I suppose since I'll be posting this here as well, I might as well make my test post here too. More eyes on things is always good, after all.
Weebs At War: Let's Play Hearts of Iron 4!
What's all this then?
This is Hearts of Iron 4, a grand strategy game released in 2016 by Paradox Development Studio. It is currently the latest in that series, and has been continually developed and received new DLCs up to now, with more content still due to be released past the writing of this post.
So what's this game about?
Basically, this is a game all about World War 2. You pick a country and guide it from 1936 to 1948 (actual end date is flexible), making decisions, building nations and running wars along the way. If you've played other Paradox games, you have a basic idea of how this is going to go, though this game is more war-focused than, say, Crusader Kings 2 or such.
If you haven't played a Paradox game, basically imagine yourself in control of the major facets of a country. You decide which direction your politics take, build your cabinet, you construct your nation's industry, you decide what weapons you build and what kind of an army, navy and air force you set up with those weapons, you trade resources with other nations, build alliances, spy on each other, all sorts of stuff you need to do to run a successful nation. As such, there's a lot of stuff to learn with this game.
And what about the LP?
Well, as I said, there's a lot of stuff to learn with this game. Furthermore, this game has an interesting multiplayer function where multiple people can play the same nation, with changes any player makes instantly being visible to all players. With that in mind, I decided to combine those two factors to create this LP. As such, here's who's part of this LP.
First, we have myself,
TheMcD. I have about 1000 hours in this game, though a good part of that was probably spent in observer mode watching games with different mods develop because that interests me. Still, I have a fair amount of experience in this game, even if there are some parts I really don't know how to work optimally. I can get through games and win wars. I will be taking the role of teacher in this LP.
And for our second participant, we have
Ibblebibble. As he describes his experience with this game himself: "I last played the game on release, and then played Italy and lost to Greece." Ibble will be taking the role of student in this LP.
So together, we will be playing this game in co-op multiplayer and attempt to get through a vanilla Germany campaign (with some cosmetic mods) while I teach Ibble to play the way I play. From there, we see how things go. Things might go great! Things might not go great. Hopefully, it will be entertaining either way.
You said something about mods.
Yeah, I'm using a few minor graphical mods I like and one multiplayer utility mod. Here's the list of mods I'm using.
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Square Counters: Exactly what it says. Normally, counters that show units are rectangular in this game. But I come from HoI2, where counters were square. So I prefer it this way.
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Universal Colored Puppets: This colors puppet states the same color as their overlord. It makes maps look a bit nicer when you can tell at a glance that a country is just a puppet.
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WW's Map: This is just a map mod. I think it looks cleaner and nicer, so I use it.
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No Forced Pause / Slowdown For MP Lag: There's an automatic slowdown with speed when somebody lags behind in multiplayer. Since this is just two people playing co-op and we're probably going to be frequently pausing to go over stuff anyway, I figure it's easier to disable the automatic slowdown and keep us in control of the speed.
I don't think that's all the mods you're using.
No, those are all the mods. Everything else is completely normal vanilla HoI4.
Don't question it.
Anything else?
One more important note.
Do not treat this LP as a comprehensive tutorial! You will be sorely disappointed if you do that. This LP will teach you to play
my way. That is not necessarily a good thing. It will probably be enough to play the game, find some success, and have fun. But people who know the game better will probably tear their hair out at some things I say. Please don't get mad. I'm just kinda dumb.
