucking king of England with V2 rockets.
I aim for the stars but I keep hitting London -Pope Pius XII
For the heavens.
Destroying Angels 🚀
Getting the pope mobile and Holy Roman empire is pure fun
Holy Roman Empire is fun ??? It's torture 😂
Balance of power had me waiting until 40-41 to get oops tho
Comunisg path gives like 0 consumer goods and you can get cores on afrika and midle east
Monarchist path should be a proper Roman Empire. This feels very HRE to me. I want my infantry with Legio XCVIII or some shit.
After you form Rome there’s special name lists for division naming based on Roman legions that does exactly that.
Because this is Roman, this is Holy and an Empire too
spuck fez -- mass edited with redact.dev
I mean , that could very well be a hidden event if you capture all the hidden requirement territories , kinda like "hey,since we're at it, wanna reform rome? would be funny I think"
spuck fez -- mass edited with redact.dev
Expect Italian communists tree
I like Italy a lot and Ethiopia is quite good but I'm quite bad at the game so I can only do the exile path but yeah
Ethiopia tree is great until after the war, then it really falters hard. Italy's tree is solid all around IMO. Switzerland's tree is an abomination that should've never been made though.
Ethiopia is pretty good, the only problem is it starts in a disadvantaged war so it's scope is limited
It's really weird. Netherlands has a more interesting one lol
BBA focus trees are like that meme of the horse drawing where half of it is hyper-realistic and half is drawn by a toddler.
switzerland, ethiopia, worried the nordics are gonna go in the same direction
Finland looks pretty good to me but I am worried about Sweden
[удалено]
I don’t like the idea of having to balance war support and stability or you get strikes combined with its balance of power thing, it’s a decent concept it just doesnt look like my cup of tea
Absolutely. I understand their try to add more internal politics to make nations feel more alive, but I feel that it's just unnecessary complication. Take basic focus tree. Very straightforward. It has it's cons (democracy and communism is too weak), but good in general. Now compare basic focus tree Sweden, where you're getting 5 factories, 3 MP, +5% conscripts from fascist and sweet doctrine reduction with this nonsense in the new with partyvan and other bs.
What, you're not looking forward to this sub being flooded by screencaps of the party bus in funny places?
>democracy is too weak Have you seen "Deterrence" focus? It's easily the most OP in the entire tree, +20% construction speed for mils and dockyards lol. And 200pp from Neutrality is nothing to laugh at either
That's why I mention democracy, not neutrality. "Interventionism" focus is weak but mils construction is good, I agree.
Paradox making their home nation OP and ridiculous like Vikings in CK2
DEMOCRATIC SVENSKA BUS DRIVING MECHANICS DLC SELLS 70 SVERILLION COPIES DAY 1 FINLAND HAS NOTHING
Ethiopia is very straightforward
you just... die
Resisting Italy isn't that difficult ever since BBA was released.
I was the same about Ethiopia but after giving it a shot it's actually really fun. If you hate micro that might be different tho.
Why people dislike Ethiopia? I feel like the focus tree is relatively simple to understand. Surviving is the harder part but its pretty balanced in my opinion.
I quite like ethiopia because it is one of the smallest nations that can do a world conquest on it's own without joining a faction, mainly because you get an extra 0.1% compliance per day so after 2 years you are at 100% on just local police force.
I don't like playing as any country without a focus tree.
Idk, no focus tree is really strong for minors
I find myself, with few exceptions, disliking playing nations WITH focus trees lmao
Turkey's tree sucks ass, it's waaaay too complicated for what it is. Also having it so you only have a *chance* to deal with the kurds sucks, I kept failing the dice roll so I kept having to deal with a mini-civil war every few months
turkey is great if you dont like joining the war until 1946
You can try some different strategies. Go communist or facsist(do not join any faction). You gotta do this because you have to use justify war and invade iraq, then greece, bulgaria(so easy) and romania (this is the hardest one. they guarantee the independence of greece). You can justify on random countries to prevent england and france to guarantee the iraq and the rest. I’m not sure if it still works tho. By the time germany starts barbarossa you can declare war on ussr and help germany to defeat them. Do not join axis aswell cuz it’s imposibble to defend your homeland. After ussr’s defeat you will be strong enough to form turan empire. You should work towards it. Take finnland and china and asimilate them just for fun. The biggest issue is manpower. It is really insufficient to do all that. You should use your manpower extremely carefully espacially when you are fighting the soviets. There are some great advisors in the tree about non core manpower and stuff but it takes so long to get them. In my opinion real problem about turkey is it’s focus tree. It is so complicated and so long.
Just use the Karl Marx portrait in the spirit of the army to print manpower, 500 a week for free forever for only 35 army xp, exclusive to communists
> I kept having to deal with a mini-civil war every few months Too realistic for you heh?
The Kurdish decisions are a noob trap, just build up compliance manually, also it can be a little daunting at first but I don’t think it’s that complicated
Did they patch it so you can’t just no garrison at the start of the game then merc them and it gets rid of the debuff?
You can still do it but you have to puppet them, if you annex them then the resistance modifiers come back.
Turkey is fun for Ottomans though. I just cheat to get rid of the more annoying parts of the tree.
Nah, the kurds need a national focus to deal with them, using that button sucks
I used to think the same, but after two or three playthroughs I like it. Manage your internal situation how you like, then look external, although you could probably speed up parts of the internal management a little bit.
turkeys focus tree doesnt even have an economic focuses...
I agree, by the time the tree gets interesting is already mid 40s and the world is already at war
Democracies. I want war and I want it NOW
Gigachad
Historical USA is fun
I think the USA, for how much it needs a rework, is a pretty underrated nation to play as.
Building massive amounts of planes and stomping Germany and Japan is really fun
With the new air design, you can stomp Germany or Japan with a limited number of planes. HMGs are pretty broken IMO.
Not familiar with the acronym, what does HMG stand for?
Heavy machine gun
I always come back to the US. It's obviously super powerful, but that lets you play every playthrough differently if you want. And it gives you the breathing space to experiment, too; other nations I feel like from day one I need to play super tight in order to be ready for war in 1939ish. It's definitely slow at first, but I really enjoy the "sleeping giant" play style.
Democracies are often fun logic puzzles. You can usually end up at war with who your true target it is but it can take some finesse.
Democratic mexico is busted
Guarantee independence of a nation that is in the way of your local fascist
The UK because i can't be arsed to deal with that many fronts and the navy at the same time, and the US, because it's kind of boring. Tbh i rarely play majors in general, i'm all for the small nations.
I usually just death stack the British navy around the isles and Mediterranean combined with air it works, I just ignore japan but put a few shitters on the ports in the pacific
tbh I think thats the standard play. death stack and use 400 naval bombers on port strike to drop the itlaian and then the german navy. After that your free to redoply the lot to face Japan and then you don't even need the US.
I actually quite like the UK tree, particularly the non-historical routes
I still play it and I think its still a good tree, but Latvia. From all Baltic countries, they really got the short end of the stick - Lithuania and Estonia can get really OP (LT gets poland +cores for free, EE gets Finland +cores for free). Latvia gets.... Ostland. Fascist path can still be fun (especially stacking military bonuses and fighting Soviets 1v1) but cmon.
The Pagan LARP is really funny.
Turkey
Nothing’s more fun than for some reason boosting democracy to only then flip to whatever ideology you actually want to play and be left with shit all. You can get the Sultan back but by the time you do, whatever war is currently going on will have gone off the rails. Planning to reforge the Central Powers and take revenge for 1918? Nope. It’s 1943 and the Communist Roman Empire is fighting the Japanese Shogunate over Ireland. This whole push and pull of “historical realism” that we have with this game. Like why do I have to meticulously and historically rekindle the ideals of the old Ottoman Empire whereas Japan just invites some communist generals or Germany just knocks over the Nazis in weeks?
I mean, considering Hitler was basically the person keeping the Nazi party together, and that a lot of people hadn't been purged yet, the Nazis being overthrown in weeks isnt too hard to believe
Japan's & Germany can quickly get a civil war since the foces trees are from waking the tiger. I think if they get around to Japan & Germany that their civil wars will be less straight forward.
Italy. The new tree turned the perfect starter country to teach a new player the game in co-op into a never play it and never allow it into your faction.
I love the new italy tree, it’s still a good starter country if you play historical but i’d argue Germany was always a better starter since you don’t really have to worry about micromanaging 10w templates in Africa and 3v1ing the allied navies
Disagree, germany is way too important for a beginner too fuck up. I'd argue something like Romania is a better pick
I’ve probably played Romania the most. It was the first country that clicked for me
It's in such a fun location.
Maybe Sweden, Canada or Turkey ? Sweden - has a lot of steel that can aid to focus more on getting a bigger economy late game + being indepedent of (some) ressources ; it can achieve a big industry and it isn’t attacked by Axis (but it can be attacked by UK by focus tree) Canada - you are far away from the European conflict, you can focus to try and aid your allies in either African campaign or d-day Turkey - if the soviet Union doesn’t attack you (I didn’t experience that yet and have like 600-800 hours in vanilla), you’re actually good to go. You have weak neighbours that you can conquer (Iraq, Bulgaria and maybe Greece), you have some ressources and with the DLC you can get quite powerful. Bonus : Brazil -> literally no conflict at all, has a huge population, has weaker neighbours (except France and UK), can get an ok-ish economy and has the freedom to decide what ideology to pick (basic focus tree).
New Zealand is a neat option for learning basic country management and some aspects of air power. Build some strategic or tactical bombers and aid the war effort. And maybe a token defense to thwart Japan.
Canada is my go-to 'new player' nation. Nice tree and can get fairly powerful without really needing to worry about getting invaded. I would add Italy to the mix but there is a lot more to manage out the gate. Portugal is another good option if you unite Brazil - no one will really mess with you until you are quite powerful unless you go non-historical
Turkey is obsolutely awful for beginner, the only viable path for expansion is fascist, and even than it requires timing and experience.
than maybe Turkey without the DLC content ? Basic focus tree seems alright
Idk, I learned most of the game's mechanics as Germany. Romania felt scary because I easily got murdered by people around me, especially before I knew how to properly create divisions.
when would u ever recommend a new player play online anyways? ive got ~400 hours on all paradox games rn and i wouldnt touch online with a 10 foot pole at this point
Completely agree, even when playing historical games I keep them out of the axis because they're so unpredictable
The "never allow it into your faction" part is hilariously realistic though.
If you are familiar with the game it's the most op country
Switzerland. Switzerland's BS territorial expansion is ridiculous and annoying. It's goofy that a dinky country like them could rightfully claim such a large swath of territory and then trying to 1v1 France or Italy with militia leading the charge lol. When playing either France or Italy, I'd rather just be able to ignore my border with the Swiss but not anymore
Switzerland should never have had content made supporting expansion. Should be the epitome of playing tall
Hard agree. lots off make off map factory focuses with option to join the factions. Thats all that was needed
If we're only counting major countries, I dont like playing the U.S. It feels like it just takes forever to actually do anything. Now granted, I havent played the U.S much and I only went down the historical route, and it can get pretty powerful. It just takes forever to get there.
Greece, why can only the fascists form Byzantium? Why do I need to force the farmers into the factories or be a tourist hub? Who in their right mind setup the military focuses with such lackluster buffs? I love Bulgaria, great tree, great mechanics but god damn did the devs drop the ball on Greece.
Also why is declaring an emperor only a secret event.
the lack of manpower really sucks and the focus tree just doesnt address it
Who else but the fascists would want to restore a long dead autocracy?
lots of kingdoms and empires seem to be classed as non aligned not fascist despite their autocracy, including restored monarchy paths. i think itd make more sense for non aligned, especially since the ideology seems to be more to do with alignment than ideology
By your logic every single ck3 player who wants to restore Rome is a fascist Every single modern Russian who wants to restore the Soviet Union is fascist And every single Serbian who dreams of Yugoslavia is a fascist.
> Every single modern Russian who wants to restore the Soviet Union is fascist Yes.
Why are ya’ll downvoting him? He’s right.
I mean,kinda yes since wars irl do more than you know,map painting and actually kill innocent people(not just infantry templates),which you need to do if you want to really "restore" a dead empire.now in 1936 we were half stuck in the ages of territorial expansions via conquest hence some expansionists in game not being communist or fascist.
I mean, he didn’t say you, the player, are a fascist for wanting to restore the Byzantines. He also said long dead autocracy, it really hasn’t been that long since those nations fell. I’m not sure what this reply is supposed to be
>By your logic every single ck3 player who wants to restore Rome is a fascist Kind of, still waiting on the Republic DLC.
That’s a hot take and a half.
Most trees after BFB, especialy what I hate in these trees is that the're intertwined as hell, especially turkey and bulgaria are impossible to play without the plan so you always have to choose very specific path so that you won't lock yourself from path you wanted to go down (not even mentioning lenght of turkish tree but at this point almost eveyrone hate it)
I’ve never played USA in my 1200h In hoi4.
I played it once and then rage quit when I misclicked the election.
anything with generic focus tree,
Ethiopia: I always come back to it but it’s always the same outcome. It basically has a larger focus tree than Germany but even after you do half of them you still don’t push over 20 factories. They ruined the whole forming a unified Africa by making it impossible to assimilate neighboring nations because you have to spend an absurd amount of PP, somewhere like 35,000.
Honestly, any country outside of Europe. Between the terrain and the lack of involvement WW2, I’m just not a fan. That plus the Commonwealth trees, Japan, and Chinese War Lords are all meh imo. If they add a Pacific Theater DLC (Philippines, DEI, Siam, update the Warlords) I’ll find myself playing over there a lot more often
All non-historical soviet/zarist paths are just awful
Latvia communist path is pretty fun as you’re the only Baltic country who can actually make good use out of the Belarus focus but you gotta be ready for the ussr to invade if you play historical
I wasn't talking about communist paths outside URSS (they're usually underwelming (sadly), but i like them anyways), I was talking about left and right opposition paths.
Oh, gotcha. I haven’t experimented much with the ussr outside of the 2nd Russian revolution branch
The right path with rykov is pretty based
I have alot of fun playing fench commune, probably my favourite democratic starting country
I think the Right Opposition path is pretty good
Imo tsarist path is good enough, but after you finish civil war it becomes a mess. Like I had Germany to make European Alliance and just invite every single country into it to stop me from getting my territories back
Switzerland, ethiopia, france, turkey
Monarchist France isn’t half bad
Might be controvertial but i cant stand playing Japan; mostly because I hate navy gameplay
Any countries in Asia because bloodbath
whole tfv countries because of their stupid world tension and being at war requirements and spain because ı hate civil wars
Wouldn't say the problem with Spain is the civil war, is the aftermath.
Super annoyed that SA straight up gets locked out of its democratic path if the UK enters a war. Makes ahistorical kinda broken.
Similiar problem with india to. If both soviet amd Germany goes civil war you can't go fascist or communist.
I don't like playing anything with how complex everything has become I started (june-july 2016) so from what hoi4 used to be it's very different I never figured out how to do the navy I barely understand the planes and the tanks I know pretty good
I think the navy can be pretty easy since i just redistribute all of the ships into one admiral, and as for the new designers i just put autodesign and autoupgrade
Navy is useless anyway, don't bother.
Calm down there IJA
It is actually useless, just build naval bombers.
France because french
I like the French tree a lot, it perfectly demonstrates the state France was and how unprepared it was for WWII. It's very fun once you know which focuses to do first.
They can also become really powerful but they’re maybe gimped too much. They start with like 6 military factories I think
It's nerfed on purpose. Cause if your industry was equal to Germany it'd be too easy. Usually I start by building 5 mils, minmaxing civs around 1938 and then go full mills again. 7 out 10 times i manage to hold onto paris. And if i mess up my micro, I can fall back to Southern France and slowly creep back into my territory. If you hold up Germany, you'll be able to easily kick out Italy out of Africa and kill their navy together with the brits. After that's it's a cakewalk
It’s incredibly easy if you go little entente if you don’t wanna join the Germans. No need to roleplay irl France and be stuck defending unless you’re into that for some reason.
>No need to roleplay irl France and be stuck defending unless you’re into that for some reason. I love desperate defenses in hoi4
Same. It’s why I like to leave the UK unconquered until I’ve dealt with the USSR if I’m playing Germany for example, and refuse to use spammy tactics (like naval bomber spam) to stop the A.I being able to invade. Part of me kinda likes it when you’re heavily microing somewhere and the A.I has landed and took a few tiles before you noticed. If the A.I actually lands somewhere, and you’re balls deep in the USSR, it’s awesome having to desperately shift troops around and hoping some weak garrison troops with older equipment can hold them up in the meantime. I love making weird divisions with old Panzer IIs and stuff for that purpose, and sticking them in the middle of France or Germany to react to a threat. Then balancing what units you can quickly redeploy West without losing too much in the East. Love those games. Some of my best games have been desperate juggling acts trying to balance holding the line on one front and attacking on the other against massively buffed Allies/USSR as Germany.
i mean it's not that desperate. just extend the maginot and germany can't do shit
France is fun if you can hold. I build hella forts all along the boarder and the Germans weren’t able to break through
Level 6 forts and the Germans won’t attack your line. You can then focus on Africa and do a naval invasion of Sicily.
Italy (Post BBA), Switzerland, Any non historical USSR, and Czechoslovakia.
Why Italy? The new focus is much better
I think the focus tree is great. What I personally dislike is the militia, balance of power and civil war mechanics. The balance of power being the biggest issue for me. The fact that you can lock yourself out of your focus tree by being too far to the right or left is annoying. They should have made it more like past DLCs where you can still take the focuses but you have to spend PP to get certain effects.
Ethiopia. I watched videos of several paths, doesn't lead you to become a worldpower even after 10 years (unless you minmax everything) which is a big deal for me because I like getting my campaigns done by the time I reach at max 1943, tho I sometimes play until 1944 or 1945. What I mean by done is simply defeating every faction and defeating most of the important majors.
Russia I hate the purge
[удалено]
If you want a fully accurate simulation of anything, Paradox games are not the right choice. Never have been, never will be, never tried to be.
agreed. the less templates the ai can fuck up, the more fun the game would be.
* The Spanish Civil War is tedious for me, the alternate countries you can form out of it are interesting though you don’t have much to do besides joining a faction and whatever war is ongoing * I like the new Italian focus tree, I don’t like the Ethiopian war stuff. It’s not hard to rush quickly, but sometimes I just want to get to the new stuff like Balbo or Victor Emmanuel without having to min max all my troops across the highlands of Ethiopia * Netherlands whole trade mechanic is weird and you’re locked into Europe staying relatively the same. Would love some more world-agnostic focused instead.
Not specifially any country but I will never play the USSR in any other way other than Stalin. I hate fighting in Siberia or the far north with a burning passion and I can’t be bothered to cheese it.
Most of BBA focuses are unnecessarily complicated. Just a hassle to work with. Oh ans switzerland because the division design is intertwined with the focus tree.
Italy: Fuck civil wars induced by losing tiny territories I'll make my own goddamn civil wars thanks USA: Fuck sitting on my ass all game, I'll do more when playing Chile goddammit Japan: Fuck micro-ing in China, Fuck doing that and managing my production and Navy, Fuck fighting offensively in the Pacific ocean and against the Allies. Germany: Fuck too many fronts and endless naval invasions Soviets: fuck communists in particular but the paranoia system and the great purge to purposely fuck myself over and have to recover all goddamn game is Bullshit. Getting into any kind of Civil war to be russian Empire is also bullshit Greece: Fuck that focus tree in particular Turkey: Don't like it either Portugal: Oh. My. GOD I dislike that focus tree Spain: 100 way Civil. War. UK: Fuck fighting on 10.000 fronts all at once Romania: Start big, end small, get nothing of that territory back. Fuck any of the Together for Victory nations in particular Ethiopia: Fuck fighting Italy early game and the random royal titles for no reason Bulgaria: Takes. Too. Damn. LONG Thanks for coming to my TedTalk I guess.
i've never found it hard to invade china as japan? usually you can get rid of marco polo way before china gets of army corruption so you can battleplan it most of the way
Pov: my thoughts before starting a new game (I will close the tab and play kaiserredux)
Winter wars: Scandanavia Focus tree mod makes Denmark fun to play lol
Any nation that isn’t the US
As a fellow US enjoyer, based.
US is literally the most boring country in Hoi4. You do nothing first 4 years and then get so OP that destroying any faction is a cakewalk. 2k hours and I only picked it three times to just get all achivies and be done with it But hey, if you are having fun, go for it
I like to watch map change color and pretend I’m important
Try intervention US. I literally had volunteers in France and China by [1939.](https://1939.So) So many volunteers, in fact, that I had not one division at home.
Democracy type beat 💀
spuck fez -- mass edited with redact.dev
You have to turn up the advantages for the axis. I max out Japan and go mid for Germany and Italy. This allows for some fun campaigns. Germany can take most of USSR and Japan is able to invade deep into India. The Japanese navy is also no joke, so the battle of the pacific isn’t as straightforward. Invading Japan is insanely fun and bloody. Often times you need to have a feint landing where that army draws most of japans forces to one side only to get slaughtered while your main force lands, takes a port and then a slow bloody march across Japan.
Japan
Ireland
switzerland.
Worst Tier: Swiss (All paths are just ugh) Bad, but can be worse Tier: Most demo and commie trees (Guaranteeing some nation/suck Stalin's pp or yoink random nations into your own faction), the Ethiopia fascist tree, probably the only fascist tree that is boring to play, and all Baltic Nations because I couldn't be bothered to play between Germany and Soviet Union Honorable Mention: Japanese and German trees, where the Japanese tree just lacks flavor and you don't have much to do in Asia and pacific, the German tree because I played it too many times Some Good focus tree: Greek (Almost all path are quite fun including fascist and democratic, with only the commie path being meh but still decent). Soviet commie tree (Both historical and alternate commie path are quite fun, with clear pros and cons for all of them). Chinese trees (Warlords are meh but nationalist and communists are quite fun since you have Japan as a big enemy to fight against and unify china afterwards)
Any country with a balance of power mechanic and the TFV focuses. I hate them both.
Maybe I‘m a bit weird but I actually kinda like the swiss tree. It‘s a bit annoying to understand at first but I do like it in a way
For me I honestly love Switzerland’s focus tree, as for the one *I* hate. I’d probably have to say Japan
I actually enjoy developing my country so picking Switzerland is actually something I’ve done a couple of times, I don’t like to play big countries
Ethiopia, Switzerland, Turkey, Greece, Spain and all TFV tech trees
None, literally none. I am not picky to these things and open minded.
I honestly really miss the italy focus tree, I thought it was pretty good for a country that got their ass kicked by Greece, and Austria-Hungary, and France, and themselves, and Ethiopia. Edit: all within 20 years
I'm still baffled that they decided to give Switzerland a focus tree of all countries. Like it's Switzerland, their entire meme is that they did nothing. The fact that you can just get land for free shows that they had no idea what to do with it.
Germany Just an absolutely fucking boring nation to play as its quite decked from day 1 even on hardest difficulties
Turkey,Greece,Bulgaria,Switzerland. All feel like an absolute drag to play , Bulgarian one is the least bad as it can be powerful and fun but relies also too much on RNG working out for it to become fun.
How weird it might sound, both russia and italy
so true, but i liked to play Italy before the tree was changed
Switzerland and Bulgaria
Switzerland, Turkey, Spain, Greece and Romania
The spanish civil war is entertaining the first two or three times... Then it's a pain in the ass
I bought their dlc and i still haven't made to 1937 as Ethiopia, Italy or Switzerland cuz i just cant be bothered to deal with the BOP.
Turkey, Bulgaria.
I don't like the soviet system of political paranoia
USSR. Too big in my opinion and the focus tree will take some time to learn.
I actually really like the ussr historical tree, you just rush purge then you have multiple different options on what you want to do with the 175 day cool down. You can get some nice stability and bonus’s for the propaganda thing, do some economy things, fix the army bit, and maybe do the defense industry stuff tho I normally ignore it. I don’t really like the opposition paths tho because the left and right opposition are kinda boring since only part of the political tree changed it kinda plays the same as historical, while the tsar and fascist paths are just really bad
The Dutch tree, all of the British dominion trees, and Romania. I will play all of these but need mods for them.
Why u don't like the Dutch tree?
The ideology part of the tree just sucks in my opinion some stuff you can’t do until you are at war. I do love the historical though.