is it just WWII ?

[L I G H T H O U S E]

does this game have a story generator style gameplay similar to CK3 or EUIV ? or is the game just you start pre WWII some countries side with axis some with allies and thats it ? or is it more of a political simulator ? what is there to do if you play a country that doesnt get involved at all in WWII ?

[screamingcrane]

It`s basically a ww2 only sim but that`s where mods can be fun. If a country doesn`t fight in a war and you don`t try to get involved it can be boring if you are fighting no war. the political side of the game is limited more towards just what you want to fight rather then deep political intrigue might be some good mods for that if it`s what you are looking for. personally just like it as a ww2 sim mostly.

[alation13]

If you want a much more "story" focused version of the game the OWB mod has more story elements (but it is still a wargame). But it is based on the fallout universe so is not related to real history in any way, shape or form.

[coolman552]

yea its mostly only ww2, mods shine at alternate history but most of them are centered around the idea of "big war coming, get ready"

[Aethrys]

It is worth noting that with historical AI off your "WW2" can shape up very differently. You can even more or less refight WW1.

[alation13]

As much as I hate the predictability of "historical AI" The alternative is so broken with the million different factions forming it just destroys the challenge.

[Mr_Faorry]

It starts 3 year prior to WW2 and has plenty of potential to diverge greatly from history depending on what national focus paths you and the ai take. There's not much to diplomacy, the game is mostly about the build up to and fighting of war so playing as a nation without fighting is like throwing the game on observer mode.

If you want to stick as close to WW2 is possible there's a 'historical ai focuses' option you can tick which will force the ai to take their historical paths, but you can also set the ai to random via the game rules to have things be completely unpredictable too (aka the fun way to play). You'll still likely have things end up in one big world war when going random, it'll just who's fighting who and why that'll change, though it's certainly possible for it to turn out as a series of smaller wars instead too.

Then of course you have mods which change the game entirely entirely be it an alt-history mod like Kaiserredux which is a 'what if the Central Powers won WW1' or an alt-universe mod like Old World Blues which changes the game to be set in the Fallout universe.

[TasteDasRainbow]

It's more of a 4x war game with vast industrial mechanics necessary to reach that effect.

There are an absurd amount of conversion mods to bring the game out of the world war 2 truncated theme.

That being said, the game is designed for short spans of years relative to games like CK. Your game in timeline in standard is some 10 years, in most conversion mods at most will be some 40 years, and that's really stretching it. A lot of the gameplay will take place in managing your industry and your armed forces.

[wolf1455]

Dont forget the pre ww1 mod(there are 2 out I think) that starts some year before and can continue into ww2. With tech and all.

[Mister_Antarctica]

There's no real story to hoi4, if you want an actual story go check out alternate history mods like TNO, OWB, and to a minor extent Kaiserreich

[L I G H T H O U S E]

well I dont like a story, I like the game world to persistently create the story as you play kind of how a CK3 session would go.

[Dashurohem]

If you don't click historical mode then other things will happen. I recently started playing without historical mode clicked and the German Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austo-Hungarian empire recreated themselves and allied with each other.
It was kind of like WW1 all over again except that Britain turned into a monarch again and conquered France.

[Mr_Faorry]

Originally posted by Dashurohem:

If you don't click historical mode then other things will happen. I recently started playing without historical mode clicked and the German Empire, Ottoman Empire and Austo-Hungarian empire recreated themselves and allied with each other.
It was kind of like WW1 all over again except that Britain turned into a monarch again and conquered France.

Make sure to set each individual country to 'random' in the custom game rules too, because if all you do is not turn on the 'historical ai focuses' setting the ai is still weighted towards their historical focuses anyway.

[Lavrentiy Beria]

Originally posted by coolman552:

yea its mostly only ww2, mods shine at alternate history but most of them are centered around the idea of "big war coming, get ready"

nahh, most of them are centred around nazis and what if hitler won, it's boring and generic this, feelsad we will never get something like endsieg or 56 anymore

[Shortpower]

Originally posted by BIG*CHKN:

does this game have a story generator style gameplay similar to CK3 or EUIV ? or is the game just you start pre WWII some countries side with axis some with allies and thats it ? or is it more of a political simulator ? what is there to do if you play a country that doesnt get involved at all in WWII ?

Ww2 period and ww2 will happen between some group fascist/democracy/communism
But there's plenty of alt history paths in mods/DLC and you can conquer any piece of land you want as any country/go any ideology as almost any country.

[Shortpower]

Originally posted by Taurhiann:

Originally posted by coolman552:

yea its mostly only ww2, mods shine at alternate history but most of them are centered around the idea of "big war coming, get ready"

nahh, most of them are centred around nazis and what if hitler won, it's boring and generic this, feelsad we will never get something like endsieg or 56 anymore

Bruh what? I've see like 2 "What if Hitler won" mods?
Kaissereich is the only long time popular "what if Germany won" and that's ww1

What popular mods are "what if Hitler won" besides TNO

I think the big mods are:

R56 (sandbox)

EaW (cringe that's way better than it should be)

Kaiserreich (Germany WW1)

With things like:

TNO (Hitler cold war)

Hearts of Azeroth (WoW, frankly the worse of the two WoW mods but the Warcraft mod is dead now)

Hearts of Minecraft (probably short term popularity as a haha meme?)

Also popular but seemingly less relevant than the first 3