Two Rounds of Loos (Hohenzollern Redoubt)

by on September 20, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

After way too long, Mark and I returned to (C&C) The Great War, with the second scenario on the Battle of Loos. This is supposed to be the main attack, and the German trench setup is more compact, with a larger British back area. The British get an extra banner for each German trench they have units in, and the Germans can get an extra banner every time they play a Recon card.

Mark had the British for the first game, and the pre-game bombardment took out four hexes of wire, and put down a couple of shellholes in the approach. He led with Infantry Assault in the center, getting into the first trench, but with only a couple units that could attack. Good rolls nearly took both front-line German units out, but one fought back with Butt & Bayonet to do one block and force the unit back three hexes(!). I led with Attack Center, but used Counter Intelligence to get Butt & Bayonet back. I did two blocks each to two units, and Mark hit back with his own Butt & Bayonet to finish off a weak infantry.

Mark Attacked Right with a Box Barrage, with units running into the trenches, and a single hit to a mortar. I Attacked Center, and did a hit to each of two units. Mark did Recon in Force to run units forward, and did a hit to a MG. I used Orders From HQ to activate five (of seven) units to do two blocks each to two units (including the only one who’d made it to the second line), and finished off a weak infantry. Mark Attacked Right, and Physician recovered two hits on a bombadier. His main attack did a block to my bombadier, but his infantry took two in return from Butt & Bayonet. I Attacked Left to finish off that infantry, and Mark Attacked Center to Reposition his mortar and force my weak bombadier to retreat.

I Probed Left for no result, Mark Assaulted Left to nearly take out a MG, and Butt & Bayonet finished off the forward assaulting unit. I did Infantry Assault in the center to get at the two remaining British units in my trenches and destroyed the one in the front line, but left the one in the second line with one block. Mark used Storm of Fire to finish off my bombadier, and I countered with Forward, finishing off one unit, and doing two hits to his bombadier. Mark Infantry Assaulted on his left, taking out my MG. I Probed Left with a Machine Gun Barrage to finish off the bombadier. 6-5

My pre-game bombardment only took out two hexes of wire, but did give me four shellhole hexes right in front of my line, and a couple on my right past the wire. Probe Left let me move towards one of the gaps, and Mark used Recon Centre to take a free banner. Recon in Force got me into contact, and I did one block each to two units. Mark Assaulted Centre while I Held At All Costs, but Mark also used Short Supply to send my in-contact unit to my baseline, while he maneuvered.

I Probed Left to move up, and Mark took a block with a Probe Right. I Attacked Left with a Box Barrage, getting tripple-6 on targeting to blow a hole in the trenches and do two hits on his MG and make it retreat. His infantry took a hit and retreated three hexes. Mark did Artillery Bombard to hit a concentration in my trench, doing three blocks across two units. I Attacked Left to remove a hex of wire and force his retreating infantry back into the cover of the third line. Mark Probed Center to get a hit on two units. I Assaulted Center (using Tactician to shift from Left), moving forward through the gap in the wire. Mark Attacked Center to do a block to a weak infantry, and I Attacked Left to continue working my way in.

Mark used Storm of Fire and Mortar Barrage to eliminate two weak units, and do a block to another. Recon in Force got me a hit, and his weaker MG retreated to the baseline. Mark did Recon in Force (by this point we’d forgotten the banner rule) and got two hits on my lead unit. Mata Hari also took a pair of Direct From HQ out of my hand, and I’d been saving up points for them. Attack Center moved me up, but did no damage, and Probe Right forced a unit back. Infantry Assault got me into the second line and did two hits to a bombadier. Mark Probed Center to move him back, and Box Barrage weakened a infantry further while forcing another to retreat onto the wire. Out Flanked moved up my right, but I didn’t get anywhere on the left. Attack Right forced a unit out of the second line, but another Infantry Assault got me into the third line and eliminated three units (one through use of Lice while he was on the baseline; a hit and flag did for him). If I could survive to the next turn, I’d get credit for being in all three lines of trenches and win. Mark went for Whistles & Bugle Calls with Trench Raid, reducing my forward unit to one block, and Butt & Bayonet did two hits and two flags to his unit in the open, reducing him to a single block. His attacks over, I won at the start of my turn. 6-[4]

Afterword

One thing that is hard to get used to is that units aren’t as vulnerable in the open as it feels. While ranged combat is a much bigger worry, you generally only see three dice at a time, which is a big difference from the five dice heavies of CC:A. Also, if you want to get to a decision, you need to close to close combat. The skull side makes a real difference, and if you can get there with a bombadier, the fourth die is extremely important.

On the other hand, it feels like most of the deck is just section cards of various types. Tactic cards exist, and are really important when they come up, but they often don’t. The second round certainly saw me struggling to get good cards, until the double draw of recovering from Mata Hari broke that loose. I was having poor die luck as well at that point, but it suddenly turned around with the Infantry Assault, and that pretty well ended it.

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Dreadnought

by on September 16, 2025 at 12:01 pm
Posted In: Books

This is a book where the subtitle is accurate and sums up the book far better than the title ever could: “Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War”.

This is also Robert Massie at his best. Typically, he does a very good job following the life of one (Romanov) person, and showing the world around them. Dreadnought follows a much larger crowd through about sixty years. He handles all of this extremely well, keeping everything flowing, giving dozens of mini-biographies, and keeping the reader from getting confused.

His starting point is that in 1914 the King of England and the Emperor of Germany were closely related, and the House of Windsor was German to begin with. In the mid-1800s relations between Queen Victoria and relations were quite close to the various parts of the region of Germany. In those circumstances, Britain and Germany were unlikely to go to war. And yet that happened in 1914.

So, this is the story of how two countries went from a very close relationship to mutual suspicion and being on opposite sides of The Great War.

We start with a quick biography of Queen Victoria, her son (the future Edward VII), her daughter (“Vicky”) and her husband Frederick III of Germany. In what has to be the most spectacular mis-diagnosis of history, early detection of throat cancer is missed in Frederick, and he is already dying when he succeeds his father, and reigns for a little over three months.

This leaves us with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who would rule Germany until the end of WWI. An admirer of Britain, and especially desirous of grandmotherly approval, he has plenty of troubles he inherited, as well as many of his own making, and he falls in with von Tirpitz and both want a great German fleet which can show the world just how thoroughly Germany has arrived as a Great Power.

Of course, before that, Bismark enters the scene, and adroitly engineers a number of crises which unite Germany under Prussian control. Having gotten what he wants, his politics become much more conservative, looking to preserve peace in Europe. Knowing that any sort of agreement with France is now impossible, his priorities are propping up Austria-Hungary and making agreements with Russia, which is tough because those two are opposed on many subjects. (An interesting bit is Massie shows how the Kaiser and other hawks forced through a harsher peace in the Franco-Prussian War than Bismark wanted. He wanted to be able to deal with France afterward, like with Austria-Hungary.)

Once Wilhelm II removes Bismark as Chancellor, things slowly come apart, and that is kind of the central theme of the book, hidden under so many other elements. Russia and France come into alignment. And then Britain and France come to an agreement over their colonial problems and start drifting closer together. Germany wants a closer relationship with Britain, but is now building a nice modern navy. This is stated as being so they can protect their own commerce and colonies in a war, but is largely short-ranged heavy ships. The only thing the German navy can fight is the Royal Navy.

As the German navy expands, naval matters become more and more important. Part three (of five) is the shortest section of the book, and one chapter in there is pretty much all the attention the titular HMS Dreadnought gets. Still, he presents it all well, and the coming of Dreadnought is important to everything after, especially as the arms race between Britain and Germany takes all the attention. On the British side, wrangling over the budget as the bill for the Royal Navy goes up causes its own brand of chaos, but naval supremacy is the only position the government can take.

The last section, which covers from Agadir (1911) to the start of WWI is exceptionally good. It covers the naval discussions around trying to halt/slow down the arms race, and the London Conference during Balkan Wars, and finally the July Crisis.

Overall, Dreadnought runs to a bit over 900 pages, and is packed. There’s dozens of mini-biography, friendships, government maneuvers, notes between governments, and crises. Changing naval technology and changing attitudes. If you want Europe before WWI wrapped up and presented to you, this will do it. The main thing is Britain and Germany are the main players here, and don’t see much of what doesn’t matter to them. There is some talk of the British army and its change to a force that could properly support a land war in Europe, but not a lot of detail is gone into there.

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Monsters of the Troll

by on September 12, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: RPGs

The second role playing game published was Tunnels & Trolls. Ever since, it has led a small independent existence, doing it’s own thing.

T&T quickly went through editions early on, ending with 5th in 1979, and then seventh came out around 2005 (they skipped 6th). Meanwhile, Ken St Andre, the designer, did Monsters! Monsters! in two editions (1976 and ’79) with Metagaming, which is the same system, but focusing on the monsters with those nasty dungeon delvers as the bad guys.

Tunnels & Trolls is owned by Flying Buffalo, and now Revolution Games is working on a new edition. Meanwhile, St Andre has self-published a new version of Monsters! Monsters! that stands as his current word on the RPG system he designed. By the introduction to the current version, he plans on doing a more thorough rework in the future, so this “2.7” edition is something of a placeholder. Trollgodfather Press (Ken St Andre’s personal publishing company) has followed up with supplements and adventures, generally set in a new world he has been developing along with a few other authors. (I assume this means Trollworld, where all the old Scottsdale group’s adventures happened is also owned by FBI/Revolution.) I believe there is only one rules supplement, Humans! Humans!, which details how run and equip humans and other civilized races for reasons that will be clear below.

I’m used to 5th edition T&T, and there are some decided changes here, but my understanding is that they’re mostly from 7E T&T. That said, if you’re familiar with any version of either game, everything here will be very familiar. And I worry that familiarity might be needed. The base system is very simple, needing just ten pages of the 112-page PDF to give all the essentials. But, it is written in a fairly conversational style, and there are places where I worry that someone who doesn’t already know the system would be missing important bits.

So, on to the actual system. This is a very simple and streamlined RPG, borrowing ideas from original D&D while often doing its own thing. There is no skill system, and really no differentiating one character from another other than what they do and the primary attributes. There are no secondary attributes. Your Constitution score is your hit points. Wizardry powers magic casting, and so on. T&T has character levels but they’re actually tossed out for monsters, so MM! doesn’t use them.

There’s eight primary attributes (it was six in T&T 5E), so you roll 3d6 eight times, and assign the numbers to the attributes. There’s five monster types in the beginning quick-start section, and after picking one, you add or subtract from what you rolled, and generally get a special ability (regeneration, fire resistance…), and since monsters don’t use a lot of tools, you’re basically done.

Later on, there’s fifteen pages of monster descriptions (including some extensive summary tables). Because this is a game of monsters for monsters, most of these can be player species as well. …But here the you multiply the scores (which is what T&T 5E did, and had a similar summary chart ported from the original MM!), instead of a flat add or subtract. I don’t know why the change, and only a couple appear in both sections, so the results could end up a bit odd.

The combat system is geared towards fast resolution… on a per round system. It can drag out a bit with evenly matched sides, as not a lot of damage will get delivered. Both sides roll damage, without any intermediate ‘do I hit’ step. Instead, the lower score is subtracted from the higher, and that difference is taken as damage. (This is great for one-on-one, I feel it loses a lot when you’re combining multiple people on each side, and then distributing the resulting damage out.) Armor subtracts from damage taken, anything that gets through that is subtracted from Constitution, and when that runs out, you’re dead. There’s no option for tactical maneuvers, no movement rates, nor turning it into a miniatures game.

The heart of the game is the saving roll, which is essentially a very early version of the attribute check that started showing up as a regular mechanic in D&D in the ’80s and is now one of the main parts of that system. The GM determines a difficulty level which defines a target number, and the attribute the check is made against. The character rolls 2d6 and adds his attribute score; if he hits the target number, he succeeds. Oh—and we get the first application of “exploding dice” here: if the character rolls doubles, he rolls again (and again, as long as he rolls doubles) and adds everything together. The attribute check/saving roll system is logical and can be easily applied to anything so it takes most of the load of attribute checks and a skill system with no problem. While mechanically differentiating two characters with similar characteristics but different backgrounds would be nice, it would be a burden on a system this light.

A new section (to me) is stunts, which is really just a proactive version of the saving roll. Saving rolls are generally called for to avoid something (level 1 vs Luck to avoid setting off a trap, level 2 vs Dexterity to get out of the way of the giant boulder, etc), while stunts are for characters to try and do something special like a maneuver to get out of combat. The player says what they want to do, and the GM assigns a saving roll to it.

T&T has always gone for massive characteristic totals. Character advancement involves getting a bonus to one of your attributes, which is always handy because there’s always harder saving rolls possible. In T&T you pick an attribute and get a bonus every time you level, MM!‘s level-less system gives you adventure points every time you take a saving roll (pass or fail) or defeat an enemy, and then you spend those to get stat bonuses.

There is one page for equipment, but then we move on to descriptions of various species on Zimrala, which includes more gear, and even goes into guns and other advanced gear.

And then magic is presented. There’s about fifteen pages of spell descriptions. This is largely the same system as T&T, but in 5E casting spells took energy in the form of strength, meaning a wizard would literally exhaust himself. Now, Wizardry is a separate attribute, and spellcasting normally comes from that instead (which at least gets rid of a lot of amazingly buff wizards). The spell list has some crossover, but also has a lot of different spells. I’d need to go through them, but I think you could mix-and-match easily without any oddities cropping up.

The second half of the PDF is setting information. The usual overview, some maps, a guide for a few places, and two GM adventures are given. I haven’t really gone through these yet, but of course it is all expanded upon in other products.

Because of the writing, I am a bit concerned with this edition occasionally skipping things, but it made sense to me. It’s a very stripped down system, and it does miss things that can be nice. If you want to be better at jumping than other people, or your Intelligence is focused on study of one subject, there’s nothing here. The only dials to work with are the eight primary characteristics. You can up your Dexterity, and become better at passing Dex-based saving rolls to make that jump, but every other saving roll on the same attribute gets better too, and everyone with the same Dex score is just as good as you.

But this is a very stripped down system, and it does a great job of getting out of its own way. As long as you’re willing to role play the rest, the main system is extremely easy to handle, and a system that’s barely changed since 1975 holds up very well today.

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Love, Witches & Other Delusions

by on September 8, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This covers the second half of the initial anime season. (Or, much more properly, the anime covers this.)

It retains the format of being smaller stories stitched together. The book gives them as chapters, but they are separate stories, connected by a fairly short amount of time passing.

We start with the main pair, Kazuma and Aqua, still sleeping in a stable and winter is coming on. This is a powerful motivator. And then Kazuma ends up temping with a different party. You know, with regular adventurers who aren’t useless. And Kazuma ends up showing how tactics and smarts can overcome a lack of overall power.

The next story is good, but less overall relevant. The third story deals with getting a real place to stay. This one is decidedly better in the anime, thanks to some superb comedic timing. The fourth story also is a bit better in the anime for much the same reasons. Like with anything in this genre, it has a sexy side, and this one leans on that more than usual for the jokes. That said, this is comedy, not ero, so everything falls apart in the face of mistaken identity and bad timing.

And then the fifth story suddenly turns back to adventuring and another climatic encounter. This doesn’t really flow out of the previous stories, so it feels abrupt, even though things did get name-dropped ahead of time. Kazuma gets to be competent again, echoing the first story, but there’s a big cast of other people being competent as well. It works, but does feel a bit light for what’s going on.

Overall, the second half of the first book is better than this is overall, though it’s a lot of fun. The anime definitely took was was here, didn’t really change anything, and still punched up the humor a bunch. Very impressive.

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The War at Sea

by on September 4, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fifth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Hearts of Iron IV. See the previous reviews here:
Hearts of Iron IV: Heart of Production
Together For Victory: Commonwealth of Iron
Death or Dishonor: Heart of Eastern Europe
Waking the Tiger: Heart of China

After Waking the Tiger, Hearts of Iron IV development moved on to the second major expansion, this time introducing a new design system for ships. Man the Guns was announced on May 19, 2018, and was released on February 28, 2019 alongside patch 1.6. Over a month later, patch 1.7 moved the game to 64-bit code, and near the end of the year patch 1.8 moved the game to the new unified Paradox launcher (talked about in the EU IV: Golden Century review).

Fuel

The biggest change in the patch to the underlying game was a change in resources. Oil is still one of the major resources produced in various parts of the world, but is no longer used in unit production. Instead, all oil a country gets a hold of is converted into fuel.

Fuel is a persistent resource; that is, it is stored until used. The revised UI has a small bar next to the fuel symbol showing what percentage of available storage is occupied, and will tell you how long until you fill it up, or how long until it is gone.

Regular infantry, cavalry, etc does not use fuel, but all mechanized formations do, aircraft do, and ships use large quantities of it. Like regular supplies, divisions will store a couple day’s worth internally, which they will consume if cut off from supply. If a supply zone’s throughput is overloaded, other supplies take priority, so fuel will start getting cut off first. When internal supplies run out, mechanized battalions will fight at 10% normal effectiveness. Aircraft consumption is based on the type of mission (“intercept” is efficient, while the long-range logistics and port strikes consume more), and will be at 25% efficiency while out of fuel, and ships are at 50% combat and 25% range (submarines get 20% of their normal torpedo attack).

All countries get a nominal base production of fuel per day, and then convert all the oil they have. Synthetic refineries produce fuel directly, and there are now five technologies that increase the fuel:oil ratio, as well as a new state-level building that stores it.

Overall, it’s a good change, and starts weaning HoI IV off of a resource model where having plenty of something at the start is of no help if you exceed production later. It can be irritating to have to worry about fuel just as there is more need to operate ships that consume lots of it in peacetime, but it is a much better model of the importance of oil.

BuShips

The major feature of the expansion is an all-new ship design system. Instead of just having a general ship type (e.g., 1936 battleship) that you can then add bonuses to in four different stats, you now add modules to a hull that provides base stats (kind of like in Stellaris, but it’d probably be better if it was even more like that system).

This does mean that there are a lot of extra technologies to research in the ships screen for various components. Most of the base hull technologies are faster than the complete ship verions, and there are fewer of them, as there is just one set of “cruiser” hulls, with “heavy” and “light” being purely determined by turret type (and type of armor now determines battleship or battlecruiser for heavy hulls—this should have been true for cruisers as well). This combination means that it takes just about the same number of days (assuming everything is researched at the base rate) of research to get through both versions (discounting some all-new bits, like mine warfare), and there was also an extensive rework to research bonuses in the patch.

The interface on this has a number of problems, starting with the fact that the slots and their contents are not well labeled (by the way, “fixed” slots are below the ship diagram, and optional/variable slots are above). Oddly, before you could, for example, pile more armor on a battleship, but here you can only use the available module types, so there’s only three discrete choices for battleship (or any other) armor now. When you get a new hull, your latest design on the old hull gets copied over to it, so that update is easy. But, if you have a bunch of specialty designs, you may need to manually go and re-create them on the new hull; thankfully, many specialist ships are probably meant to be second-line ships that you can keep on older, smaller, faster to produce, hulls. But if you are actively building and modernizing, for example, light cruisers and heavy cruisers, one of them will have to be updated by hand, at a high cost in naval experience.

The good news is that the patch also added the ability to do naval and air exercises. This of course will use up fuel, which is a problem for countries struggling with their oil supply, but means you can get peacetime naval experience with which to design these new ships.

Construction changed as well in the patch. Shipyards still do not use the efficiency mechanic of factories, but now there is a cap on how many can be designated to a particular ship. Capital ships have a limit of 5 shipyards, which puts a very hard limit on how fast a capital ship can be produced. A very interesting side note to that is that repairing a ship now also takes shipyards. Be careful as to what occupies the bottom of your naval production list, as they may be halted to repair damage from combat or a mishap during a training patrol.

I was one of the people excited for a more detailed ship designer, but the experience is underwhelming. There’s a number of problems, which generally boil down to a lack of obvious interesting decisions. You can put just about everything you want on a design, leading to very good generalist ships that won’t give you any trouble. It might be very slow to produce, but while the interface tells you the cost, it doesn’t tell you how that translates to build time. That said, once you think your way through a naval strategy, there’s plenty of room for specialty ships.

A good feature is that you can update older designs to use newer parts, and refit existing ships to that new design. Notably, most radar technologies now unlock a better radar module, which you could refit into existing designs. Fire control is a separate technology dependent on computing machine technologies and add bonuses to hit chances. You can refit much more than these, but they are force multipliers, relatively cheap, and were often refitted on ships historically. The real problem here is that refitting is done by finding a ship, telling it to refit, waiting for it to arrive and show up at the bottom of the build queue, and then (possibly) repositioning it in the queue, and reworking dockyard priorities. It’s nice to be able to do it, and generally takes no resources, but it needs some automation (e.g., telling the game to send one ship of a particular class in at a time to get new radar sets, or being able to refit a ship while its already under repair).

Enemy Mine

One thing that does increase the potential naval research time in the expansion is a group of nine new technologies around naval mines. The basic tech (that most countries should start with) allows the use of minelaying and minesweeping gear.

Generally speaking, both are best done by destroyers, though other surface ships can take the module. Two of the other techs allow submarines to deploy them, which allows for potentially sneaking into enemy waters to cause mayhem. Areas are rated for the general number of mines present, and cause enemy (but not friendly) forces to suffer ‘accidents’ and take a penalty to invasions on those coasts.

To help with the problems created by this, the expansion also lets you restrict your forces’ travel through a sea area. You can set access to either avoid or blocked, which will cause all non-manual sea travel to not go through there, possibly just to force trade routes to go through areas you have more control over, or to avoid places known to have mines or submarines operating.

In general, it’s a nicely done feature, but I’m reminded of Federation & Empire avoiding the entire subject because it’d boil down to if you have minesweepers along, you’re safe, otherwise you’re not. And despite the potential power of a solid minelaying strategy, most people (even multiplayer) ignore it… and so does the AI. It will never make more than a minimal effort at minesweeping, so this can be too easy of an advantage over it.

Big Happy Fleet

Naval organization was also completely redone for the patch. Paradox finally introduced a good amount of hierarchy for naval forces, which does help with distributing them. That said, the interface is is pretty difficult to decipher. Thankfully, initial naval forces are pre-distributed in the new scheme at the beginning, unlike land forces, which must always be arranged in armies and theaters manually.

Just like land forces, there are now naval theaters, which can be used for geographical splits, or just to organize by type (say, all the minelayers in a separate theater). Theaters can contain any number of fleets (which is the only level that uses admirals), which can then have task forces. Each theater always has a reserve fleet, which can contain task forces not assigned to a normal fleet, and can serve as a ‘holding pool’ of ships used to bring regular fleets back up to strength after losses.

One of the options in the ship designer is to assign an icon that symbolizes the design’s general role; this is important, as that’s how the task forces work assignments. You set a task force to have so many ships of a particular type, and a particular role, and the game knows to send ships of that type to it when some are missing.

This is all a big help—once you’re used to it. I’d say it’s harder to figure out at first, but with the separate patrol and strike force missions you can really make naval dominance work. However, production seems to get confused if there is more than one naval theater, and there is now an unfulfilled need for the logistics screen to tell you how many ships (especially destroyers and subs) are needed to fill out your task forces.

Britain Redux

Part of the patch was a rework of the British focus tree, though three extra branches are also added by the expansion.

The general rearmament branch got expanded and reworked in the naval section, and the Special Air Service was added for a bonus to the number of special forces formations allowed. With the expansion, the colonial branch can turn the Commonwealth into the Imperial Federation, a super-state of all or most of the Dominions (this will require a lot of stored political power for a series of decisions).

New to the expansion (and mutually exclusive with Reinforce the Empire) is a decolonization branch, which will dismantle the British Empire, but will grant more manpower at home (immigration of people who think they’ll do better there than under the new independent governments).

Then there is a pair of mutually exclusive branches, one of which is partially a rework of an old sub-branch that aimed towards war with the USSR. The overall branch is the historical appeasement policy, and is intended as a ‘play for time’, while getting rearmament going, and so includes focuses that construct coastal forts or other bases, and the Home Defense branch includes “Prepare for the Inevitable” for a permanent civilian factory boost.

The final branch is the full-on alternate history section, and the first sub-branch starts with Edward VIII staying King of England, while marrying Wallis Simpson, and leads to events causing revolts throughout the empire, which then must be stamped out with loyalist help. The second sub-branch is the Fascist route, which can kick off a civil war, but spending political power can avoid this, or at least put if off until winnable. The third is the Communist branch, which focuses on granting various concessions with trade unions in return for bonuses to help rearmament.

In addition, the patch included around seventy new countries releasable from current nations. Some of this was needed for the decolonization above, but the rest was put in just to be consistent with those.

New Deals, New Civil Wars

The American focus tree was also completely reworked for the patch. The main idea was to give the US player more to do in the early game, when usually it’s a case of sitting around, forced to do nothing while the war gets going. To this end, Congress was added with the patch, and current support can be seen in the decisions menu. Many focuses now require sufficient support from Congress, and there are plenty of random events as well as decisions that will adjust this.

Naturally, anything that needs Congress will expend political capital, sending members into opposition after getting it to pass. One of the effects of the Great Depression is -1 political power/day, so after picking a focus, at the start of the game, the only political power available for decisions and such is the extra 0.15/day caused by good stability.

The center part of the main tree is a series of mutually-exclusive focuses, starting with Continue the New Deal and Reestablish the Gold Standard. The former leads to the WPA branch, which has some economic bonuses and a research slot, and the other leads to the Adjusted Compensation Act, which does much the same, though the research slot takes longer to get to.

With the expansion, there are two further alt-history branches, with Suspend the Persecution leading towards communism from the New Deal, and America First leading towards fascism from Gold Standard. Both of these will cause a civil war if pursued, with somewhat different mechanics.

In the center there’s a second choice of The Neutrality Act, which focuses on the internal economy, and Limited Intervention lowers the bar for getting involved with what the rest of the world is dealing with, but is opposed by Congress, making it hard to do anything else. A few more things are available from either branch (such as Lend-Lease Act, though it’s harder to do on the neutrality side).

Overall, it’s a much better experience than the original focus tree, though the truly historical path is still a lesson in patience. The political shenanigans don’t really make up for it, but do give a fuller appreciation of FDR’s second term.

Extras

Two countries got all-new unique focus trees in the expansion.

The Netherlands have five national spirits with the expansion (only one, for Queen Wilhelmina, exists without it), greatly weakening its position. One is their version of the Great Depression (De Crisisjaren), which doubles all construction times. While the Netherlands sat out WWI, the carnage happening just across their borders made neutrality the only reasonable option, and so Aloof Neutrality also acts like The Great Depression in making it harder to join factions and the like, while Shell-Shocked Spectator of the Great War reduces recruitable population and factory output (surprisingly, they do not use some form of equivalent to the US’s Disarmed Nation or Undisturbed Isolation laws—the former seems particularly apropos). Finally, Weak Government lowers stability, and reduces political power.

They start with eleven civilian and four military factories, and three dockyards, the army is eight understrength divisions with a lackluster template (no support companies; but how would they produce supplies for them?), and only 70 recruitable population. What they do have is a large supply of oil from Curaço, aluminum from Suriname, and the Dutch East Indies, a sprawling puppet state (with no national spirits or other tweaks of its own) with its own seven-division army, a single dockyard and factory, and a lot of rubber.

There are three big focus trees, one starting with Abandon the Gold Standard (which they historically did late in 1936) which starts working off de Crisisjaren, and allows for improved industry, and can try to strengthen the military. Obtain Foreign Colonial Investments instead boosts the colonies, and can move the government to the East Indies if forced to capitulate in Europe, and Form New Government opens up a web of potential focuses to try and get protection from one of the nearby major powers. Extra fun bits are works to reclaim more land (which was indeed ongoing at the time), and the ability to flood provinces, which inhibit movement, and greatly aid defensive strength.

Mexico starts with eight civilian factories, three military, and two dockyards. Worse, while there’s good oil production, much of it is under the control of the US and Britain (thanks to the Oil Concessions spirit). Other signs of recent instability include Callistas, which reduces political power and construction, Politicized Army, decreasing planning, and making new leaders more expensive, and Caudillo Tensions, which lowers stability. There’s a surprising twenty-one divisions available, though most of them are really bare brigades, but there’s six regular divisions (infantry and cavalry) with support artillery, and most equipment is already in place.

There are three different civil wars brewing. Caudillo Tensions start “moderate” with a 150-day timer to go to “high”, and then another 150 days to go to a civil war. Various focuses will reset things, but the timer will continue until General Cedillo is supported or arrested in the focus tree, which are 3-5 steps down different trees, or the civil war happens and is defeated. (This last is all I’ve seen the AI manage so far.) The other two depend on the strength of the Catholic Church in Mexico, and can only happen if stability is less than 60%. Stability starts at 22%….

Finally, two extra features are the ability to play on as a government-in-exile (mostly meant for multiplayer), or get the benefit of veteran formations put together from defeated nations who you’re protecting. There’s also two new techs for AMTRACs, armored amphibious infantry carriers to help with landings, and two for amphibious tanks. Both are expensive to build and use, but handy if you have some serious naval invasions ahead of you. (Unfortunately, that last will need a separate template, whereas it might have been better to instead allow an armored battalion that is currently undergoing planning for a naval invasion to temporarily reequip with it. Instead, you’d need a duplicate template with amphibious tanks in place of the usual armor battalions, and switch a division’s template to it, and then back again once the invasion is secure and you’re driving inland.)

Conclusion

All of this came with even more knock-on effects than I have gone into already. For example, regular (as opposed to support company) artillery, anti-tank, and AA battalions are “towed”, and now those can be specified as being truck towed (motorized), so as to keep up with faster formations. This of course, eats up more fuel.

The increased number of alt-history paths for major powers does mean that things can go very strange if you don’t use the “use historical focuses” AI setting. However, Paradox also put in a new interface at this point which lets you direct what ideology each country can/will go to, which might be a lot to set up, but can keep things within bounds. I’d prefer a setting that makes historical paths more likely, but not guaranteed so that things don’t either always go down a historical path, or go completely wild.

The expansion itself is huge, and a mixed bag, with the headline feature (ship designer) not being nearly as good as I think it could be, but still worthwhile. Certainly avoid this expansion if you’re just learning the game. Get to know the base game before getting the ship designer and access to alt-history/faction versions of the US and Britain. Once you know the game, I do recommend the expansion if you’re ready to dive into the details of naval warfare. (I’d recommend getting the early country packs first instead, but they’re now part of the base game anyway.)

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