The New Order: Last Days of Europe - An Axis Victory Cold War Mod for HoIIV

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timmy_khagann

SealTheRealDeal said:
If nothing actually comes of Russia's magical recovery
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Who's to say there won't be?

Like I said: The canon result of the Second West Russian War is just one outcome out of many. Russia's speedy recovery will still remain in a scenario where someone other than Zhukov unifies Russia, and where the war itself concludes more favorably for the Russian unifier in question. Once there's content for the second decade, somebody can plausibly start in 62 with another Soviet unifier (Suslov, Bukharina, Sablin, Kaganovich, etc.), declare war on Germany ten years later, and reclaim the USSR's 1936 borders in record time. That itself is a timeline where the handwaved reconstruction does influence where the narrative leads to. Where the proverbial Chekov's gun actually is used and actually does hit something to no small effect.

You're free to disagree over what the team thinks the world will look like by 1982, but what I'm trying to say is that the canon from 1962 onwards matters less than what the player has established for themselves within the same timeframe. No unifier will be railroaded to or restricted from any outcome just because the team prefers using a specific permutation for the eventual 1972 bookmark. Hence why I said it's safe to ignore canon if you wanted - because it won't ever matter to playthroughs starting from 1962. And it is these playthroughs which the mod's contrivances are designed for and cater to the most.
 
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Baron Steakpuncher

Baron Steakpuncher

SealTheRealDeal said:
I dislike it because it's a pointless contrivance.

I assume you're familiar with the principle Chekov's gun? They established that there's a gun, in a rather obtuse hand-wave-y way at that, only for it to be pointless. It's not even a clever red herring, it just doesn't work narratively. If nothing actually comes of Russia's magical recovery, then they should skip the contrivance and just say that Russia is too weak to reclaim its old borders (which would actually be pretty realistic given how immensely fucked Russia is).

A contrivance in service to something, I may begrudgingly accept depending on how necessary it is to the plot. A contrivance for no purpose is just a contrivance.


If I ignore the gameplay and ignore the lore I guess I'll have to just ignore TNO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And if you have no further questions I'll get back to doing exactly that.
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Look speaking as a dev i think you're under a bit of a misconception.

Russia, strong under Zhukov though it is, is still a damaged and wounded nation from the horrors of WW2 and the subsequent atrocities inflicted upon it. Then despite this, despite everything they've had done against them including terror bombing and outside interference, they get back up anyway. The Russian spirit is not broken, it drags itself to its feet and gets ready for another go against an enemy so terrible that "evil" is insufficient to describe it.

That is the great success of Russia in TNO, where the English and Poles and Czechs fail, Russia succeeds and takes one last shot at the monstrous Reich. And they win, they might not advance to the Romanian border, they might not reach Germania's blood soaked walls, but the Reich loses its shell of invincibility and RK Moskowien (and possibly some other areas) is Russian once more.
 

Dunois

The whole matter of how quickly Russian can and should recover from its status in the TNO timeline is quite fascinating in my opinion. The canon timeline up to 1962 is very vague as to what happens in TTL Russian and whether or not horrors like the Holodomor and Stalin's purges are avoided. What we do know is that Siberia is far more industrialised that TTL, that the New Economic Policy remained in place and that a lot of refugees moved East in order to escape the Germans and Generalplan Ost.

While Russia is in a bad situation in 1962, I feel that it is somewhat important not to overstate the consequences of warlordism and of the German bombings. In-game most of the wars and raids in Russia in the early 1962s are done with light infantry, especially in Western Russia and the Urals. While casualties will occur, the lack of heavy artillery, planes, tanks etc will mean that they'll be relatively limited and most importantly that destruction to cities may remain somewhat limited. Additionally, most of the armies from defeated warlords will likely switch sides and join the victors, especially at the lower levels and where ideology isn't necessarily too much of an issue.
The potential effects of German bombings are in my opinion vastly overstated and their impacts are over-estimated. The Germans won't have enough planes to continuously bomb Russia every day, especially as Russia all the way up to Western Siberia is vast. I honestly doubt that the Germans would organise more than one sortie a day or even do more than 3/4 sorties per week. Additionally there will be plenty of targets to aim for all over Western Russia and Siberia so they can't hope to bomb every single shack every week. Oh and the accuracy of strategic bombing with "dumb" bombs and ammunitions is only about 15 to 20% too. All in all bombings will be a big nuisance, especially in larger cities and will have a big impact on industrial production by lowering production efficiency etc. But bombing won't necessarily destroy infrastructure which is already there or have a big impact on agricultural production. Moreover, a lot of industrial facilities mines etc will remain available in a dormant and mothballed form.

We don't know what happens in Russia in TNO2 and I suspect that reconstruction and dealing with the aftermath of unification will form a big part of the gameplay for every unifier.

Some of the Russian factions already have an easier time than others in rebuilding their society and economy in-game. I also suspect that the new gameplay mechanics on economy will complicate things somewhat compared to current gameplay and make Russia far more challenging to play.
Here's my own ranking based on the unifiers I've played so far of who would have the easiest time rebuilding and phoenixing Russia to have a fighting chance of conquering Moscow.
1. Novosibirsk: Has enough lands suitable for agriculture and access to the Siberian river network. The megacorps are a huge asset as they're very similar to Japanese zaibaitsus and Korean chaebols. If their energies are channelled in the right direction, they can definitely spur significant economic growth and generate revenues to fuel reconstruction and a war of revenge. Novosibirsk more than any other Central Siberian unifier is also likely to exploit the motherlode of the Norilsk nickel palladium deposits to the hilt and in a similar manner to OTL. The megacorps will also move to aggressively exploit Siberian oil and gas reserves too. IF (big if!) it avoids the Ditch disease and carefully husband its revenues for exporting raw materials, a Novosibirsk united Russia could become a combination of OTL Norway and South Korea and a massive force to reckon with economically.
2. Tomsk: Same reasons as Novosibirsk but lower because it won't be able to afford the ambitious social programmes some salon want for its citizens, at least not immediately. The Bastillards and Modernists are the salons most likely to pump up the economy. Tomsk main weakness will be the long-term sustainability of its system of Government.
3. Tyumen: Five-year plans can be a powerful mechanism to drive up investment and growth. If heavy-industry focus isn't done at the expense of the countryside, then it can emulate most of the successes of OTL Soviet Union and built itself a comfortable economy and industrial base with which to fuel a war of revenge. The resulting Soviet Union will be asset rich but cash poor and may be quite a grim place in which to live.
4. WRRF: I'm placing them so low as their initial position is really poor though they have the advantage of having a lot of legitimacy. Building-up a strong civilian economy can be challenging with them in-game. Overall, I would expect a Soviet Union united by them to look similar to the Tyumen one albeit with more freedoms and more consumer goods available to the populace.

I haven't played other factions but from what I've read, I think that the below ones both in-game and in real life would face a very hard time rebuilding Russia in time for a war of revenge.
Taboritsky's HRE: No explanation needed as to why ...
Hyperborea/Russkyi Reych: Both are abominations that are unlikely to last long-term and whose economy will likely be poor with low GDP growth and a lack of industries.
SBA: Incorporating Western Russia will be an immense task for them and their outlook seems very isolationist. I just can't see them implementing large industrial projects to make Russian self-sufficient in key strategic goods and able to build modern MBTs, planes etc.
Rodzaevsky Russia: A carbon copy pf Nazi Germany except in Russia, if their economic policies are the same as OTL and even TTL Nazi Germany, they'll run out of steam during the 1970s and shatter in a civil war.
Eurasia: A weird creation whose insane ideology won't gain the adherence of the population and which doesn't strike me as having the prerequisites for building up a strong economy and leveraging all the natural resources and geographical assets of Russia.
 

Dunois

Baron Steakpuncher said:
Look speaking as a dev i think you're under a bit of a misconception.

Russia, strong under Zhukov though it is, is still a damaged and wounded nation from the horrors of WW2 and the subsequent atrocities inflicted upon it. Then despite this, despite everything they've had done against them including terror bombing and outside interference, they get back up anyway. The Russian spirit is not broken, it drags itself to its feet and gets ready for another go against an enemy so terrible that "evil" is insufficient to describe it.

That is the great success of Russia in TNO, where the English and Poles and Czechs fail, Russia succeeds and takes one last shot at the monstrous Reich. And they win, they might not advance to the Romanian border, they might not reach Germania's blood soaked walls, but the Reich loses its shell of invincibility and RK Moskowien (and possibly some other areas) is Russian once more.
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In TTL world, a Russia that manages to rebuild itself, achieve prosperity for its citizens and reconquer Moskowien, the Caucasus and even Eastern Ukraine would become a case study in national revival and a near-miracle.

It has everything it takes to do it on paper, the population, the natural resources and the human capital. All that's needed to put this to work and engineer the miracle is leadership. Zhukov has it, some other unifiers have it too. Others don't though ...
 
Whiteshore

Whiteshore

Dunois said:
Here's my own ranking based on the unifiers I've played so far of who would have the easiest time rebuilding and phoenixing Russia to have a fighting chance of conquering Moscow.
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I would say Sverdlovsk would also be high up as they have an elite officer corps combined with a rational economic policy.
 
Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

Whiteshore said:
I would say Sverdlovsk would also be high up as they have an elite officer corps combined with a rational economic policy.
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I can think of a few more that would be similar to Novosibirsk or Tyumen. Irkutsk under Yagoda has a Dengist economic outlook that may be quite successful (admittedly, India and China may be issues, although both get involved in the Great Asian War), and middle-path Samara (I forget the exact name) is literally setting up a South Korean-like chaebol-based military-industrial complex. I think Party Irkutsk is basically neo-Bukharinism and could possibly build a strong economy through what are basically dirigeste-type economic policies.

Another weaker one might be Chita or fascist Magadan, since they fail to do a lot of reforms and thus underutilize their populations relative to their potential. That's actually something that ought to be considered more deeply...a lot of the ostensibly strong unifiers have feet of clay in that they have poor social stats (high poverty, low education, etc.) and bad social reforms (limited education, overly low taxes, etc.) that undermine their potential.
 
Gukpard

Gukpard

To be completely honest, I don't care about the Cannon

Even my headcannon (that is made to not be a wish fullfilment scenario) is irrelevant, I gonna get Shulgin and in TNO I gonna reclaim the 1939 borders
 
Meshakhad

Meshakhad

I agree that the SBA would have a hard time integrating West Russia. However, they are also more likely to have a strong and fairly mechanized army. I also think that the SBA's isolationism is far from certain. Their foreign policy tree has both an isolationist option and an interventionist option, and I can see additional paths.

The most important issue for the SBA (if LibSoc) is recovering from their purge after Stepanov's failed coup. If they've been able to unify Russia, that says that their army is functional, but they may not be up to facing the Wehrmacht.
 

brooklyn99

Banned
Gukpard said:
To be completely honest, I don't care about the Cannon

Even my headcannon (that is made to not be a wish fullfilment scenario) is irrelevant, I gonna get Shulgin and in TNO I gonna reclaim the 1939 borders
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I share your sentiment. It's really a more interesting outcome for Russia to return to the global stage under somebody like a certain wholesome 100 unifier in the Far East... by which I mean the Australian Tsar; Mikhail the 2nd (would be really interesting as well, to explore the diplomacy and relationship between his state and Australia at the tail-end of TNO1 or/and TNO2). As opposed to falling back into Communist authoritarianism.
 

Matryoshka

I find it ridiculous how much people overestimate the strength of Germany in TNO. By the time of the Second West Russian War, Germany will have gone through an incredibly destructive civil war, one that will annihilate an entire generation's worth of German manpower and intelligence, one that will have huge social and political ramifications moving forward. Bormann's Germany will be incapable of solving the fundamental contradictions of Nazism, and it will experience a slow and painful stagnation. People conceive of Germany and the German takeover of Eastern Europe and Moscowein as being comparable to a standard authoritarian occupation- to reduce it to that level would be a laughable understatement. Germany is a totalitarian slaveocracy enslaving millions of people that utterly despise the regime and would likely prefer almost anything to it, ruled by bureaucrats and politicians that are woefully incapable of managing that House of Cards, and ruling over a domestic population that is explicitly shown at the end of a Bormann campaign to be roused into unrest, with the Red Army Faction being confident and substantial enough to kidnap and execute high ranking government officials. It is incredibly likely that Bormann's inevitable death will lead to yet another power struggle, one that will provide a perfect opening for Russia to invade.

If a barely united West Russia in the 50s almost managed to beat Germany not far from its prime, then I see no reason why a Russia united under a sufficiently strong unifier would have any issue whatsoever at beating Germany down, at least to the extent at which Moscowein could be reclaimed.
 
Gukpard

Gukpard

So, I finished a campaign of matkovsky (here go r
Eight hours of my life).

What I have to say is that it is a cool campaign, and that he's a awfull person, not as bad as Shafarevich but not as less evil as Bunyachenko. He comes out as a heroic figure, regardless, and I'm not saying this as a good quality, but basically he is the one pushing Russia to recover through morally bankrupt means with good but questionable intentions.
 
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Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

Having just finished a Yagoda game (where Novosibirsk unified Central Siberia, Omsk ground itself down fighting Zlatoust, and the Tsar ended up both conquering Eastern Russia and then disposing of Omsk and the other West Siberian states), I can definitely state that in economic terms he is one of the strongest Russian warlords due to his Dengism. I was able to get a GDP growth rate above 10% and had by the time I finished in '73 (I took the time to attack the Kazakhs before reforming the RSFSR) the third or fourth-largest economy in the world, quite close to Germany proper (albeit still smaller than their combined satellite states, even if they had gone Göring overthrow). In addition, they can build good links with the United States or Japan, as well as potentially receiving a considerable amount of U.S. aid through Magadan if the U.S. player uses the CIA appropriately. Between that, their strong security state and the legitimacy they have as the continuation of the old Soviet Union, they're probably one of the strongest possible unifiers for beating up on Germany.

I would overall characterize State Irkutsk as blursed, similar to Zhadnov's Komi. On the one hand, you do reunify the country, build a strong economy, and establish decent social policies (not completely blessed, but better than many countries) which can lead to significant advances in the quality of education and reductions in poverty, with an overall improvement in the material conditions of the Soviet remnant. On the other hand, it's an NKVD securocracy that routinely spies on its population for the purpose of eliminating dissident elements. It will be interesting to compare Yagoda's and Sablin's Soviet Unions once TNO2 comes out.

One thing I do wish the game had emphasized a little more in the regional and superregional stages was Yagoda's internal state of mind and character--by the late 1960s and early 1970s, he would be getting old, and given that he's spent a lifetime trying to secure the Soviet Union against all threats foreign and domestic (rather more domestic than foreign, but still), you'd think he might be doing some reflection on what he's done and whether it was worth it (he probably would consider it worthwhile, but still). Another thing I would have liked would be more gameplay and gameplay interactions in Central Asia; it's kind of disappointing that after the Kazakh reunification wars everyone in the region just sort of sits around doing nothing, and that the Soviets/Russia don't have any interactions with the non-Kazakh Central Asian states. Even for the states like Father Men and maybe Tomsk that wouldn't be interested in conquering Central Asia, there should at least be some interactions and things going on.

Anyway, next up is Novosibirsk or Tyumen, I think.
 
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White Aurora

White Aurora

Found this message while browsing through HOI4 thread in SV. Some of the stuff written here could theoretically be used for the ''Black Gold, Red Sand'' update
I think that like 60% of the time the Italian retreat from the Levant would result in a Levant war, with Labour-Zionist Israel and Transjordan as well as other factions like maybe the Harakiyyin or some sort of Lebanon appearing depending on what the IME does beforehand.
Other options would be a Harakiyyin total takeover or King Hussein establishing a kingdom over the whole Levant. None of these would be the end of the content though, and even then another war could perhaps break out later. For many reasons (not gonna write a whole wall) I don’t think an Israel that isn't founded by the labor-zionists is possible before the Haganah is thoroughly destroyed and this could only be done by an Arab regime. Think of Habash bashing the zionists a bit too hard, and just as conservative Palestinian elements are trying to rebel against him the Jewish yishuv opens the pandora box and is led to independence by someone other than the Haganah - maybe the Lehi?
 
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the Imperium of Canada

the Imperium of Canada

No one:
Not a single fucking soul:
The guy who made an actual Taboritsky T-Shirt:
ssrco,classic_tee,womens,101010_01c5ca27c6,front_alt,square_product,600x600.jpg
 
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