Fascist Pacifist Bulgaria is the Best Country in the game

[JinxHeartnet]

There's no other way to describe it, playing Bulgaria with the military dictatorship route and doing peaceful development is absurdly overpowered and I love it. So often I'll see people talking about how you can core the Balkans as communist Bulgaria, an incredibly boring and frustrated tree which relies heavily on RNG just as the Tsarist "Fate of the Balkans" route does, but with the fascist route not only do you get everything from Slovenia to Istanbul for free and with cores but you also get some ridiculous national spirits. Such as the Ratniks, giving you +35% recruitable manpower, Corporatism which gives -7% consumer goods and +10% civilian factory construction speed, switching to partial mobilization before completing War Industry let's you get War Economy as a non-aligned nation in 1936, and the combination of Military Dictatorship and Restore the Bulgarian Patriarche gives you +1.00% weekly War support and +0.50% weekly stability permanently. And of course, Bulgarian Reintegration Campaign let's you demand and core any state in the Balkans which is occupied by one of your faction members. You don't ever have to go to war, and you can core all of the south Balkans. Plus the economy tree turns you into an absolute powerhouse, ending with an ungodly OP uranium prospecting focus that gets you nuclear bombs by early 1944. And Prussia of the Balkans + Supremacy on the Bosphorus, yeah you'll be a superpower without even having to try. If you haven't yet, please play fascist Bulgaria. It's so fun.

[Bored Peon]

Communist is pretty much the same with the right focus options.

I did it that way for the achievement a while back. I missed the one to secure the Balkans and then go after Turkey or something because I did them in the wrong order.

[plieger]

Fascist Bulgaria is pure immersion. In some (unmodded) games was Georgi Dimitrov
(General Secretary of the Communist International 1935-1943) head of state of a fascist Bulgaria.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Communist is pretty much the same with the right focus options.

I did it that way for the achievement a while back. I missed the one to secure the Balkans and then go after Turkey or something because I did them in the wrong order.

It's not really the same, there you get a ton of very terrible debuffs and not very many good national spirits. Then you have to rely on RNG as to whether or not the nearby countries will submit to you which they probably won't, with fascist Bulgaria you just sit there and let the Axis do all the warring for you until you're ready to come in with unmatched strength to finish off the Allies.

[Eren Jäger]

Ok, thank you for the advise. I restored the Byzantine Empire with Greece yesterday, but the problem is that you're getting sucked into WW2 relatively early on, so you can't prepare yourself.

Apparently you can conquer many areas with Bulgaria without getting directly involved. I'll try it.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Eren Jäger:

Ok, thank you for the advise. I restored the Byzantine Empire with Greece yesterday, but the problem is that you're getting sucked into WW2 relatively early on, so you can't prepare yourself.

Apparently you can conquer many areas with Bulgaria without getting directly involved. I'll try it.

The only focus you need to be wary of is United Kingdoms Balkan intervention policy thingy.

Being fascist will bring aggression from Russia.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by Eren Jäger:

Ok, thank you for the advise. I restored the Byzantine Empire with Greece yesterday, but the problem is that you're getting sucked into WW2 relatively early on, so you can't prepare yourself.

Apparently you can conquer many areas with Bulgaria without getting directly involved. I'll try it.

The only focus you need to be wary of is United Kingdoms Balkan intervention policy thingy.

Being fascist will bring aggression from Russia.

By the time the UK gets around to that focus, I had enough nukes to carpet bomb their entire industry on day 1 of the war and matched down from Syria to South Africa in just a few months. If you keep building up compliance in occupied territories to get cores through the decisions, you'll be so overpowered late game that you'll be wanting war with the Allies.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by JinxHeartnet:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The only focus you need to be wary of is United Kingdoms Balkan intervention policy thingy.

Being fascist will bring aggression from Russia.

By the time the UK gets around to that focus...

The time it takes the AI to get to that focus varies. I have seen it as early as 1941 or so before.

[Richard Sein]

Instead of peaceful communist development (rng) you can go Papa Stalin path and join commintern then take balkans by force. The only thing AI USSR may actually take is Bessarabia and they puppet everything else. And yes, you still get to core these puppets. So I would argue that communist Bulgaria is not that bad.

[JinxHeartnet]

Originally posted by Richard Sein:

Instead of peaceful communist development (rng) you can go Papa Stalin path and join commintern then take balkans by force. The only thing AI USSR may actually take is Bessarabia and they puppet everything else. And yes, you still get to core these puppets. So I would argue that communist Bulgaria is not that bad.

You're assuming that the Soviet AI won't be pushed back to the Urals by 1943, the Axis AI is cancer but at least they win in the East and the Balkans 80% of the time. Then, if they look like they're about to lose, you can just leave the Axis and go to war with them in order to annex Romania. There's no losing as fascist Bulgaria, you build up and get OP through peaceful development then join the winning side with nukes in order to grab spoils. I play with player-led conferences anyway, because the war participation mechanic is broken and poorly designed. I'll have 5% war participation after nuking every factory in the UK before naval invading them with my own navy and a full army group, yet Germany will get 60% after losing their whole navy in 1939 and grinding in Greece and Egypt for the rest of the war taking 8 million casualties.