made world go horny

I'm still in early 1939, Historic focus on, don't have la Resistance, and playing on civilian difficulty (because I'm an absolute noob) but it looks like the game will be won, as I have in my camp: Half of South America, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, all of Eastern Europe (minus Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland) the entire Middle East, India, China, Australia, New Zealand and I have just puppeted Japan. But when I saved, the USA (!!!) had recently joined the Cultists. And I did not boost Cultist popularity in the USA, nor are they at war. This surprised me a lot, and disappointed me a little, as I was gearing up for war against the USA. France also has quite a huge (I think some 40%) presence of Cultists (again, I didn't boost them directly) and WW2 hasn't started yet.
Germany, Soviets and the UK don't have large Cultist presence. Italy has some, maybe 15% or 20%.

The game might be balanced on regular or harder difficulties, but on civilian difficulty, with the 50% boost in PP, it is too easy to boost cultist popularity in a LOT of nations at once and convert half the world before 1939.

I think it would be more fun, if you can't boost cultist popularity through the regular method, but in return: have more means to (semi-randomly) boost popularity through the PP events. (So, add more PP events alongside the three you already have - the one that boosts a neighbor, that boosts those with at least 30% cultists and the one that boosts the entire world) Maybe make it more difficult for nations to increase Cthulhu support during peace time?

Perhaps another method could be to implement mechanics that protect the Great Powers from Cultist subversion? At the least, the USA or other Great Powers shouldn't convert to Cultists without direct popularity boosting by the player, or without even being at war.

On a random note: I think it might be interesting if you allow some preventive strikes against nations with large Cthulhu support. For example: There are a few UK focus that allow them to declare war on Iraq/Iran, or the Benelux or Scandinavia, if those nations have 20% Communist or Fascist support. I think changing those focus to add 20% Cthulhu support might be easy enough to implement, and allow for the AI to react, before the world fully explodes into madness.

Overall: great mod, though! I'm loving the Cthulhu focus and their descriptions give a great atmosphere. I also love the insane research and production boosts, but tied with limited population (although the manpower boosts add up nicely).
I'll keep you updated on how the rest of the game develops.

Originally posted by Iskander:

I played another game as Cthulhu, this time with la Resistance, still on civilian difficulty because I'm a filthy noob casual. I used my spies to boost ideology in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and India, but still: plenty of other nations joined my faction willingly, including the entire Balkans, Turkey, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand and the Chinese factions. I'm sure if I continued playing, or even decided to boost influence in major nations, that some of those would join as well.

So I think it is too easy for nations to convert to the Cultist ideology, even if you don't boost their ideology, even if they aren't at war, even if they are major power, like the USA or France. And this happens before WW2 truly starts in my games (settings on historic focus, so before late 1939) I think all the decisions adding Cultist drift need a little nerf.

One other thing that annoyed me, is that I sometimes don't want certain nations to join my faction, as that would drag the rest of the faction into a war, raising world tension when I don't want to raise it yet. I thought: "Maybe it is a good idea to have cultist nations have to request to join your faction, and you, as Cthulhu, can reject their request". But then I thought: while it would certainly be great from a player/pragmatic point of view, it would likely give you too much control and make things too easy. You are madness, damnit! Ride the wave of your Brazillian madmen sending waves of cultists to fight in China! Revel in the glory of going to war against the Soviet Union, because the Estonians embraced the one true God! :)