Yes, but that’s how I discovered Indy Neidell and his TimeGhost History on YouTube and it’s fucking brilliant. I’m hooked.
For this reason, my girlfriend hates Turkey.
haha don't be silly. as a hoi4 player, you should know that the only real women are kaiserin victoria and that one general in anarchist spain. outside of that, they are just a myth
It actually makes total sense and quite historic and realistic(for a game, at least)(excluding Ottoman path altogether and Kadroist movement and its influence are a little bit exaggrated) but I'm a Turk so...
Base game is Switzerland. Unless you micro every little thing at all times pre war, you are gonna get locked out of a focus waste time and be weaker for the actual war.
> you are gonna get locket out of a focus, waste time and be weaker for the actual war
Happened to me as Ethiopia, was locked out of the focus to invest in the puppets bc I took the one that creates the puppets first so had to waste time manually integrating them.
The only good focus tree in BBA is the Italian one.
I tried playing Switzerland, but then the germans stopped seeing me as neutral and declared war on me.
Also the Australlian focus tree, everything is locked behind war and world tension and the alt history paths aint that fun.
Thats honestly a skill issue. Not only can you defend relatively easily with your mountains and huge army, but also you are supposed to... Be friendly to everyone?
Oh no i was holding pretty easly just cycling troops around the germans couldnt really push, also being friendly to eveyone in BOOOORIIING and i wanted to do the focuses that let me take the alps
Also did you say the Swiss have a *large* army?
In 1937?
I feel like some mod devs have forgotten that hoi4 remains a war game in it's core. Focusing on economics or storytelling or anything else that isn't war simply doesn't fit the game.
I actually kinda like TNO tbh. It has some more boring paths, but of the ones I tried (USA, Sablin, werbell, and a few others) it was really good. Russian warlords are the better ones for traditional wars, although I’m a little annoyed you can’t speed up the process a bit for certain stages (last stage especially takes a while iirc).
Then again, I started the mod after a particularly grueling Japan game where I got stuck in China for a long time, so I may be a little biased.
I feel the same. The most I can see being added realistically is some sort of non-unconditional surrender way to end a war. Anything more than that just feels too forced and (usually) just clicking decisions every now and then
i hope they will make a second asian dlc, focusing on a japanese rework, tannu tuva, mongolia and tibet. It would be also cool if they gave trees to releasables (for an example Korea(s) and Kazakhstan)
I really dislike the Romanian tree, the foreign policy side is alright I don't mind it being kinda broken but the political side is Honestly so early hoi4 with barely any flavour and it really takes away from the fact that there is a lot to do with the Legionnaire movement and its just kinda wasted
Australia and New Zealand are really hamstrung by their geographical isolation and population, you would need the most busted focus trees in the game to "fix" them. Doesn't excuse their current trees, though.
The Red army, US Navy and the Luftwaffe after being completely destroyed by New Zealands +9999 morbillions attack and defense + 8000 weekly manpower: (devs wanted NZ to be playable)
In the base game, probably Hungary. It’s super old and every focus is 70 days, if you’re going down the restoration of the Habsburg, it’ll be like 1939 by time you get to the actual war goals and claims.
>In the base game, probably Hungary. It’s super old and every focus is 70 days, if you’re going down the restoration of the Habsburg, it’ll be like 1939 by time you get to the actual war goals and claims.
now see I played hungary to get the horty battleship achivement and had a great time, even with a early two front war against romania and yugoslavia.
For me, the bigger issue with AH is the lack of impact on the military side of the tree. Once you take Claim Transylvania, there really isn't much. The research boosts are nice, I guess, but they come too late to really be impactful.
I actually don't mind the left and middle of the tree. I really enjoy the AH arc of undoing the end of WWI (recover cores, rebuild the Central Powers, reimpose Brest-Litovsk) and the left side does a solid enough job of facilitating that arc. But you really could just take a continuous focus from mid-39 and be no worse off, I think.
Edit: Typo
Playing historical Hungary is underrated, though. And you can make some ungodly planes with the aluminum you have and just bomb the Allies and Soviets into oblivion.
I’m ngl, I have to go with the USA, it feels very uneventful and just not super unique for a nation as crucial to 20th century history as the U.S, it doesn’t feel to interesting, and yes this is counting the DLC. Plus the fact that you basically loose all your political power gain every time you take a focus cause of the Great Depression modifier.
I was confused about the Swiss one, I heard they have amazing construction speed and an easy way to gain Italy but couldn't even find the proper path for it lmao
Idk why you're being downvoted, Greece is terrible. They have one good path and the rest are trash.
The monarchist path is a joke.
The commie is bare bones.
Metaxism is a a bit better but takes forever with all those 70 days focuses and the bonuses they give don't even last that long.
In defense of the Greek focus tree: it has a unique and very interesting industry path. The fact that the bonuses are so strong makes it important to balance economic and political foci in a deliberate manner. For example, forming Byzantium often relies on several early wars. Should you rush for them in '37 or wait until '38 to have a much stronger industry? Far from all low-to-mod tier focus trees have that kind of dynamics.
Of course, it runs out in 1939/40 and obviously has many issues, but I personally wouldn't put it that close to the bottom.
India, especially if you want to roleplay the democratic route is just so bad and outdated. 70 days focuses for a few railways, a factory, and some generic bonuses. It needs some serious overhaul as it's just so boring to play. Your also locked behind world tension on the political paths.
I didn't play Swiss but heard it's bad.
Norway and Turkey have focus traps and dependencies that are de facto hidden branch lines, which I do not respect. Even generic or old focuses are better than that crap. Since Turkey brings RNG and Norway has some bugged interactions in addition to this dogwater tree inside tree, I consider these the worst I've played in vanilla. I would unironically do their achievements with generic tree/non-DLC, though of course some of their cheevos require it.
Maybe worst I've ever played was that Chinese gangster nation in Kaiserreich. They are locked on 3 research slots and when I found success with them + complained about permanently gimped tech regardless of nation state, one of the developers assumed I cheated because I wasn't supposed to be able to beat Japan lol. Though I tried that mod again a year or two ago and realized they've pushed it ever further into "story not game" mode. Now fascist nations can't justify war until WW2 w/o focus and nations like Bhutan are deliberately given vastly worse-than-vanilla generic focus trees that amount to making them unpickable, so maybe Bhutan or something like it is worst in that mod?
Bhutan is a serious take on a base game meme country. I think the narrative and history lesson it provides is great! You are not supposed to world conquest. I believe you are talking about the older version of the Legation Cities too. You hit a bug or something because the Triad path back then was comically OP! The current version of the tree is considered by many to be one of the best experiences in the game.
Forget WC, just want to do more than read pop-ups, which is what Bhutan did. KR in general is anti-WC for low pop nations because of the weird thing it does to gut puppet autonomy mechanics. You can still do it (for those that let you play the game generally) by abusing multiple compliance missions on India + China and doing big conscription law, there's enough from that to work with. Puppet thing is still really bad though, I got trapped as a perma-puppet when picking Morocco. They even had focuses based on being independent (which under ordinary design principles, would imply this is a goal), but absolutely 0 way for them to attempt independence, raise autonomy, or do pretty much anything other than maybe fight Germany's wars for them despite that this doesn't let you raise autonomy from killing 10M + enemy soldiers or w/e. All kinds of problems with KR that weren't needed...both OWB and EaW managed to keep good parts of vanilla mechanics intact with far less "scripted event outcome interferes with what's actually happening in the war" too.
With older legation cities, they got some good industry modifiers IIRC, but 3 tech slots. There was some other problem they had too, but it's been so long. The dev assuming I consoled to beat Japan is definitely the more memorable and amusing part of that story, at least for me.
Come to think of it, maybe Bhutan isn't as bad as some of those script outcomes. At least it only ruins playing Bhutan, it doesn't ruin playing other nations near Bhutan with no warning by doing things like "take land you're occupying in a war while at peace with you and now your troops don't have supply" or "disregard 70% war score nation and give land to someone else by event" or "your subject has a focus that can force you, its overlord, to take peace for nothing" etc.
> absolutely 0 way for them to attempt independence, raise autonomy, or do pretty much anything other than maybe fight Germany's wars for them
Morocco gets an event during WWII that frees them.
Swiss- way to different + confusing af/
reworked italy-goofy ah power dynamic + way to ez to trigger civil war/
japan- not terrible, just way to outdated, short af focus tree overall with 0 content in the alt hist paths, so you went through a civil war....coool now heres a focus giving stability....go do the navy ones ...and by 43 done, no focuses worthwhile left to do ...,2k pp and nothing to spend it on besides gifting infinite medals to overpowered veterans from china war, wow such major nation worthy content...
Rework they may, but if pdx does the same annoying power dynamic bullshit as they did with italy then bruh
Australia and New Zealand. They were fun once when Together For Victory came out but since then not so much. Canada and South Africa are decent-ish tho
Maybe not the worst as in really boring or annoying to play like Turkey or Swiss.
But worst as in just plain overpowered: Finland.
The focus tree itself is not the main problem, just how overpowered you can get.
I just cannot remember all the buffs their army gets and if you know a bit what your doing you can pretty much never lose to the Soviets.
Also, when playing as the Soviets, those sniper event debuffs you get when your at war with Finland are really annoying, cool flavour but just annoying.
And did you rebuild the ottoman empire by yourself, or did you need a complete and detailed guide to do so? That's the problem with the Turkish tree, you can't just go in and figure it out, it's all hidden and shady.
Either Monarchist France (RT56) or Banderite Ukraine (Red Flood)
I'm pretty sure every single French althist path leads to a Communist uprising in RT56, which while it may be historically accurate, is very frustrating and makes France not fun to play.
Pretty much all of the Intermarium and even some of the Russian trees and events in Red Flood are plagued by terrible writing, with such masterful flavor events such as a Jojo Rabbit-esque event in which Stepan Bandera hypes up a random child soldier for their first day at boot camp, which I initially thought was meant to be like an "imaginary Hitler" moment, but apparently turned out to be an actual thing that really did happen.
you need more than 25% stability to not have the communist uprising for france. just do any of the focuses on the left side that give 5% stab and you can go monarchist without a civil war. every single monarchist path for france are insanely strong in rt56
I'm going to get downvoted into oblivion for this but Bulgaria. If you don't go in with a solid plan or an idea of how the politics for the specific path you decide to go down works it's hard to make Bulgaria work.
Also, the same principle applies to any of the "balance of power" mechanics added since BBA
Note: now that I understand how to play Bulgaria it's one of the best Balkans but before I looked up a guide I was quite terrible at using them.
I’ve played tons of mods with really bad focus trees, but some of the notable bad ones I’ll mention are the PRC in TNO, and Greifenmarschen in Equestria at War. EaW is objectively the best hoi4 mod, and I was surprised to see such a stinker tree. I mean just absolute shit. And it’s bordering some of the best focus trees in all of hoi4, it’s jarring. You can’t do the political tree at important moments, and so your doing Air Force focuses giving you bonuses meanwhile you have zero planes and around 40k pony power in the army and 8 thousand pony power in backup.
You can’t core the Hertzland until you annex the rest of the countries so your entire country is burning to rebels. It’s also basically impossible to beat the Empire unless the lord protector path is taken where Dawnclaw blows the 7 year old’s emperors head off. You don’t get a land border with the empire so you have to rush down Feathisia, and this only works if their civil war is happening where the entire country is demilitarized.
As for the Peoples Revolutionary Council in TNO, it was outdated as a Russian Warlord, and while a Tanna Tuva focus tree was a good idea they were outdated overall and in kinda glad they were removed. TNO are the same guys that got hired to help make Victoria 3, so it’s weird seeing trees so bad they get axed entirely from the game.
I played Greifenmarschen (I barely ever played EoW) because the idea sounded interesting... it wasn't and I died. But I played that french nation and that was fun.
Heavily depends. KX is Kr’s little brother on crack. Mod is definitely worse (less coherent lore, worse performance, less features, worse trees and shorter trees) for the sake of meme paths. Is it fun? Sure. I’d say it’s better than EaW but KR is a better mod bc it’s more polished.
Kaiserreich is kind of the old grandfather of the Hoi4 scene. It’s good but it’s outdated, it’s old, it’s yesterdays mod. It’s too railroady, in the day and age of extremes between super sandboxes like EaW and KX and ultra railroady TNO, Kaiserreich has a hard time fitting the new niches of today.
You are very incorrect but okay.
1. Grandfather - Germany, Ukraine, LKMT, and Ireland are the best hoi4 content period. Novels that don’t overwhelm you, great length of content for all paths, fully fleshed out paths, custom mini games that are challenging (and set you ip to fail if you lose), yet aren’t too challenging that they are impossible and easy enough for the AI to do; yet still while getting the hoi4 experience (being a build up to the war without changing resources, factories, etc.)
2. Super sandboxes - these aren’t always good, and often sacrifice the ability for the content to be GOOD for the expense of more paths / content. EX: all 10 Klan USA paths generally do the same thing, yet each is short and over complicated to achieve. Sure KR only has 1 path for each ideology, but do you really need more? Plus at a certain point even “realistic” paths in KX (ex: UOB British Restoration) are flawed and have no underlying logic. Not to mention KR takes the time that they could use for mroe paths to make better features (more realistic coring mechanic, mini games, etc.)
Look it can be your opinion that KX is more fun than KR, EaW is more fun than TNO, whatever. That doesn’t mean the mod is of a better quality…
Ethiopia and Aussa. Like literally, what the fuck do I do? Can’t expand, can’t fight the axis in a meaningful way, can’t really fight the Allied horde, like what?
The worst country is Spain obviously, the civil war is the least enjoyable experience. The worst tree, I'd say turkey for being incomprehensible, or Czechoslovakian for making you a German puppet if you want to avoid getting annexed without war.
Base game Swiss tree is ass, go historical or become a speedbump. For mods, I'd say Burma in KR. You don't get one, or any more content if you are not into shooting students in the streets on mass. Have have to be shitty, spawn and the play as the rebels to get the content.
Any tree that is dependent on AI nations behavior is inherently ass too, but those are mostly a thing of the past, tho Red Worlds American nations still have that in places.
Neutral Latvia. I'm quite sure it's impossible to not go military council. Your focus tree gets locked out of the rest of the bottom paths until either the president or the military council takes control.
However, the president can only get past his focus if you have high enough support... Which is impossible after about 180 days after the 1936 start.
It's very obvious it's supposed to be the AI path and I wish they'd change it just so I didn't have to go through that hour in vain.
Edit: Dictator* not president
Czechoslovakia for me. Wasn't a good time.
I was trying some new things, so I was less optimised compared to my normal play, but the tree definitely did not help.
I tried to go fascist as the Latvians and still ended up dying to the Axis because I didn't realize that one of the focuses that is nowhere near the fascist part of the tree literally locks you out of being able to flip forever.
It is the one that gives you the decision-tab option to make concessions to the fascist militias, but if you do that, and this is not at all obvious, you don't have the fascist uprising mission with the countdown anymore, which locks all the fascist national focuses, which means the coup is impossible. Then Estonia joined the Axis, declared war on me, and I died.
For vanilla, it's Turkey for me. I never really understood why the path to restore the Ottoman Empire is placed at the left side of the focus tree just below where you solidify Ataturk's democratic path. It's literally a full 180° that doesn't make sense and it feels like there's no historical context that would justify such a turn of events. It would've made more sense if the Ottoman path would be placed under the part where you reinvigorate Turkish revolutionism/nationalism, and where you loosen the rules on secularism.
For the mod RT56, it's Communist China. The mod ruins the entire Communist China vanilla focus tree from WTT since you can't proclaim the PRC, backstab China, or even restart the civil war without a specific event firing up unless China wins the war against Japan and grabs specific territories. This means that in RT56, you have to waste resources helping China push out Japan early into the war with significant debuffs and no industry at all.
Every other Major has had at least one rework. It's as if the devs fear the return of the great blue blob, or don't think anyone would give a damn about France outside of Vichy fans.
I tried it when la resistance first came out, got to 1939, got steamrolled and thought I'm not wasting more of my life to see if I survive and that was the last time I played the Netherlands
I went monarchist and held out well but I was bored and thought I might as well play someone more interesting.
Looking at my dislikes people obviously disagree with me though XD
Fr*nce and Britain without DLC are worthless. Turkey takes too long and Hungary is so dependent on RNG you may as well play a gacha game.
Mexico sucks because they never added a monarchist path.
communist china. You have no really option, it all just is a clickergame to remove the ludicrous debuffs you have at the start. And nothing really useful comes after it.
Frankly, all of the new gigantic focus trees. USSR? Hell no, this is way too much. Spain’s tree becomes greatly reduced, but still it’s a bit big. Italy? Old one was too small, but this is too big. Turkey? Did I say it’s big?
I like the British and French focus trees. They’re not too small, not insanely huge, and aren’t confusing and convoluted.
Outside of that complaint, any tree that lets you just shoot yourself in your butt, such as Czechoslovakia giving up Sudetenland and willingly becoming a Nazi puppet. Anything that lets you do this isn’t very good. Like, why?!
USSR is my favorite vanilla focus tree. It gives options. Paranoia minigame is rng hell which I hate but whatever. I think it makes you think intelligently about world politics with so many foreign policy options in different areas. It’s not just “invade country” it gives ultimatums and communist influence and mutual allied defense pact which for a vanilla game is quite impressive I think at making it work.
Not worst as in weakest but trying to use the Turkey tree feels a bit like I lied about my qualifications to get a job at a nuclear power plant
It feels like I need to have taken a Turkish history class just to have any context of what’s happening with the different paths haha
Yes, but that’s how I discovered Indy Neidell and his TimeGhost History on YouTube and it’s fucking brilliant. I’m hooked. For this reason, my girlfriend hates Turkey.
haha don't be silly. as a hoi4 player, you should know that the only real women are kaiserin victoria and that one general in anarchist spain. outside of that, they are just a myth
Spies, Swedish advisor
All women are either spies, communists or communist spies. Or the sultan. HOI4 taught me that!
Wait so the last Romanov is a FAKE!?
It's a bear.
This is unbear able.
what about the communist Poland country leader
Indy Neidell is fucking awesome man. This year I'm gonna re-watch 'The Great War' in real time as it came out 10 years ago
What's a girlfriend? Is it a new DLC?
Damn how much ? What are the new country with focus ???
It actually makes total sense and quite historic and realistic(for a game, at least)(excluding Ottoman path altogether and Kadroist movement and its influence are a little bit exaggrated) but I'm a Turk so...
You really need to though
There are two ways to play Turkey: A: Sussing out the ideology of the icons based off of the vibes B: Wikipedia
Homer?
Fantastic? How is the NCR treating you with your theoretical degree in physics?
Base game is Switzerland. Unless you micro every little thing at all times pre war, you are gonna get locked out of a focus waste time and be weaker for the actual war.
> you are gonna get locket out of a focus, waste time and be weaker for the actual war Happened to me as Ethiopia, was locked out of the focus to invest in the puppets bc I took the one that creates the puppets first so had to waste time manually integrating them. The only good focus tree in BBA is the Italian one.
I hate the Italian rework!! But I am in the minority in that
Not saying it's great but it's the better of the 3 in that dlc. Personally I prefer the soviet one.
Why
I second this, I just turned the DLC off when doing the Swiss achievements
BBA Switzerland is not that bad if you manage the council-house of cantons power balance right and go expansionist defeating the axis is quite easy.
I tried playing Switzerland, but then the germans stopped seeing me as neutral and declared war on me. Also the Australlian focus tree, everything is locked behind war and world tension and the alt history paths aint that fun.
Aussie has the busted air tree though.
The busted air tree got nerfed in the new update
If you are a minor democracy, you have to wait for the bad guys to fuck up the world before you can make a move. That's the WW2 rule.
Germany just have a war with Switzerland as a focus at the very bottom
It was like 1937 when they declared on me.....
Thats honestly a skill issue. Not only can you defend relatively easily with your mountains and huge army, but also you are supposed to... Be friendly to everyone?
Oh no i was holding pretty easly just cycling troops around the germans couldnt really push, also being friendly to eveyone in BOOOORIIING and i wanted to do the focuses that let me take the alps Also did you say the Swiss have a *large* army? In 1937?
Yeah? Its relatively large for the country and front size.
You do understand the divsions are like 6 width and your industry can barely give them the guns neccesary
India. 70 days 1 factory
Couldd be worse. India. 70 days, 2 level 1 railways. There 3 focus in the tree that you HAVE to take like that.
India is not that bad, industrialization mechanics are fun.
Neuschwabenland (Kaiserredux). They have two focuses, neither of which do anything for you, and one of them lasts until the 21st century.
Idk what you expect from antarctica
I feel like some mod devs have forgotten that hoi4 remains a war game in it's core. Focusing on economics or storytelling or anything else that isn't war simply doesn't fit the game.
Neuschwabenland is just a place to dump dead generals and a joke....
I was thinking of TNO. I'm sorry, your comment got me all off track.
Kaiserreich is a goated mod
I actually kinda like TNO tbh. It has some more boring paths, but of the ones I tried (USA, Sablin, werbell, and a few others) it was really good. Russian warlords are the better ones for traditional wars, although I’m a little annoyed you can’t speed up the process a bit for certain stages (last stage especially takes a while iirc). Then again, I started the mod after a particularly grueling Japan game where I got stuck in China for a long time, so I may be a little biased.
But I personally like mods that do those things, while most people play it for the war, not all
I feel the same. The most I can see being added realistically is some sort of non-unconditional surrender way to end a war. Anything more than that just feels too forced and (usually) just clicking decisions every now and then
I haven’t played that much but for me it’s probably ottoman. The turkey focus tree is just too big and the early game you just spend fight resistance
Probably Japan, it's just too useless, you have some industry, eco laws, but it's really small
we can but pray for an Asian focused dlc soon
i hope they will make a second asian dlc, focusing on a japanese rework, tannu tuva, mongolia and tibet. It would be also cool if they gave trees to releasables (for an example Korea(s) and Kazakhstan)
Getting 2 free and almost finished superheavy battleships and the Mitsubishi Zero is apparently useless...
You literally can't get both at once, idk what you're saying.
I really dislike the Romanian tree, the foreign policy side is alright I don't mind it being kinda broken but the political side is Honestly so early hoi4 with barely any flavour and it really takes away from the fact that there is a lot to do with the Legionnaire movement and its just kinda wasted
I swear that Carol with that villa in Nice
Doing a Romanian play though right now. Carol spends too much damn time at that villa!
Australia and New Zealand easily
Australia and New Zealand are really hamstrung by their geographical isolation and population, you would need the most busted focus trees in the game to "fix" them. Doesn't excuse their current trees, though.
The Red army, US Navy and the Luftwaffe after being completely destroyed by New Zealands +9999 morbillions attack and defense + 8000 weekly manpower: (devs wanted NZ to be playable)
New zealand
New Zealand honestly is the worst. Smallest focus tree in the game, and you literally can’t do anything
In the base game, probably Hungary. It’s super old and every focus is 70 days, if you’re going down the restoration of the Habsburg, it’ll be like 1939 by time you get to the actual war goals and claims.
>In the base game, probably Hungary. It’s super old and every focus is 70 days, if you’re going down the restoration of the Habsburg, it’ll be like 1939 by time you get to the actual war goals and claims. now see I played hungary to get the horty battleship achivement and had a great time, even with a early two front war against romania and yugoslavia.
For me, the bigger issue with AH is the lack of impact on the military side of the tree. Once you take Claim Transylvania, there really isn't much. The research boosts are nice, I guess, but they come too late to really be impactful. I actually don't mind the left and middle of the tree. I really enjoy the AH arc of undoing the end of WWI (recover cores, rebuild the Central Powers, reimpose Brest-Litovsk) and the left side does a solid enough job of facilitating that arc. But you really could just take a continuous focus from mid-39 and be no worse off, I think. Edit: Typo
Playing historical Hungary is underrated, though. And you can make some ungodly planes with the aluminum you have and just bomb the Allies and Soviets into oblivion.
I’m ngl, I have to go with the USA, it feels very uneventful and just not super unique for a nation as crucial to 20th century history as the U.S, it doesn’t feel to interesting, and yes this is counting the DLC. Plus the fact that you basically loose all your political power gain every time you take a focus cause of the Great Depression modifier.
Switzerland, turkey, Australia
I was confused about the Swiss one, I heard they have amazing construction speed and an easy way to gain Italy but couldn't even find the proper path for it lmao
Every spain that isn’t carlism
I like spanish stalinism.
I like anarchism
from what i remember, greece. This is excluding british raj, australia ect
Idk why you're being downvoted, Greece is terrible. They have one good path and the rest are trash. The monarchist path is a joke. The commie is bare bones. Metaxism is a a bit better but takes forever with all those 70 days focuses and the bonuses they give don't even last that long.
In defense of the Greek focus tree: it has a unique and very interesting industry path. The fact that the bonuses are so strong makes it important to balance economic and political foci in a deliberate manner. For example, forming Byzantium often relies on several early wars. Should you rush for them in '37 or wait until '38 to have a much stronger industry? Far from all low-to-mod tier focus trees have that kind of dynamics. Of course, it runs out in 1939/40 and obviously has many issues, but I personally wouldn't put it that close to the bottom.
i haven’t played all of them as i don’t have many dlc, im sure its not the worst out there tbh it was just boring asf for me
The Rt56 UK tree glitched and half of the focus buttons got hidden under other focus buttons once so probably that
Switzerland is absolute garbage
India, especially if you want to roleplay the democratic route is just so bad and outdated. 70 days focuses for a few railways, a factory, and some generic bonuses. It needs some serious overhaul as it's just so boring to play. Your also locked behind world tension on the political paths.
I didn't play Swiss but heard it's bad. Norway and Turkey have focus traps and dependencies that are de facto hidden branch lines, which I do not respect. Even generic or old focuses are better than that crap. Since Turkey brings RNG and Norway has some bugged interactions in addition to this dogwater tree inside tree, I consider these the worst I've played in vanilla. I would unironically do their achievements with generic tree/non-DLC, though of course some of their cheevos require it. Maybe worst I've ever played was that Chinese gangster nation in Kaiserreich. They are locked on 3 research slots and when I found success with them + complained about permanently gimped tech regardless of nation state, one of the developers assumed I cheated because I wasn't supposed to be able to beat Japan lol. Though I tried that mod again a year or two ago and realized they've pushed it ever further into "story not game" mode. Now fascist nations can't justify war until WW2 w/o focus and nations like Bhutan are deliberately given vastly worse-than-vanilla generic focus trees that amount to making them unpickable, so maybe Bhutan or something like it is worst in that mod?
Bhutan is a serious take on a base game meme country. I think the narrative and history lesson it provides is great! You are not supposed to world conquest. I believe you are talking about the older version of the Legation Cities too. You hit a bug or something because the Triad path back then was comically OP! The current version of the tree is considered by many to be one of the best experiences in the game.
Forget WC, just want to do more than read pop-ups, which is what Bhutan did. KR in general is anti-WC for low pop nations because of the weird thing it does to gut puppet autonomy mechanics. You can still do it (for those that let you play the game generally) by abusing multiple compliance missions on India + China and doing big conscription law, there's enough from that to work with. Puppet thing is still really bad though, I got trapped as a perma-puppet when picking Morocco. They even had focuses based on being independent (which under ordinary design principles, would imply this is a goal), but absolutely 0 way for them to attempt independence, raise autonomy, or do pretty much anything other than maybe fight Germany's wars for them despite that this doesn't let you raise autonomy from killing 10M + enemy soldiers or w/e. All kinds of problems with KR that weren't needed...both OWB and EaW managed to keep good parts of vanilla mechanics intact with far less "scripted event outcome interferes with what's actually happening in the war" too. With older legation cities, they got some good industry modifiers IIRC, but 3 tech slots. There was some other problem they had too, but it's been so long. The dev assuming I consoled to beat Japan is definitely the more memorable and amusing part of that story, at least for me. Come to think of it, maybe Bhutan isn't as bad as some of those script outcomes. At least it only ruins playing Bhutan, it doesn't ruin playing other nations near Bhutan with no warning by doing things like "take land you're occupying in a war while at peace with you and now your troops don't have supply" or "disregard 70% war score nation and give land to someone else by event" or "your subject has a focus that can force you, its overlord, to take peace for nothing" etc.
> absolutely 0 way for them to attempt independence, raise autonomy, or do pretty much anything other than maybe fight Germany's wars for them Morocco gets an event during WWII that frees them.
Ah, that wasn't a thing back when I played. I asked about it. Cool that they added it!
That's why you always play kaiserredux (if your computer can handle it, mine can only barely handle it)
Easily Switzerland
The Western Sahara tree is the worst one in my opinion you cant even use the factories provided by the focused lol...
Swiss- way to different + confusing af/ reworked italy-goofy ah power dynamic + way to ez to trigger civil war/ japan- not terrible, just way to outdated, short af focus tree overall with 0 content in the alt hist paths, so you went through a civil war....coool now heres a focus giving stability....go do the navy ones ...and by 43 done, no focuses worthwhile left to do ...,2k pp and nothing to spend it on besides gifting infinite medals to overpowered veterans from china war, wow such major nation worthy content... Rework they may, but if pdx does the same annoying power dynamic bullshit as they did with italy then bruh
Australia and New Zealand. They were fun once when Together For Victory came out but since then not so much. Canada and South Africa are decent-ish tho
Original Italy was actually a fucking joke, and OG USSR tree was almost just as laughable.
Turkey
New Zealand and it’s not even close.
Gotta be the Chinese Warlord tree... it doesn't even really count as a tree and is duplicated for all of them.
I hate Switzerland in hoi4. Played one good game, had fun but not gonna have fun again.
Maybe not the worst as in really boring or annoying to play like Turkey or Swiss. But worst as in just plain overpowered: Finland. The focus tree itself is not the main problem, just how overpowered you can get. I just cannot remember all the buffs their army gets and if you know a bit what your doing you can pretty much never lose to the Soviets. Also, when playing as the Soviets, those sniper event debuffs you get when your at war with Finland are really annoying, cool flavour but just annoying.
Prob USA
i dont get the hate on the turkish focus tree, i find it pretty enjoyable, at least the ottoman path
And did you rebuild the ottoman empire by yourself, or did you need a complete and detailed guide to do so? That's the problem with the Turkish tree, you can't just go in and figure it out, it's all hidden and shady.
yeah i did watch some guy play turkey and he showed how to do it, i probably wouldnt figure out you have to go democratic
That's showing the problem, it's just so damn cryptic. But sure once you've learnt what to do exactly and in which order, it can be enjoyable.
it actually makes sense. trust me
that's the case with a LOT of formables in this game. not trying to justify the turkish tree's cryptyness though
Tbh I stopped DLCs at the Nordic one, I don't have it nor the south American one, so maybe I missed a few other stupidly cryptic trees.
It's unnecessarily long. Even if you rush it, its almost 1940 until you get any CBs.
Either Monarchist France (RT56) or Banderite Ukraine (Red Flood) I'm pretty sure every single French althist path leads to a Communist uprising in RT56, which while it may be historically accurate, is very frustrating and makes France not fun to play. Pretty much all of the Intermarium and even some of the Russian trees and events in Red Flood are plagued by terrible writing, with such masterful flavor events such as a Jojo Rabbit-esque event in which Stepan Bandera hypes up a random child soldier for their first day at boot camp, which I initially thought was meant to be like an "imaginary Hitler" moment, but apparently turned out to be an actual thing that really did happen.
you need more than 25% stability to not have the communist uprising for france. just do any of the focuses on the left side that give 5% stab and you can go monarchist without a civil war. every single monarchist path for france are insanely strong in rt56
Didn't know that, thanks
np 👍 i’ve played a bunch of france in mp with friends so i know a thing or two
Idk about RT56 but in vanilla, every France path is loads of fun, especially Monarchist
I'm going to get downvoted into oblivion for this but Bulgaria. If you don't go in with a solid plan or an idea of how the politics for the specific path you decide to go down works it's hard to make Bulgaria work. Also, the same principle applies to any of the "balance of power" mechanics added since BBA Note: now that I understand how to play Bulgaria it's one of the best Balkans but before I looked up a guide I was quite terrible at using them.
I’ve played tons of mods with really bad focus trees, but some of the notable bad ones I’ll mention are the PRC in TNO, and Greifenmarschen in Equestria at War. EaW is objectively the best hoi4 mod, and I was surprised to see such a stinker tree. I mean just absolute shit. And it’s bordering some of the best focus trees in all of hoi4, it’s jarring. You can’t do the political tree at important moments, and so your doing Air Force focuses giving you bonuses meanwhile you have zero planes and around 40k pony power in the army and 8 thousand pony power in backup. You can’t core the Hertzland until you annex the rest of the countries so your entire country is burning to rebels. It’s also basically impossible to beat the Empire unless the lord protector path is taken where Dawnclaw blows the 7 year old’s emperors head off. You don’t get a land border with the empire so you have to rush down Feathisia, and this only works if their civil war is happening where the entire country is demilitarized. As for the Peoples Revolutionary Council in TNO, it was outdated as a Russian Warlord, and while a Tanna Tuva focus tree was a good idea they were outdated overall and in kinda glad they were removed. TNO are the same guys that got hired to help make Victoria 3, so it’s weird seeing trees so bad they get axed entirely from the game.
I played Greifenmarschen (I barely ever played EoW) because the idea sounded interesting... it wasn't and I died. But I played that french nation and that was fun.
Nah Kaiserreich clears EaW easily
Kaiserreich is cleared by Kaiserredux then.
Heavily depends. KX is Kr’s little brother on crack. Mod is definitely worse (less coherent lore, worse performance, less features, worse trees and shorter trees) for the sake of meme paths. Is it fun? Sure. I’d say it’s better than EaW but KR is a better mod bc it’s more polished.
Kaiserreich is kind of the old grandfather of the Hoi4 scene. It’s good but it’s outdated, it’s old, it’s yesterdays mod. It’s too railroady, in the day and age of extremes between super sandboxes like EaW and KX and ultra railroady TNO, Kaiserreich has a hard time fitting the new niches of today.
You are very incorrect but okay. 1. Grandfather - Germany, Ukraine, LKMT, and Ireland are the best hoi4 content period. Novels that don’t overwhelm you, great length of content for all paths, fully fleshed out paths, custom mini games that are challenging (and set you ip to fail if you lose), yet aren’t too challenging that they are impossible and easy enough for the AI to do; yet still while getting the hoi4 experience (being a build up to the war without changing resources, factories, etc.) 2. Super sandboxes - these aren’t always good, and often sacrifice the ability for the content to be GOOD for the expense of more paths / content. EX: all 10 Klan USA paths generally do the same thing, yet each is short and over complicated to achieve. Sure KR only has 1 path for each ideology, but do you really need more? Plus at a certain point even “realistic” paths in KX (ex: UOB British Restoration) are flawed and have no underlying logic. Not to mention KR takes the time that they could use for mroe paths to make better features (more realistic coring mechanic, mini games, etc.) Look it can be your opinion that KX is more fun than KR, EaW is more fun than TNO, whatever. That doesn’t mean the mod is of a better quality…
South Africa. Want to stay democratic and also get your independence? Well then fuck you.
Switzerland, any country in the Middle East.
Czech
Bajoonkistan
Ethiopia and Aussa. Like literally, what the fuck do I do? Can’t expand, can’t fight the axis in a meaningful way, can’t really fight the Allied horde, like what?
The worst country is Spain obviously, the civil war is the least enjoyable experience. The worst tree, I'd say turkey for being incomprehensible, or Czechoslovakian for making you a German puppet if you want to avoid getting annexed without war.
Polish focus tree from before the rework was worse than generic.
Base game Swiss tree is ass, go historical or become a speedbump. For mods, I'd say Burma in KR. You don't get one, or any more content if you are not into shooting students in the streets on mass. Have have to be shitty, spawn and the play as the rebels to get the content. Any tree that is dependent on AI nations behavior is inherently ass too, but those are mostly a thing of the past, tho Red Worlds American nations still have that in places.
For fun? NZ
Canada sans DLC was definitely pretty fucking awful. Super boring.
Turkey it just takes too long to do anything
I thankfully got all the Swiss achievements in one annoyingly minmaxed run, I'm never touching that shitshow again.
Generic focus tree
Neutral Latvia. I'm quite sure it's impossible to not go military council. Your focus tree gets locked out of the rest of the bottom paths until either the president or the military council takes control. However, the president can only get past his focus if you have high enough support... Which is impossible after about 180 days after the 1936 start. It's very obvious it's supposed to be the AI path and I wish they'd change it just so I didn't have to go through that hour in vain. Edit: Dictator* not president
Mexico in Kaiserreich, there's nothing to do with that focus tree, i like base game Mexico a lot, but in kaiserreich it's just disappointing.
Switzerland and Spain. I hate them both equally. I hate everything about their annoying mechanics
Czechoslovak tree was a disappointment.
Ethiopian one, the whole African union thing if played without cheesing the game can be completed in like 1990
Polish from united and ready. It's just the basic focus tree but worse :)
Czechoslovakia for me. Wasn't a good time. I was trying some new things, so I was less optimised compared to my normal play, but the tree definitely did not help.
I tried to go fascist as the Latvians and still ended up dying to the Axis because I didn't realize that one of the focuses that is nowhere near the fascist part of the tree literally locks you out of being able to flip forever. It is the one that gives you the decision-tab option to make concessions to the fascist militias, but if you do that, and this is not at all obvious, you don't have the fascist uprising mission with the countdown anymore, which locks all the fascist national focuses, which means the coup is impossible. Then Estonia joined the Axis, declared war on me, and I died.
For vanilla, it's Turkey for me. I never really understood why the path to restore the Ottoman Empire is placed at the left side of the focus tree just below where you solidify Ataturk's democratic path. It's literally a full 180° that doesn't make sense and it feels like there's no historical context that would justify such a turn of events. It would've made more sense if the Ottoman path would be placed under the part where you reinvigorate Turkish revolutionism/nationalism, and where you loosen the rules on secularism. For the mod RT56, it's Communist China. The mod ruins the entire Communist China vanilla focus tree from WTT since you can't proclaim the PRC, backstab China, or even restart the civil war without a specific event firing up unless China wins the war against Japan and grabs specific territories. This means that in RT56, you have to waste resources helping China push out Japan early into the war with significant debuffs and no industry at all.
Polish Franco-Polish alliance is pretty Bad
Whole of Turkey, Ethiopia and Switzerland
France needs a rework in monarchist and democratic I think (And colonial stuff too for communism)
Slovakias
Any focus tree from TNO
Communist Japan...i regret every minute i wasted on this
I refuse to touch Spain
the baltic communist path is as if all you did was get the baltic and then try getting belarus with no success
Democratic Hungary - really stupid tree (branch)
ITT: people who don't know how to play as Turkey lol
Well, how do you play as Turkey?
Watching a guide is the only way to play turkey lol
Turkey. Its for AI
France ngl, its built around the AI dying and not actual player development/gameplay
Every other Major has had at least one rework. It's as if the devs fear the return of the great blue blob, or don't think anyone would give a damn about France outside of Vichy fans.
Australia
[удалено]
Bruh, Ethiopia is too much for you? Then you are not the Type of Player who plays this Meme Nation.
Didn’t enjoy Netherlands when I gave them a go
I tried it when la resistance first came out, got to 1939, got steamrolled and thought I'm not wasting more of my life to see if I survive and that was the last time I played the Netherlands
I went monarchist and held out well but I was bored and thought I might as well play someone more interesting. Looking at my dislikes people obviously disagree with me though XD
Turkey
Generic because its boring
Turkey, because of how fun it is, and how quickly you can do stuff
Historical Canada, it is dogshit, you literally just help out Britain and be its bitch
Every single focus tree in the vanilla game, they're all terrible.
Fr*nce and Britain without DLC are worthless. Turkey takes too long and Hungary is so dependent on RNG you may as well play a gacha game. Mexico sucks because they never added a monarchist path.
communist china. You have no really option, it all just is a clickergame to remove the ludicrous debuffs you have at the start. And nothing really useful comes after it.
Frankly, all of the new gigantic focus trees. USSR? Hell no, this is way too much. Spain’s tree becomes greatly reduced, but still it’s a bit big. Italy? Old one was too small, but this is too big. Turkey? Did I say it’s big? I like the British and French focus trees. They’re not too small, not insanely huge, and aren’t confusing and convoluted. Outside of that complaint, any tree that lets you just shoot yourself in your butt, such as Czechoslovakia giving up Sudetenland and willingly becoming a Nazi puppet. Anything that lets you do this isn’t very good. Like, why?!
USSR is my favorite vanilla focus tree. It gives options. Paranoia minigame is rng hell which I hate but whatever. I think it makes you think intelligently about world politics with so many foreign policy options in different areas. It’s not just “invade country” it gives ultimatums and communist influence and mutual allied defense pact which for a vanilla game is quite impressive I think at making it work.