Paradox Games

Whew, we just won our war. World War II started in 1937 and ended with the invasion of Japan by Soviet forces in 1941.

The original plan was to stop pushing - as our fronts in Asia and Europe completely stagnated - and build up, maybe trigger a civil war in Southern Italy.

Then Italy declared war on Switzerland for some reason. Switzerland joined the Comintern, making our front with Italy big enough to allow France to push into their territory properly. But that's not even the best part.

Switzerland was also guaranteed by the UK who promptly annihilated Japan's fleet, disrupting any further naval invasions and stranding probably half of their troops on the mainland while Soviet paratroopers secured ports in Northern Japan. Then the Japanese decided to pressure Siam, causing them to also join our cause and completely wreck any progress the Japanese had made in Indochina. One of the last battle of the war was two Japanese divisions being encircled by a Chinese-French army in Vietnam.

The war ended just in time for the Olympics.◊

Next thing on the agenda: Build up to take on the Allies at some point in the future.

edited 25th Sep '16 2:46:12 PM by DrunkenNordmann

And then your world will turn into Command and Conquer :P

I'm just hoping that I can take the rest of Europe and Africa before I turn to the East so that I can make a concerted effort to destroy the Soviet Union without having to deal with other threats.

With a few differences, though - the Soviet Union's led by Trotsky.

Where does the US stand in all this? If they're not allied already, you could try wooing them into the Comintern.

We're playing with ahistoric AI focuses and the US elected Alf Landon (+50 % ideology drift), so there's no way they're going to switch to our side. Also, promoting communism over there would probably cause them to go to war with us sooner because the US has a focus to declare war on the USSR that's unlocked by having a certain percentage of communist support.

We might promote communism in Canada or Australia to reduce the potential number of enemies, but the current plan is to build up and maybe use Chukchi as a staging point to invade Alaska should the US join the Allies against us.

But really, war's not gonna happen for a while. We - and with that I mean France and the Soviets - need a larger navy first and I just unlocked Fighter I because I had to concentrate on my army and upgrading China's infrastructure for most of the war.

We also need our new comrades to recover. Japanese People's Republic lost their territory on the mainland, North Sakhalin, the Kurils and Okinawa. Germany has become a rump state under Soviet overlordship, losing land to both France and the USSR. Italy has been completely annexed into the French Commune, with Albania being liberated by the Soviets.

There's also the People's Republic of Ethiopia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea now. We're having an unspoken "no excessive blobbing" rule because the whole world being controlled by only two or three countries just looks hideous.

Though I think the Russia player is playing with the idea of retaking Alaska. :/

Here's a map of the countries◊ and one of the factions◊.

We want to get Spain, Yugoslavia and Portugal (which I'm influencing right now) to join the Comintern, too, but currently they're not liking Russia very much. Hopefully, choosing the anti-capitalist focus will improve relations enough to get them on board.

edited 25th Sep '16 5:39:34 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Ugh, that was a big mistake. I should have known better than to try and make four colonies at once. I went bankrupt and was forcibly converted to Protestantism after the morale penalty caused by the bankruptcy made my armies too depressed to fight properly, and my colonies all withered on the vine. I was hoping to get some colonies of my own because Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal all have them already, but now the bankruptcy thing isn't going away until like 1586 so I've still got years and years >.>

Quite the downturn from a country that was the first to circumnavigate the globe.

For context I'm playing as Holland and am trying to form the Netherlands.

edited 25th Sep '16 6:41:54 PM by theLibrarian

How do I tell if my airplanes are doing any thing in HOI IV?

Like I seem to be loosing them and they keep needing replacment, but nothing seems to be happening beyond that. :/

Its kind of annoying actualy.

Simalry how do I make my ships do any thing?

And why wasn't this shit covered in a turtorial or any where?

Well, assuming you've assigned them to an air zone wherein there are enemy provinces or vessels or aircraft and given them a mission, there should be fighter or bomber unit models flying around. Second, if you have CAS/NAV/TAC assigned to port strike or naval attack (CAS and NAV only) or anything to kamikaze attacks, you should be getting naval battle notifications all over the place. Third, if you're fighting under the cover of friendly aircraft, your enemy should get a combat penalty from your air superiority. Furthermore, if you have CAS or TAC running ground attack missions, they'll pop into your land battles in the air zone and both give your divisions a boost and directly do damage to the enemy divisions. Over land, air power does not do much directly unless you are engaging in strategic bombing, which can damage all manner of buildings or nuclear bombing (does massive damage to all buildings in the state targeted and if the state is worth a lot of victory points, may reduce NU, but will never actually harm divisions). At sea, it can sink ships, and over land, most air missions are to support your ground troops - attacking the Maginot Line with both air superiority and close air support is a much easier task than doing so without either. Gaining air superiority can also allow you to deploy paratrooper divisions via transports.

To maximize the effectiveness of your aircraft, use small wings, especially for fighters. 50 or 100 planes are popular sizes, and 20 wings of 50 fighters will beat one wing of 1000 fighters of equal tech and variant level.

As for ships, grab a fleet (no suggestions on fleet composition since ships just got rebalanced and I do not know if, for example, battleships are still cowards that leave battles in which they are screened before they can even lose any ORG) and assign it a mission, then up to three sea zones. Different missions will have different spreads. A tightly packed fleet will bring more might to bear more quickly if/when it finds an enemy, but it will have a harder time finding an enemy to engage in the first place. Note that there is no mission for shore bombardment, which is handled by telling a fleet containing a capital gunship (CA, BC, BB, or SHBB) to hold, then to enter the naval province adjacent to where you want support.

edited 26th Sep '16 2:27:55 AM by Balmung

Okay, I saw them flying around, but what was bothering me was the little circle that said "CAS Mission" and when I clicked it "Divebombers (Kaga)" or something like that, and I was thinking I had to DO something with that to make my divebombers..... uhhhh do things.

Does that just mean there doing something instead? Because the problem I have is the air region says "no active missions" even though that is lit up and the airplanes are flying, does that part just refer to air suporirity because china has no airplanes, so I have not been doing that....

Edit: If I change from Facisim to Comunisim will I loose my current leader in the process? Or can ideoligy change without cycling leaders?

edited 26th Sep '16 2:28:02 AM by Imca

In the air map mode, did you actually set a mission? You can assign air wings to a region without assigning a mission, but they won't do much. Aircraft have a variety of missions that they cn be assigned (which ones depends on what type), but when you assign a wing to an area, none of these are set. Click one of the boxes to toggle the mission (there should be a little dot in the corner that indicates the mission is or is not active). Also, unless you're island hopping, beware that carrier aircraft will suffer massive efficiency penalties as they have shorter range than their land-only counterparts.

If you have air superiority, your fighters are already doing their main job - weakening enemy ground forces. CAS and TAC with the ground support mission can also boost your own troops.

And if you change ideology, you WILL change leaders. Unless you have civil war, your generals, theorists, high command, and research companies won't change, but your leader will change with the ideology, or for democracies, sometimes also with elections (eg. the USA can replace Roosevelt in an election and get the Standard Oil company for free, and if the USA becomes communist, Earl Browder will become the leader of the USA and if they become fascist, some guy I don't remember takes over).

edited 26th Sep '16 2:36:54 AM by Balmung

Will my ideologies remain though? The stuff like "state shintoisim"?

If you have a referendum or bloodless coup, yes, in all or almost all cases. If you have a civil war, no, in all or almost all cases. For an example I'm familiar with, if the USA goes communist or fascist via coup or referendum, it keeps the spirit "Home of the Free", but if there is a civil war, neither side will get to keep the spirit. Also, in some cases, but not all (unless this has been changed), the revolting half in a civil war may not get the original nation's national focuses, and instead be assigned the generic tree. I have no idea why this happens or if it's a bug or by design.

All in all, if you want to change ideology, you really want the referendum or coup and NOT the civil war, unless you are a puppet, in which case, that civil war is your best shot at independence, as puppets cannot peacefully change ideology.

I was going to apoint the political guy that generates +1 comusim a month, and just let him do his thing.

Will that be peacefull?

You will get a series of events that will do things like take away a small part of your manpower but give more daily support for the ideology (these effects go away, giving you back your manpower when you change governments) or reducing your NU but giving a boatload of support for the ideology you're boosting. Some time after you get over 50% support, you should get an event calling for a referendum, which will create a peaceful transition to a communist regime if you take the correct option, while the others will send you down the path to civil war unless you can the communist guy and boost fascism again. Note that, as support for an ideology grows, the rate at which advisors and outsiders influence that ideology slows down.

Transitions between the three ideologies are all mechanically more or less identical.

edited 26th Sep '16 2:53:41 AM by Balmung

I'm itching for a new game of Stellaris, but could someone first tell me what's still broken about it? I kind of lost track of all the patches and fixes, and new broken stuff by now.

Might just start up some more EU 4 or CK 2 instead.

When choosing the coup option (support from the higher-ups) at the start of the event chain you can also avoid a civil war very easily. At some poin there's an event where the officers try to launch a coup. You can either condone it (causing a civil war) or tell them to get the support of the people first.

Changing the second option prevents a civil war and at some later point, when you have more ideology support, a coup d'état happens without triggering a civil war.

Didn't know about this the first time and got thoroughly trounced as Brazil in a civil war. :/

That's why you should always read the things before choosing :P

New CK 2 Dev Diary; they are looking at improving the AI and some of the clunkier parts of the UI.

They also said that the next DLC (which should be one of the last) will be similar to Way of Life.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-25-man-vs-machine.971056/

Hey Balmung, you know the coding for these thigns right?

I have a mod that allows setting of internal policy on things like feminisim, recruitment age, and all the like its pretty cool and it uses policies which I like much better.

I found another one that does something similar as a national focus, but while it doesn't allow the change of recruitment age, it does allow the generation of female aces which is cool for something like this.....

My question is simple, can I take and apply the rule change "allowfemaleaces = true" or however it is taged (not on my computer at the moment) to a policy as wel, or do rule changes have to be stuck to ideas?

You can basically just attach it to a focus, yes.

Well, have to restart my Netherlands attempt. The bankruptcy thing screwed me over; I was forced into Catholicism, lost a bunch of my Continental possessions, then was losing Zeeland by the time I decided to quit. Learned my lesson from that.

How do I into naval invasions?

And can I increase the range of my fleet? I did pearl harbor, but like now, I cant invade murcia....

You should probably focus on America instead of invading Spain

Man, I really hate how passive communists are compared to fascists or even democracies. I've seen democracies join the Allies during peace-time if the tension was too high, but communists? Nope, you have to be in a defensive war and maybe they're willing to join then.

Currenlty, we have communist Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal and Austria sitting around, unwilling to join the Comintern. That's especially jarring in the last case because the only reason there is a communist Austria is because we all sent volunteers to keep them alive.

I might just promote some communism in Iraq to goad the Brits into starting World War III. Maybe them starting an aggressive war will actually keep the US out of the Allies. I'm not not that keen on having to re-enact World In Conflict. :/

It's also annoying that you can't lend-lease equipment to faction members if you're both at peace. I'm sitting on 60mil manpower, but I'm lacking support equipment and artillery to actually get some more infantry on the field to properly Zerg Rush the Raj when the next war starts.

But seriously, communists need to be more pro-active. It's not much of a world revolution when half of the communist countries are sitting on their asses doing nothing.

edited 27th Sep '16 12:07:18 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Today's game of CK 2 Ironman:

• Started in Charlemagne age, and went for a random ruler. Got the king of Bavaria.
• One Karling murdered the other to form the Great Blue Blob. Gave shelter to a woman, Great Blue blob invaded. Guess I'd be playing as the Duke of Bavaria.
• Ruler died of leprosy, leaving an underage son in charge.
• Said underage son was murdered several years later, leaving his even younger sister in charge.
• Waited forever for newest ruler to reach adult age so I might actually started doing something.
• Married a brother of the Basilieus. Great Blue Blob leader died leaving a fractured empire. 15 years, multiple seductions, a successful faction ultimatum, and a quick war later, I was once again Queen of Bavaria.
• Invaded by two different Slavic empires while my council rebelled for more power.
• Rage quit.

Well, looks like I got more or less the entire CK 2 experience in one afternoon.