The worst part is that I'm one of those guys that minmaxes curtain call Guangdong. If I get bored of this, then I doubt that most people in r/TNO actually engage with the mechanics, instead they are most likely pausing and reading a glorified fanfiction.net story that weights almost gig
Hoi4 would have been remembered as a mediocre Barbarossa simulator if it weren't for Paradox deciding to try to make the decision/event process more accessible with focus trees and some modders realizing it was the perfect format to make choose-your-own adventure political novels. With the exception of BlackIce, warfare is always the last consideration of a HoI4 mod.
There's no need to insult fanfiction.net authors by comparing them to TNO modders, most FFN people at least have read their source material.
TNO forgets warfare. Even the proxy wars are not a bad idea in concept. As playing with friends on it before proxy wars in vanilla can be fun. Sometimes more fun then the hot wars you have. TNO's main issue is the minigames. Having a proxy war is not fun when 6 of them happen at the same time each with their own gui and minigame. Like the infamous Denmark GUI image the minigame autism is what holds TNO back as they forget you have a lot of things to do. I feel each minigame is done by a separate guy who thinks there's is the most important. EAW understands the focus tree if fluff to make you feel like you are preparing for your next war or conflict and handling your nations economic issues without a fucking minigame.
TNO's issue is that and once again it does not have to be this way. People keep gushing over EAW but its deserved. I played Pax and the Changelings as my first dive into the mod. The events despite being story based kept me interested even if I never watched MLP before and the story was interesting and compelling. I honestly its think since its Pony world the modders are politically detached so they are not trying to beat you over with a message or moral you are supposed to learn like TNO wants. Instead, to me at least, the story was telling an actual story. It was just how the people or bugs and horses in this case would probably act and react in the situation they are in.
EAW is good, but the Sombra path for the Crystal Empire is very outdated. 0/10
Everything on Equss is outdated. TBH I hold the unpopular opinion that Zebrica did not need to be in the mod. I get they like to make the map feel fuller and not dealing with show canon gives them more choices but I like it for the colorful ponies despite never having seen the show. I tried Griffonia content and it's still good but something about Equss stuff. Perhaps since it was the earliest and first stuff made and since its based on the show proper you can feel the love the original maker(s) had for the IP and their game?
Could be. Equss' backstory content follows the show's lore until around the 5th season, and things like the Sun and Moon war, Lunar war, Our Town, and the Changeling's invasion of Canterlot are events/locations that were hinted at or explained in the show, as well as the griffonian colonies and the yakkayistan war. EaW has heavily diverged from the show since, and as the show has already ended, I don't see why they don't try to make a facelift for Equss' content
Good job and a very thorough AAR! I enjoyed reading it and based on how much actual gameplay there's there I don't think I missed out on anything at all. Still can't believe they put all that effort into the Missile Crisis replacement only for it to have about as much gameplay impact (at least it sets up a story). I appreciate your attention to detail too, I'd absolutely not have been able to sit through these events and would've missed out on things like the Synarchists being completely ignored. Thanks for providing me with new ways of being disappointed in a mod I once had great hope for and thank you for saving me the trouble of playing this!
No fun allowed.
Worse. Deleting your entire army is good strategy that improves your performance. The military's only function for most tags is to suck money out of your budget. No full wars, no border wars, no proxy wars, not even any use of the mechanic to detect forces in a state to trigger effects (like KR Switzerland does with the rebellious population in Romandie). Deleting all your units is simply one less expense. Problem with this "strat" is that outside of Russia making your GDP go up by earning money to invest gives you... More factories that you then can't use on anything that matters because you have no reason to produce weapons and buildings like prisons provide no real benefits towards any issues you might face.
Boredom absolutely plays a part in it; even vanilla HOI4 began including minigames because the devs have realized it's the only Paradox title that you can set to 1 speed, alt-tab in and out of and let play itself without any major hiccups for a good two/three years ingame. But more broadly speaking, a lot of HOI4 modders have egos and want to not only prove their rework is 'better' than the original content but also make sure their additions don't get reworked, and creating obtuse, flashy minigames are a great way to do both at once.
I really enjoy alternate history so I keep up with some HOI4 mods, but I really struggle playing the game. It’s very overly complicated and there’s a lot of dead air, especially when you’re just waiting for something to happen.
It's probably why every single mod seems to have like 50 civil wars you can intervene in now before the big showdown. At least it's something to do, even if it ends up being microing an entire war for dogshit AI with 3 divisions.
I'd also call it a holdover from the time Kaiserreich was the most influential HOI4 mod; every country in old KR was absurdly unstable (except A-H funnily enough) and one event chain away from having a civil war. TNO just took it to a new level because every civil war is an opportunity for more agitprop.
Its absolutely why its in there. Minigames tend to fail since they are trying to remake the game into something its not and sadly this TNOification is getting out of hand and into vanilla too. I do agree with the Grevious poster that a lot of its based on pride in that they think making a minigame is a lot of work and makes them look cool and its hard to get rid of minigames without breaking something. Though the point is that there was nothing to do at first which is not even true in current TNO. Now there is too much to do. There is SAF, WAF, Madagasgar, ICW, ME, Iran, etc. There are a lot of conflicts to do and now minigames get in the way since you want to focus on these and not the ther crap. Even then you need to use a separate GUI window to use them and it can get equally as obnoxious. Minigames will remain the bane of HOI4 modding and part of me wishes that paradox never gave these faggots a scripted gui mechanic.
No, they haven't. They are gonna (eventually) gonna put the FO76-inspired lore in there, because East Coast is East Coast, but all they've done recently is put canadian OCs in there. I think that a Minnesota update is also around the corner.
Why subject yourself to this torture when you could be playing chink submod that's actually fun?
