Plagued /r/TNOmod and the Reddit HOI4 modding community - When a subreddit for a video game mod turns to utter insanity

[Rome's rightful successor]

So one of TNO's fan sequels (The Fading Order) decided to remove Burgundy.

I still do not get how Burgundy "whitewashes the nazis". Germany in TNO is still portrayed as being bad.

 

[Corpun]

So one of TNO's fan sequels (The Fading Order) decided to remove Burgundy.
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I still do not get how Burgundy "whitewashes the nazis". Germany in TNO is still portrayed as being bad.

Because redditors think More Evil State cancels out Evil State no matter how many fanfics you put in about innocent civilians and people getting purged. Same reason they removed Goring's Africa in RedditReich.

 

[dalurker99]

So one of TNO's fan sequels (The Fading Order) decided to remove Burgundy.
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"Burgundy isnt even popular within the community"
???

 

[Moja Zemlja]

So one of TNO's fan sequels (The Fading Order) decided to remove Burgundy.
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I still do not get how Burgundy "whitewashes the nazis". Germany in TNO is still portrayed as being bad.

Esoteric Nazism can at times seem wacky and a bit out there but it reflects very real and insane beliefs held by certain members of the SS and Nazi party, by removing Himmler and Burgundy they are effectively whitewashing the Nazis by making a more 'wholesome' setting. No a timeline where Nazi Germany won isn't going to be nice and as heavy handed as events like 'From Cradle to Grave' are they work well to show how extreme the methods of the true believers has become.

 

[The Foxtrot]

I still do not get how Burgundy "whitewashes the nazis". Germany in TNO is still portrayed as being bad.

These idiots failed to grasp something that TVTropes put very succinctly ; that while the Reich is Evil, Burgundy is Oblivion. Burgundy is literally "BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!" when it comes to just how depraved and fucked up hardcore Nazis can get.
Burgundy supposed to be stomach-churningly evil, hence why "From Cradle to Grave" is one of the first events that fires off. It's a warning to softer hearts that playing as Burgundy will not result in you turning it into a Wholesome Chungus 100% Communist nation. By playing as Burgundy, you will be playing as one of the most horrific fictional nations ever conceived, and that if you're a sensitive sort, exit and start over with another country because Burgundy has only horror and suffering inside its borders.

But, nothing Burgundy does diminishes how evil the Reich is. Himmler/Burgundy just takes the extreme beliefs of the SS to their logical conclusion, which happen to be so extreme that even "normal" Nazis think they're too extreme. We still see plenty of cruelty and tyranny in the Reich, especially under Bormann, who runs the Reich like a corrupt business and undoes what few benevolent laws Hitler passed (such as Anti-Smoking laws).

Esoteric Nazism can at times seem wacky and a bit out there but it reflects very real and insane beliefs held by certain members of the SS and Nazi party, by removing Himmler and Burgundy they are effectively whitewashing the Nazis by making a more 'wholesome' setting. No a timeline where Nazi Germany won isn't going to be nice and as heavy handed as events like 'From Cradle to Grave' are they work well to show how extreme the methods of the true believers has become.

For fuck's sake, Heydrich's entire story is that he thinks Himmler is evil enough to merit a second Civil War and making deals with the people he once viewed as "subhuman" just to try and stop his former boss's insanity, ultimately resulting in him blowing his fucking brains out because he can't deal with the shame that everything he did was for nothing, in service to pure evil, and that's if Heydrich "wins" the SS Civil War.

It's still made very clear that Heydrich is an evil man who has finally woken up to what he has done. He's not trying to wash the blood off of his own hands, merely keep the rest of the world from dying to Himmler's insanity.

Did I mention that, if Heydrich wins, not only does he blow his brains out, but Germany itself basically collapses into anarchy? You know, a major, nuclear-armed state that just culled most of its more moderate elements and the survivors are mostly former SS?

Yeah, I think the TNO devs and all the devs of these shitty submods forget that TNO is supposed to be horrifying.

"Burgundy isnt even popular within the community"

The fuck? Burgundy might as well be the unofficial face of TNO! "Burgundian Lullaby" was the main menu anthem for what, 3 years?

 

[Bogdandoff]

You can legalize homosexuality in 1938 Germany as the le ultraWholesome social democrats
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Everything in Kaiserreich is either feminism or lgbtbbq shit

 

[Chuckwagon]

I see Kaiserredux chads are keeping up their winning streak. At this point I think the only thing base KR still has over them is less ridiculous loading times, and frankly I'd rather wait 20 mins for an actually fun game to load up than sit through the bullshit nu-KR's devs keep on pozzing Sarmatia1871's creation with. They sure as all hell can't claim realism when their Long's a caricature derived from literal anti-Huey Long propaganda like It Can't Happen Here and who bears even less resemblance to the RL Huey as of this update making him NatPop(?!), their Sand France blows and dreadfully misuses figures like De La Rocque or the Action Francaise, and now they did to Goering what should've been done (and what KX does do) to Mordacq, etc.

In other news, the Bring The War Home devs have recently consneeded that perhaps the development cycle, constant bouts of drama and infighting driving away the actual workers on their team have not necessarily developed to BTWH's advantage.

I'm gonna need a bigger for that last comment up there. If they're admitting that this mod is '70%' dead and 'close to playability' (after four years of development!) now, we can probably expect them to call it quits and shit out what they've got in the form of a Spartakus-tier clusterfuck of a Git release sometime within the next 1-3 years.

 

[Bloudwulf]

Because redditors think More Evil State cancels out Evil State

The Gang of Four is a good example of this. I remember reading about how many people didn't like to play as them because of Henning von Tresckow. These people deal in absolutes. Unable to choose between black and grey because neither of them are white.
This is why I hated Sablin so much. Because of how one-dimensionally good his path is, there is literally no reason not to choose him, so there are no stake sin his story. It ruins the core message of TNO, which was how we can strive towards making the best of a bleak situation by weighing between less bad options. And in the end no ending will be perfect because we live in a fallen world. Very similar to the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream game, where Harlan Ellison wanted to make a "game you can't win" and in which the objective was "to lose less".

Actual Nazis also like to use this kind of thinking as a "gotcha". They point out how opposing German or Japanese expansionism is hypocritical when Britain and America also had empires, not realizing that opposing one doesn't make the other right. And how there is absolutely no moral quandary in supporting an empire where people holding dissenting views are allowed to exist and run for office to have a chance at changing the oppressive system against an empire where those people disappear.

​

 

[The Cum Beast]

I still do not get how Burgundy "whitewashes the nazis". Germany in TNO is still portrayed as being bad.

I still think that if the tno community can't understand that the nazis were evil without a fucking hoi4 mod telling them that, It's their problem.

The "nazis being whitewashed" argument is also dumb because the mod whitewashes communism and socialism (i.e sablin) or how the mod glosses over zhandov basically having unit 731 style human experiments or how the pan-african Camaroon basically forces neutral countries in west africa into their faction. Imagine trying to tell a uyghur that communism is actually wholesome chungus 100 and that they're brainwashed by the west into hating it.

Speaking of unit 731 I'm pretty sure the tv tropes page for japan claims that the empire of japan isn't as bad as the nazis (they were) Whitewashing the atrocities that Japan commited. While it would be interesting from a story telling prospective for the japanese having to live up to their "pan-asian" narrative, it wouldn't make sense as the japanese never really believed their narrative of freeing asia, and portraying them as liberators is the same thing as whitewashing nazis.

 

[Melight]

I see Kaiserredux chads are keeping up their winning streak. At this point I think the only thing base KR still has over them is less ridiculous loading times, and frankly I'd rather wait 20 mins for an actually fun game to load up than sit through the bullshit nu-KR's devs keep on pozzing Sarmatia1871's creation with. They sure as all hell can't claim realism when their Long's a caricature derived from literal anti-Huey Long propaganda like It Can't Happen Here and who bears even less resemblance to the RL Huey as of this update making him NatPop(?!), their Sand France blows and dreadfully misuses figures like De La Rocque or the Action Francaise, and now they did to Goering what should've been done (and what KX does do) to Mordacq, etc.

I yearn for the day theres a KX light that removes some of the bloat to cut down on loading times and increases game speed

 

[The Foxtrot]

This is why I hated Sablin so much. Because of how one-dimensionally good his path is, there is literally no reason not to choose him, so there are no stake sin his story. It ruins the core message of TNO, which was how we can strive towards making the best of a bleak situation by weighing between less bad options. And in the end no ending will be perfect because we live in a fallen world.

In my opinion, Wallace Foster Bennett's presidency as America portrays this much better. His whole shtick is "Don't Rock The Boat!", being the "Great Compromiser", which ironically makes him the best president for America in TNO's timeline, since he'll coexist peacefully with both a Bormann or Speerite Germany and a Liberal/Convservative Japan, while slowly de-segregating America and strengthening the OFN as a whole.

Sure, you could make the case that letting de-segregation happen on a state-by-state basis is wrong, or that trying to peacefully coexist with Nazi Germany makes him weak, or that offering Japan oil sales in exchange for returning the Treaty Ports and Hawaii is literally paying the Japanese for winning WW2...
...but you can also argue that letting American race relations heal on their own makes for a stronger nation going forward, or that peaceful coexistence with Nazi Germany saves lives in the long run since nobody could win WW3 (and Nazi Germany will collapse on its own anyway), or that negotiating with the Japanese in good faith will strengthen a Liberal Japanese government and therefore stabilize the entirety of Southeast Asia.

Sablin never has to make any decisions like this, he never has to swallow his pride and possibly compromise his ideology/morals in the name of the greater good. Hell, if Sablin and Zhukov are the last two contenders for being the TRUE AND HONEST Russia, it's a peaceful reunification! Sablin not only gets the benefits of being 100% Wholesome Chungus, he gets a reborn and sharpened Red Army alongside his own forces! And Sablin gets to freely go against Marxist-Leninist ideology (like allowing Alexander Men to continue preaching, or letting Mikhail III live).

Sablin literally only maybe becomes a bad guy if he decides to emulate Bukharin more, but even then he's portrayed as still a 95% Wholesome Chungus.

 

[The Cum Beast]

It would be more interesting if sablin couldn't peacefully unify with anyone, similar to tukhachevsky or serov. That way it would at least show that sablin's ideas are unpopular within the wider communist world and has to prove that his ideas have even the slightist chance of working and making russia better by showing that he could militarily unifying Russia against more orthodox communists and other stronger warlords. I know that the devs said Buyatia is being reworked, but we'll probably only see the rework by the time hoi96 comes out

 

[Corpun]

In my opinion, Wallace Foster Bennett's presidency as America portrays this much better. His whole shtick is "Don't Rock The Boat!", being the "Great Compromiser", which ironically makes him the best president for America in TNO's timeline, since he'll coexist peacefully with both a Bormann or Speerite Germany and a Liberal/Convservative Japan, while slowly de-segregating America and strengthening the OFN as a whole.

Redditors hate Bennet for not being so tough on segregation though because of course that isn't holsum 100. I like him because he reintroduces the Silver Standard though.

Sablin literally only maybe becomes a bad guy if he decides to emulate Bukharin more, but even then he's portrayed as still a 95% Wholesome Chungus.

Sablin could have been fun if his storyline explored the ideas of making a state off your ideals and dealing with realities presented to you. That German advisor guy only exists as a paper devil-on-your-shoulders and can be completely ignored. There are no issues with being a total idealist and pardoning everyone. If instead you got debuffs for being too much of an idealist and risked getting couped by other communists or something, ultimately resulting in Sablin either becoming the villain he wanted to defeat to protect his beliefs or dying defending his beliefs or some shit would have been much more interesting, if a little predictable.


Instead he comes off like an OC character for some dev to LARP as, especially when in real life he was a literal who who's failed mutiny was ultimately irrelevant in the grander scheme.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

I've never actually played Sablin despite considering warlord Russia to be the high point of TNO, how does his wholesome socialist bullshit stack up against the other objectively good unifer Alexander Men? A lot of people simp for Sablin but I've never really heard anyone do it for Men even though in theory he has all the aspects that would make him ideal for them to simp over.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

A new Hearts of Iron IV total conversion mod is out called Beyond Earth.
It takes place in the future year of 2200 and in the world of Civ: Beyond Earth


"Global Warming"


In the Future we will replace the train with a less efficient way to transport goods.

Cool, North America is a Hunger Games reference.

 

[Corpun]

Cool, North America is a Hunger Games reference.

200 years in the future and somehow Quebec and Mexico exist despite whatever the fuck happened to America and Canada.

I've never actually played Sablin despite considering warlord Russia to be the high point of TNO, how does his wholesome socialist bullshit stack up against the other objectively good unifer Alexander Men? A lot of people simp for Sablin but I've never really heard anyone do it for Men even though in theory he has all the aspects that would make him ideal for them to simp over.

Never played Men because he spawns too late to be worth playing but I assume it's as bullshit retarded as Sablin. From what I heard he is basically a lolbert with vague Orthodox characteristics and lets everyone do what they want.

 

[Bloudwulf]

basically a lolbert with vague Orthodox characteristics and lets everyone do what they want.

I've mentioned this before, but Men's Christianity simply boils down to "just be nice".
And no, I'm not saying it should rather be a based and redpilled tradwife theocracy. Taboritsky is for that.

 

[Randall Fragg]

For fuck's sake, Heydrich's entire story is that he thinks Himmler is evil enough to merit a second Civil War and making deals with the people he once viewed as "subhuman" just to try and stop his former boss's insanity, ultimately resulting in him blowing his fucking brains out because he can't deal with the shame that everything he did was for nothing, in service to pure evil, and that's if Heydrich "wins" the SS Civil War.

It's still made very clear that Heydrich is an evil man who has finally woken up to what he has done. He's not trying to wash the blood off of his own hands, merely keep the rest of the world from dying to Himmler's insanity.

Did I mention that, if Heydrich wins, not only does he blow his brains out, but Germany itself basically collapses into anarchy? You know, a major, nuclear-armed state that just culled most of its more moderate elements and the survivors are mostly former SS?

Yeah, I think the TNO devs and all the devs of these shitty submods forget that TNO is supposed to be horrifying.

I actually think the Heydrich storyline marks the start of TNO's decline. I like the general idea and most of the execution of it, but the way Heydrich is characterized sucks. The man was an absolute sociopath IRL, and I frankly doubt he'd have the mental capacity for self-reflection or waking up to how evil he was.

Heydrich should have been characterized as an utter monster. An ambitious, power-hungry, empathy-less psychopath whose entire career in the Nazi party has been about gathering enough power so he can be the next head honcho. He doesn't even really believe in the Nazi's racial beliefs; he himself views his role in the Holocaust as just another job to get himself more power and influence. Emphasize how Heydrich is essentially a product of the Nazi system: in almost any other nation, someone as cruel and openly evil as him would be locked in a cell, or at the very least be kept far, far away from any kind of authority. Under Nazism, people like Heydrich can climb to positions of power because of their cruelty and eagerness to do violence.

And his turn against Himmler isn't due to being horrified by Himmler's plans. Heydrich doesn't give a shit about the whole 'global nuclear holocaust' thing. No, the reason he turns against Himmler is because Himmler's plans would cuck Heydrich out of being the Furher of Germany, what Heydrich has been dreaming of for decades. And that makes Heydrich pissed off at the chicken farming nerd and gets him to start the second civil war. Not out of some sense of needing to protect the world from Himmler's insanity. But because 'wait, if the nukes go off I'M not going to be in charge!'

Likewise, his suicide at the end of his path should have been handled differently. Instead of 'Heydrich realizes that the nazi ideal is hollow and gets a sad', it should have been much, much more petty. He blows his brains out because he's been forced to delegate so much authority to his SS minions over the civil war that he's essentially an even more cucked version of the Holy Roman Emperor. The SS divisions ignore him and act as little feudal overlords, Heydrich hold no real power, and is basically a figurehead keeping the whole shitbox afloat. Heydrich anheroing isn't his mind breaking from realizing what he is. It's a move of pure, petty spite when he realizes that he's been cheated out of his dream. 'YOU FUCKERS MAKE ME A POWERLESS FIGUREHEAD? WELL FUCK YOU, ENJOY THE POWERVACCUM, I STILL WIN!'

Heydrich should not have been characterized as an evil man who finally wakes up to what he is. He should have been written as a complete, utter monster who is still the only thing standing between the world and complete annihilation.

 

[The Foxtrot]

Taboritsky is for that.

Yazov is worse than Taboritsky. At least, in Taboritsky's twisted mind, he truly believes he is doing what is best for Russia, and he is making things right by un-doing the damage caused by the USSR. I feel bad for Taboritsky.

Yazov is a genocidal monster who is worse than Himmler, in my eyes. At least Himmler's insane plan has an "after the war" where Pureblood Aryans repopulate the Earth, Yazov doesn't have any plans for if the Black League actually wins the Great Trial against literally all three of the major powers.

 

[Saturnalia-1918]

Why does Germany even control any land in Africa in TNO anyways? I thought the whole thing with the Nazis was that they wanted to conquer and colonize Eastern Europe, so why do they control 1/3 of Africa?