Recent reviews by StaleBreadToast

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Quality of Life updates Paradox can do:

-Allow us to do propaganda and stability decisions, relax the checks, what's keeping a state from doing more propaganda if they have the pp.
-Add more stability decisions, countries like Germany, Italy always have 90+ stability while minors never get to that levels.
-Add non-alligned decisions, and more buffs to democracies and non alligned. Allow dictatorships and kingdoms to declare war, mobilize, conscript easier.
-Add or incorporate mods that fix the bugs, state population and formable nations coring.
-Add default MIO's for every minor nation so they can compete in even grounds. Like default advisors.
-Add option to annex insignificant nations into a neutral state in custom options menu, so many vanilla players can play lag free.
-Give more building slots to colonies and minor nations, choking nations makes them unfun, relax the rules a litttle bit.
-Majority of players quit because of restrictive game rules before they learn the mechanics. Default option should be a relaxed mode where players can declare wars/ form alliences more easily.
In current state HOI4 throws you at a wall, instead introduce game rules slowly. Choking player at first sight makes most newbies quit before they enjoy the game.
-Make continous focuses avaliable from beginning, what's point of restricting everything?
-Add option to queue further researches like you do with MIO upgrades, it becomes hard to manage it later on while you are fighting an active war.
-Give basic, first tier, outdated equipment to all nations so you can play around more with different playstyles.
-Add option to swith between/hide different branch equipment in production.
-Make La Resistance operations more useful, relax the rules for coups and instigating revolts.
Funding resistance should be more useful.
-Slash time of most operations in half, by the time they are completed war is over so most players don't bother.
-Intelligence agency is a golden opportunity to add lots of engaging stuff: like general assassinations, influencing elections, coup detats, revolts, assassinating scientists to slow progress etc.
Some are in the game but takes so long and too restricted by the rules you never use them, that only clutters the game.

Shared focuses are great and can be expanded further:
-Balkan Path for Turkey (And slash down their focuses in half or at least allow player to simply skip to Balkan Faction so they can actually play multiplayer.)
Allow other Balkan nations to do focuses Turkey has so they all benefit. Allowing faction to be founded early on would also make it a viable multiplayer strategy other than cozying to great powers.
It also makes sense since Ataturk show interest in a Balkan Union long before WW2
(Also while you are at it, remove Said Nursi from grand vizier role for Ottomans, he was staunchly against politics by that time and never wanted to read a newspaper/radio so people don't think he will get into politics. I think that was very disrespectful for Paradox to add him.)

-Share the Japanese focuses to develop Manchuko for both Japan and Manchu.
-Share colonial development branch for Italy and France's economy path with their colonies so they are useful.
-Add more building slots, infrastructure, resources to colonies/minor nations so they are fun to play.
-More supply hubs for West side of China.
-Relax gamerules for political actions and add a relaxed playstle mode, make that mode default for players so newbies don't drop the game so often.
-At least incorporate some of the lesser DLC's no one bothers to buy, like vehicle packs and such, seeing a ton of DLCs under the game makes newbies not buy the base game in first place.
-Add more resources like Steel to medium sized countries. Both buying steel and building industry makes them impossible to compete with other countries.
-Add more infantry equipment to Balkans, specially Turkey. (Turkey got retreating Greek army's equipment and were thinking an invasion of Iraq right after that. Deficit they have at start doesn't make sense.)
Also, non alligned countries like Turkey, Iran, early game Yugo and others should have more relaxed political options.
A king, dictator or founder of nations won't have much opposition if they want to go to war, they don't need to switch to right/left extremes to declare wars or switch mobilizations, they can pretty much do whatever they want.
-Give more equipment and armies to Balkan nations at start so they can withstand Soviet early expansion.

(Disturbing content warning for some people but "This War of Mine" is about civillians surviving in war so what do you expected)

Military and insurgents in this game mostly focus on fighting each other. They don't specially target civillians.
However there are militaries -or specially airforces- that target civillians intentionally in real life.

Most defenders of civillian bombings say all of the population is guilty and must be collectively punished because "they let their government stay in power." this is ignorant or most of the time malicious.

It doesn't matter if %90 percent of the population is against an extremist, warmongering government, if that ruler has a similarly extremist paramilitary force -Like the axis countries in WW2- or turned their military into obedient puppet. There is no way majority of people can takedown their government.

What does advocates for civillian casualities expect?
People storming the palace and taking the power like the French revolution? Simply because they outnumber the government 10 to 1.
What about machine guns and tanks and an airforce that now uses AI to find new civillians to bomb and an extremist military force that has no remorse in their actions and no shame?
Even in the French Revolution the used grapeshots from cannons to 'disperse' crowds.

There is simply no way for majority of population to topple their government unless army or police lets them do it.

And WW2 and Korean war also showed bombing civillians don't hurt the war industry as much as it expected and instead of getting demoralised and turning on their government, bitter young people who lost their families flock to conscription offices instead.
Targeting civillians for the sake of hurting war industry or demoralizing them so they turn on their government or "because they deserve it for letting tyrants take charge" is a stupid arguement lacking any morality or masking of malicious intent.

When we take worst estimates for Germany's loses in WW2, for 5 Million military loses Germany also lost 2.5 Million civillians excluding famine and intented massacres. And that was with Allied bombing runs and with WW2 tech being inaccurate (20% of RAF bombs fell within 5 miles of targets in 1941).

So if a modern country today, with far more accurate weapons and precise munition, says it was forced to hurt -I am making numbers up here.- 3 civillians for 1 military target and also says those civillians were "possible combatants" or tries to justify it by saying it was to break morale or hurt their war effort.
Still not improving their aim even after prolonged fighting (Normal militaries tend to realize their mistakes and fix them up unless they are not doing those mistakes by intent), using unguided munitions in densely populated areas while they have acces to better ones, using vague phrases to defend their actions...

You can safely say that country or organization or political figure is lying to your face and have far worse intentions than ending the war quickly.


Also, wish there was endless mode in the game so we can have the full experience.

Someone please teach paradox what a demo is

Needed money to remake vault in my liking so I let a single competent guy run entire vault -He attends to 3 room long power generator, diner and water treatment facilities in shifts- sent all young men to scavenge in wasteland -and to die- and uhh... 'Utilized' women.

Considering it took me 3 hours to turn vault into a fascist eugenics project I think most vaults in fallout turned out fine.

Firstly, game is so slow. Not the gameplay or story progression but the animations are slow. If you want to really enjoy it you need faster darkest dungon mod, my fav is the one in nexus.
It saves hours in a campaign.
Then the tutorial is slow, it becomes a chore every game.
Then you need to complete 5-10 quests so you can unlock all the buildings and see heroes you want to use.

Even then it's grind mostly. Need busts to upgrade buildings so you grind busts. Heroes need exp but missions suck so you grind them on same missions.

Tip: Instead of choosing a party from ground up for every mission you can implement a corps like system with solid teams.
It's easier to manage who gets to rest and who goes out with dedicated teams. It would be cool addition to have two parties out at the same time so they train outside your control or a way to train heroes without grinding.

And game doesn't even respects when you do all that and raise a good hero.
Your crusader who is sole survivor of a boss fight, trained and equipped well. Gets random crit, blighted in one round and then dies next round without ever getting a chance to be healed.
It would be reasonable if enemies were faster and it makes sense a legend can die to a bastard arrow but game calculating who takes turns is stupid.
Instead of hero with 9+ speed the skeleton guy with 1 can take priority sometimes. There should be safeguards like if hero has more than double speed or 20 dodge and enemy's accuracy is debuffed, it should be certain they will miss or certain hero will get to strike first.

And crits make no sense, enemy does a critical attack but it only hurts a little,but your heroes still get stressed out.
You can lose heroes in stupid ways like they refuse to eat a meal then they starve+death's door+ stressed from death's door+heart attack. And you can't do anything while it's happening. It's dumb.

I think best feature is having quirks and trinkets to personalize your heroes, making them feel special.
But majority of quirks and trinkets are simply useless and clutter the game instead. Or have stupid debuffs that ruin them. Or simply too weak you don't even bother equipping one.

Heroes getting quirks in town events-activities is a nice touch.

Getting random quirks after quests however makes no sense. Virtous melee hero who survives deathly encounter earns a ranged trait for no reason.
Quirk earning is a wasted potential.

It would be more enjoyable and it would feel more personal if traits were given by specific actions. Ex:
-Guy who disarms traps more gets better at it.
-Heroes that get afflicted constantly breaksdown completely needing proper treatment or goes
full psychotic.-And make it double edged sword, instead of simply stress debuff add +%25
damage so he is unstable but stong making it a decision to treat that hero or not-
-Guy who goes to warrens a lot should be warrens explorer. -This enables you to make region specific teams.-
-Guy who lost a close friend to beast should be beast hater.

Heroes that proved their worth or sole survivors of bossfights got things like "Veteran's guilt" or "Local Legend" that also effects other teammates making them calmer since they are adventuring with a guy that 1v1 an alligator. Or the guy who got afflicted and killed his own teammate making his future teammates stressed and more likely to turn paranoid.
It would feel more personal when you lose those heroes.

Quirks and stress is what makes this game unique.
There should be a lot more quirks and diseases but important ones that make you care not -%5 melee damage. Imagine diseases spreading in barracks, or progressing worse and heroes getting more and more tired and needing treatment after you non stop used them for a month.
"Irrepressible" should not be simply +%5 virtue chance. That makes it useless clutter, give him a good buff so we can rely on that hero not letting us down.

You don't feel anything when guy with no reaction to his own actions and randomly gained quirks die to a random reason you couldn't avoid.

Most trinkets are mediocre while good ones have stupid debuffs that ruin them for no reason, earning that trinket is really challenging at first why not simply let player enjoy it?

Grinding could be fun too but all the missions are essentially same:
-Walk around the dungeon until you see enough rooms.
-Activate 3 items (or gather 3 items from rooms) So walk around dungeon until you see enough rooms.
-Skirmish/Cleanse Walk around dungeon and find room battles. Only difference is you can avoid wandering uselessly but that's only if you get to scout before, but scouting is chance based too. So same.
-Scouting quest is literally walking around dungeon
-Boss missions are slightly different since you avoid other rooms to hold on to your strength until boss.
Also why does bosses punish you for trying new tactics? Break the guy's stuff and they all get angrier and stronger. Or the game doesn't even let you break it. It's opposite of Fear&Hunger instead of outsmarting the fight you get punished for not grinding until boss HP runs out.

And all the dungeons feel the same, even though warrens are square shaped and weald is straightforward because of how missions are structured, you end up walking in a single line.

They could have added more variation, making dispersed paths that doesn't connect later on, with different rewards and risks so you can choose where to go or add VIP escort missions or survival ones where you fend off waves-Like farmstead-. Or ability to send another party to a lower level mission so they can grind themselves while acknowledging threat of losing them out of your control.
Like add option to split party in half in scouting mission, so they scout faster but they need to be more self sustaining, and why not make speed more useful.
Or make the layout more complex and give us ability to flank enemies in cleansing missions with a %100 chance to surprise them.
Or attend to hamlet's needs to upgrade it instead of grinding busts.

Things like buying campfires in short quests, using laudanum for stress healing, scouting for the room right next to you so you can plan ahead, arbalest/musketeer healing bleed, plague doctor having stronger battlefield medicine so she can be a weak healer, occultist having min 1 heal so he doesn't kill people randomly with bleed, campfire scouting skills being passive so you get the buff but don't spend time on it, meeting allies or another party you sent before etc. would make the game a lot more enjoyable.

Camping skills take too much time and half of them are useless. Scouting should be given free at least for the room right next to you and all the skills related to scouting are so useless they are not worth the time and instead should be passive skill for equipping that hero. Having +%25 damage is better than idk a chance to scout ahead the corridor you will walk anyways because there is no other way.

Only differences are farmstead dlc and player's choice antiquarian rushes for money those feel nice but still you have to grind for the good missions and resources.

It's really, mostly grinding for a while so you can train your heroes faster and then they will reject your orders or die for some nonsense. It's a common thing for the game to unnecessarily restrict stuff so you grind more. Mods can help with that.
This game needs a remake with all of it's mods. Promise is good but you can't connect with heroes and their loses because heroes themselves don't care, they don't care if they accidently kill some of their own, or they don't care if they survive hell, they simply go to tavern have some drinks and get a random quirk.
Also Ancestor is cool but he talks too much for my taste.

Also even though nobody cares about it, I think it would be a nice touch if the same effect was seen at the same time. Like two heroes get blighted, instead of the horror+blight it would be comfier showing the blight once on two heroes and then the horror.