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

[Pointless Pedant]

Ah yes, the centrist mod; It was called Calm Before The Storm and fell into deep drama when they revealed both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would have permenent debuffs because their economies are inherintly inferior to liberal Capitalism.

What caused such drama is the devs were libertarians who said this mod would be Vanilla plus and that these changes were making it more historically accurate. They bragged about how the player was hard-coded to lose hours in as Nazi Germany as a trap path, and recommended people try out their social democrat Germany path.

When the mod itself came out it was still unfinished and since it killed it's own hype on reddit very few people noticed it; For example, you spend 5-6 hours going from 1933 to 1936 as Japan to find out those half-finished unlocalized events were the only content they included for Japan so far.

The correct way to do that would be just giving an accurate balance of industry. The USA had over 41% of the world's GDP at the time, while Germany and the USSR had 14% each. That would be a sufficient balance to stop any dumb extremist world conquests, since the capitalist nations could just overwhelm them with ship, aircraft, and munition production.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Paradox absolutely refuses to do this and instead injects the Axis (especially Japan and the historically useless Italy, both of which were industrially weaker than France) with steroids.

 

[Kanuckski]

There are two major types of right wing modders. One is the extreme chauvinist who adds a new tree for his own country with all chauvinist over powered ness it would imply. Nothing more than a right wing power fantasy.
The second type makes far more balanced mods you wouldnt describe as right wing. OG kaiserreich for hoi2, and kaiserreich for hoi4 before it was taken over by commies. One of the modern day mods for hoi4 as well.
But that all pales in comparison to left wing modding. Weirdly enough, left wingers have enough time and manpower to execute major overhauls to video games. One advantage of being either a high school student or a jobless basement dweller.

Here's my pseudo intellectual opinion on why the left wing dominates modding: Modding scenes for extremely popular games tend to be dominated by early twenties aspiring video game coders working their way through post secondary education. They have the passion to enjoy what they're doing, still have the time to allocate to extensive projects ALA TNO, and enough skill to to do it. People don't notice it since they don't pay much attention to what modders actually say, let alone outside of non-mod-related sources. But Discord servers, state of twitter, and Discord account-linking makes it easier than ever to see these modders in unrelated conversation. Modern ideological extremism for youth tends to be sustained by disconnection from reality through endless time spent online. It's a perfect storm of the all the requirements to invest in ambitious projects, but also in a good age range to start caring about politics and end up believing in radical lefty shit. It's the same with a lot of Twitter artists too, young, self-sufficient, or not in need of a job living a life in which connecting with reality is largely optional. Both these groups end up attracting very young and or very similar people.

What's different about HOI that makes this dominace so much more visible however is obviously the political nature of its content. In Minecraft modding it might affect Discord discourse and what they post on Twitter, but it's supremely unlikely it'll bleed into mod. In the Risk of Rain 2 community you have a bunch of transflag character skins from modders, shit is too small to ever matter. In HOI, that political shit is the point for a lot of people and why it's so much more visible than any other modding community that comes to mind when it comes to seeing the political beliefs of mod developers.

 

[Techpriest]

The correct way to do that would be just giving an accurate balance of industry. The USA had over 41% of the world's GDP at the time, while Germany and the USSR had 14% each. That would be a sufficient balance to stop any dumb extremist world conquests, since the capitalist nations could just overwhelm them with ship, aircraft, and munition production.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Paradox absolutely refuses to do this and instead injects the Axis (especially Japan and the historically useless Italy, both of which were industrially weaker than France) with steroids.

The reason they do this is pretty simple: game balance. HoI4 isn’t Gary Grigsby’s War in the East or War in the Pacific, or that one War in North Africa game which can have insanely autistic calculations of fuel, ammo, recruitment, railroads, etc etc. They want a scenario where you can have a victorious Germany fighting the US and trying to invade the Eastern Seaboard, because that’s fun. The US is still ludicrously powerful in the base game, and when it gets fully online can and will be able to solo both Japan and the Germans, and probably the Soviets too. Of course that’s a player US.


TNO is a mod where you can have the CIA vs Himmler. It reminds me of Nazi’s, Nukes, and NATO, a war game alt history featuring nazi death rays and a victorious Germany. If you want you can try and reform nazi Germany but why do that when you can form the nation of Hyperboria as a weird quasifacist occultist guy in Russia?

It’s a weird community and the creator of the mod has his moments but all in all, the milk seems to come from them mocking themselves. Not really a full lolcow community compared to say, alien abductees or COVID conspiracy theorists. That’s just my two cents.

EDIT: Also some of the TNO memes are pretty fun, gotta love Forrest Gump on release consistently causing the apocalypse.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

The correct way to do that would be just giving an accurate balance of industry. The USA had over 41% of the world's GDP at the time, while Germany and the USSR had 14% each. That would be a sufficient balance to stop any dumb extremist world conquests, since the capitalist nations could just overwhelm them with ship, aircraft, and munition production.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

Paradox absolutely refuses to do this and instead injects the Axis (especially Japan and the historically useless Italy, both of which were industrially weaker than France) with steroids.

They're doing this for game balance, if you just want a repeat of history just read a book. Otherwise you get scenarios like in the Nobunaga's Ambition series of games where some clans are literally unplayable no matter how good of a player you are or how easy you put the difficulty on. For example in the scenario that happens just after Oda Nobuhide croaks, don't even try to attempt to unify the Oda clan with anyone except Nobunaga because it's impossible, he'll just come in and stomp your shit out. Not even the one who has the best chance of beating Nobunaga, Nobuyuki who starts with a general with really good stats (Shibata Katsuie), can do shit since Nobunaga starts with himself, so of course he's got the best stats in the game, and he often hires Kinoshita Tokichiro on year 1 who for some reason has the second highest stats in the game Yeah I know he's Toyotomi Hideyoshi

 

[Pointless Pedant]

The reason they do this is pretty simple: game balance. HoI4 isn’t Gary Grigsby’s War in the East or War in the Pacific, or that one War in North Africa game which can have insanely autistic calculations of fuel, ammo, recruitment, railroads, etc etc. They want a scenario where you can have a victorious Germany fighting the US and trying to invade the Eastern Seaboard, because that’s fun. The US is still ludicrously powerful in the base game, and when it gets fully online can and will be able to solo both Japan and the Germans, and probably the Soviets too. Of course that’s a player US.


TNO is a mod where you can have the CIA vs Himmler. It reminds me of Nazi’s, Nukes, and NATO, a war game alt history featuring nazi death rays and a victorious Germany. If you want you can try and reform nazi Germany but why do that when you can form the nation of Hyperboria as a weird quasifacist occultist guy in Russia?

I disagree with that premise because I think unbalanced scenarios can still be fun to play.

Take the Winter War, for example. There was absolutely no way that Finland was going to win, but they still inflicted massive losses on the USSR before being eventually defeated. By your logic, it would be no fun to try to wargame that scenario, and yet it still didn't turn out the way many predicted it would. Similarly, the Axis will lose the war unless the Allied players all collectively have a stroke or are retards on the level of Chris Chan, but that doesn't mean the exact course of the war is predetermined. Maybe Germany could have not sent Rommel to Africa and dragged the war on a little longer on the eastern front, surviving long enough to get the first nuke dropped on Berlin instead of Hiroshima. There are plenty of alternate history possibilities that don't involve kneecapping the USA, or Canada, for that matter, which is incredibly weak in game compared to its significant power in reality.

Similarly, in an alternate history scenario, you can play as an absolute maniac and try to survive as long as possible before being inevitably beaten. Pol Pot lasted 4 years, can you do better than that?

They're doing this for game balance, if you just want a repeat of history just read a book. Otherwise you get scenarios like in the Nobunaga's Ambition series of games where some clans are literally unplayable no matter how good of a player you are or how easy you put the difficulty on. For example in the scenario that happens just after Oda Nobuhide croaks, don't even try to attempt to unify the Oda clan with anyone except Nobunaga because it's impossible, he'll just come in and stomp your shit out. Not even the one who has the best chance of beating Nobunaga, Nobuyuki who starts with a general with really good stats (Shibata Katsuie), can do shit since Nobunaga starts with himself, so of course he's got the best stats in the game, and he often hires Kinoshita Tokichiro on year 1 who for some reason has the second highest stats in the game Yeah I know he's Toyotomi Hideyoshi

I think someone else could have unified Japan easily. Ieyasu won Sekigahara because he was able to convince a lot of Ishida's army to switch sides in the middle of the battle and join him. If not for specific alliances forged between certain clans a different shogunate could have won in the end.

Similarly Toyotomi's invasion of Korea would have been more successful if not for some utterly miraculous naval victories by I Sun-shin which were massively against the odds. As it was the Japanese army was thoroughly beaten to the point that they wouldn't set foot on the Asian mainland again for centuries.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

I think someone else could have unified Japan easily. Ieyasu won Sekigahara because he was able to convince a lot of Ishida's army to switch sides in the middle of the battle and join him. If not for specific alliances forged between certain clans a different shogunate could have won in the end.

Yup, how does the saying go? Nobunaga planted the seeds, Hideyoshi tilled the land and Ieyasu ate the cake? Something like that? It was basically anyone's game at that point. Nobunaga himself or his generals weren't too impressive tactically, there was some luck involved and of course some classic DarkSydePhil pigroach luck of outlasting your enemies, when Nobunaga "brought the end to the old world" by defeating the fabled Takeda cavalry, Shingen already croaked by then so they were under the command of his dumb inexperienced son, and let's not forget Uesugi Kenshin humiliating Nobunaga at Tedorigawa through careful strategy and waiting for the right opportunity to strike and as you probably know this all stopped because Kenshin's notorious alcoholic lifestyle caught up to him.

But back to Nobunaga's Ambition, it seems that the only ways to defy history in that game is if you either are a good player and play as one of the major clans or play some earlier scenarios when Nobunaga isn't playable, that's my one big gripe with the games. For example if you choose the earliest possible starting scenario which is usually the year of Nobunaga's birth, Imagawa Yoshimoto gets so many good events after you win the succession crisis that he just speeds through them and it allows him to start his march on the capital in the mid 1540s and by then Nobuhide is still Oda clan head so Nobunaga isn't there to have his Battle at Okehazama event fire and kill off Yoshimoto. Even the dumbfuck AI manages to do this with Yoshimoto if you choose to just spectate the game.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Yup, how does the saying go? Nobunaga planted the seeds, Hideyoshi tilled the land and Ieyasu ate the cake? Something like that? It was basically anyone's game at that point. Nobunaga himself or his generals weren't too impressive tactically, there was some luck involved and of course some classic DarkSydePhil pigroach luck of outlasting your enemies, when Nobunaga "brought the end to the old world" by defeating the fabled Takeda cavalry, Shingen already croaked by then so they were under the command of his dumb inexperienced son, and let's not forget Uesugi Kenshin humiliating Nobunaga at Tedorigawa through careful strategy and waiting for the right opportunity to strike and as you probably know this all stopped because Kenshin's notorious alcoholic lifestyle caught up to him.

But back to Nobunaga's Ambition, it seems that the only ways to defy history in that game is if you either are a good player and play as one of the major clans or play some earlier scenarios when Nobunaga isn't playable, that's my one big gripe with the games. For example if you choose the earliest possible starting scenario which is usually the year of Nobunaga's birth, Imagawa Yoshimoto gets so many good events after you win the succession crisis that he just speeds through them and it allows him to start his march on the capital in the mid 1540s and by then Nobuhide is still Oda clan head so Nobunaga isn't there to have his Battle at Okehazama event fire and kill off Yoshimoto. Even the dumbfuck AI manages to do this with Yoshimoto if you choose to just spectate the game.

I've never played those games, but that's actually a period of history that could have easily gone differently. There was a lot of luck and diplomacy involved and any number of warlords could have won in the end.

WW2 on the other hand was just the Axis powers starting what they couldn't finish and being stomped by a coalition which outclassed them in industry, resources, and manpower.

 

[Randall Fragg]

(I actually enjoy TNO. It has flaws, but it's still fun.)
(The Burgundian System is the only escape from Clown World. Live in Bunker, Eat the Oatmeal, Nuke the Degenerates.)

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

WW2 on the other hand was just the Axis powers starting what they couldn't finish and being stomped by a coalition which outclassed them in industry, resources, and manpower.

The althype made good videos on possible scenarios of an axis victory. And before you say it, Turkey was very well capable of supplying a million men in the Caucasus. You just have to look at its performance in WW1

 

[Techpriest]

Anyway if we’re making image shitposts about TNO I’ve got a fun one

 

[Jah Hates Kaffirs]

I feel this meme especially applies to TNO fans.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

I was expecting a Paradox Community thread in general at some point but this is even better. This community manages to gather all the concentrated autism of the Paradox modding community in one place.

 

[Lonely Grave]

I've been expecting this for a while, HoI4 is a game that just begs to be overrun by revisionists thinking their beliefs will be validated if they make it work in simulation.

What makes it unique is that HoI4 modders appear to be totally isolated in terms of pure autism. One of my favourite RTS games is Ultimate General: Civil War which lets you fight a Confederate campaign and features several custom scenarios for the capture of Washington DC among others for a Rebel victory. Sounds like the perfect breeding ground for Southern revisionists, right? Nope - most of the community surrounding UGCW is international and approach the game from a purely historical viewpoint.

 

[Techpriest]

I've been expecting this for a while, HoI4 is a game that just begs to be overrun by revisionists thinking their beliefs will be validated if they make it work in simulation.

What makes it unique is that HoI4 modders appear to be totally isolated in terms of pure autism. One of my favourite RTS games is Ultimate General: Civil War which lets you fight a Confederate campaign and features several custom scenarios for the capture of Washington DC among others for a Rebel victory. Sounds like the perfect breeding ground for Southern revisionists, right? Nope - most of the community surrounding UGCW is international and approach the game from a purely historical viewpoint.

I call it the Autism/Learning Curve barrier. The more difficult or niche a historical/alternate history game or scenario is to mod, learn, or get into, the less crazy the people who play it tend to be outside of their niche interest. While there are exceptions to this, in general things like Rule the Waves or Ultimate General Civil War are more difficult to really make political because the politics of the thing aren’t modeled with any detail, or the focus is squarely on the tactical or operational level. Paradox games focus a lot on the big picture and abstract smaller details. HOI4 excels at abstracting the politics compared to previous games in the series, changing the 9 ideologies to 4 and the focus tree idea means you can keep things somewhat railroaded or let slip the absolute insanity. Alternate history is also fun because it gives nerds excuses to dredge up obscure historical figures and do things with them. I think that’s a lot of the appeal of these sort of HOI mods.

 

[HumanHive]

It’s really too bad. Warlord Russia is fun and I loved playing as Tomsk, but everything is so fucking scripted it ends up as a waste of time. There’s huge potential in building up a demobilized WW2 nation into a 60’s era war machine, but nope all wars must be approved by the author. So forget whatever you wanted to do with the army you made, just keep clicking research buttons like a braindead rodent desperate for a dopamine hit.

Forget visual novel. This shit is just a tankie bedtime story. The troon drama is a sideshow to the massive disappointment that is this mod. Thank God for OWB.

 

[Dagobert]

As a fan and writer of alternate history, TNOmod really is a mixed bag for me. It suffers from one problem though that really hurts it: the writers can't seem to put themselves in the shoes of the "bad guys" as it were, so the Nazis/Fascists/other "bad guys" tend to be written from the author's perspective of what they were. It's a subtle difference, and bias can't ever be totally eradicated, but the level of attention one puts to moderating that bias can make all the difference. There's a lot more flaws, but I personally find that to be the worst.

There's an alternate history story called What Madness is This that is basically "what if every country was a Nazi Germany" and while it could have been edge-tard trash, because it's written to not take itself fully seriously and even leans into the crazy, it kind of works. If TNOmod was written with a higher degree of self-awareness and just leaned into the more absurd elements, it could probably work better.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

I've heard that paradox purges right wing mods, but have there been good examples? Like, a mod which replaces every word with nigger is gonna get banned, but I'm talking about fully developed mods like TNO. Where are the nazi hubs for hoi4 modding?

Only ones I found are mods with the Holocaust in them and a Victoria 2 mod that let you basically do IRL ethnic cleansing and murder in the style of what happened to the Armenians/Turks/your least favorite Balkan race. I should go check Stormfront.

The althype made good videos on possible scenarios of an axis victory. And before you say it, Turkey was very well capable of supplying a million men in the Caucasus. You just have to look at its performance in WW1

Like when they tried to march an army to the frontlines and most of the army froze to death or died of disease long before they reached the battle which they were utterly BTFO in since it was all based on a strategic plan that made the WWII Japanese look like experts at logistics?

 

[Kanuckski]

It’s really too bad. Warlord Russia is fun and I loved playing as Tomsk, but everything is so fucking scripted it ends up as a waste of time. There’s huge potential in building up a demobilized WW2 nation into a 60’s era war machine, but nope all wars must be approved by the author. So forget whatever you wanted to do with the army you made, just keep clicking research buttons like a braindead rodent desperate for a dopamine hit.

Forget visual novel. This shit is just a tankie bedtime story. The troon drama is a sideshow to the massive disappointment that is this mod. Thank God for OWB.

I've never been more fucking blueballed by anything than TNO. Fucking playing the West Russian Revolutionary Front, story is all about hyping me up to rebuild the USSR and retake occupied West Russia after the failed West Russian War. I reunite all of the Russian statelets, I reform the USSR. I get this epic pop-up with blaring music to celebrate my victory. Then I see this "CONGRATULATIONS FOR PLAYING THROUGH ALL THE CONTENT CURRENTLY IN THE FACTION COME BACK SOON FOR MORE." I can't declare war on Reichskommissariat Moskowien since I no longer have a focus tree and justifying war goals is disabled by the mod. Talk about a premature victory.

This is the video that I link embedded, though they've updated all the reunification super events to be much better. They changed some of the displayed quotes so the game doesn't scold you for being a bad boy who makes a bad Russia. They also touched up the songs and gave new ones to different end paths for leaders with multiple reunification outcomes. Out of the updated ones; mathematician Russia is probably my favorite. https://youtu.be/WbPUG1MzXp0?t=653

 

[Pointless Pedant]

I've never been more fucking blueballed by anything than TNO. Fucking playing the West Russian Revolutionary Front, story is all about hyping me up to rebuild the USSR and retake occupied West Russia after the failed West Russian War. I reunite all of the Russian statelets, I reform the USSR. I get this epic pop-up with blaring music to celebrate my victory. Then I see this "CONGRATULATIONS FOR PLAYING THROUGH ALL THE CONTENT CURRENTLY IN THE FACTION COME BACK SOON FOR MORE." I can't declare war on Reichskommissariat Moskowien since I no longer have a focus tree and justifying war goals is disabled by the mod. Talk about a premature victory.

This is the video that I link embedded, though they've updated all the reunification super events to be much better. They changed some of the displayed quotes so the game doesn't scold you for being a bad boy who makes a bad Russia. They also touched up the songs and gave new ones to different end paths for leaders with multiple reunification outcomes. Out of the updated ones; mathematician Russia is probably my favorite. https://youtu.be/WbPUG1MzXp0?t=653

The issue is that by that point it's the 1970s and the major powers have thermonuclear ICBMs. The war to seize Moscow would be very short and rather explosive.

There's a reason we didn't see the Soviets steamrolling across Europe in the 1970s, and that was without any crazy Nazis involved.

One other unfinished aspect of the mod is that there are no tactical nuclear weapons. The USA can't go Duck Hook on South Africa and bring down atomic wrath on the German colonies (Huttig getting nuked after gassing the Americans would be both hilarious and doctrinally accurate). Davy Crocketts would be great for memes and actually existed, unlike most of the shit in this mod.

 

[Kanuckski]

The issue is that by that point it's the 1970s and the major powers have thermonuclear ICBMs. The war to seize Moscow would be very short and rather explosive.

There's a reason we didn't see the Soviets steamrolling across Europe in the 1970s, and that was without any crazy Nazis involved.

One other unfinished aspect of the mod is that there are no tactical nuclear weapons. The USA can't go Duck Hook on South Africa and bring down atomic wrath on the German colonies (Huttig getting nuked after gassing the Americans would be both hilarious and doctrinally accurate). Davy Crocketts would be great for memes and actually existed, unlike most of the shit in this mod.

That point about Russia not taking Moscow to evade a potential Nuclear way is fair, even if it still sucks.

But on the topic of new content for TNO; it almost feels like this thread was made too early for the true lulz. The mod has only really begun to ramp up it's heavy-handed American commentary as of last month's update. America and the Organization of Free Nations defeating and claiming Nazi Germany's African holdings. In which they use to subsequently nation build a democratic central African super state. One that is somehow supposed to be a serious commentary on Kirkpatrick Doctrine, Korean War, the Vietnam, American Imperialism and racism ruins everything all in one. I think conceptually the writers do it the best that you possibly could given the overall context. Since going into Africa to form a puppet super state out of a bunch of tiny states isn't good for local stability but is certainly a compelling concept in-universe and for the player. It ends up falling apart because it's a retarded idea for the OFN to pursue. The devs could have just left it at "nation build is bad" "we shouldn't liberate a people just to subsequently put them under our banner to serve our needs."

But as was said earlier, they can't just stay in the middle ground where they can make genuinely compelling arguments. They have to go all out, with the best ending being a ceasefire from a position of strength with actual Nazis in hopes their glorified extermination through labour camps fall apart due to local rebellion (which they do if you you do this)
In America there are massive protests at home that fighting to liberate people from the Nazis is a bad move. That the American superstate defacto dictatorship is somehow no better than literal death camps. Through their writing they constantly argue from a position that equates corruption, incompetence of leadership, poverty and economic melt down as genuinely comparable tragedies to extermination. They even go about having the guy who fucked up the Vietnam war (Westmoreland) as one of the leaders of the African superstate who can choose to napalms their own lands in Africa. Real subtle stuff.

This is a former writer's response to that massive wall of text I screnshooted earlier about Panzer's interview. I bring it up now because it's relevant. Shows that even with Panzer gone. His vision of TNO is conceptually complete and will continue to be the crux of development for years to come. Any current problems with the mod are only the beginning.

Also, OFN Summit collapses because of a whites only bathroom miscommunication.