[Let's Play]Hearts of Iron 4 - Kaiserreich | Video Games Open (2024)

Thanks to everyone who's responded so far. A random pick from the countries that had been suggested up to yesterday (Russia, the Ottomans, Germany and the US) gave me Russia. It's a pretty good choice, all things considered, as there are so many ways it can go, but first you have to address the chronic problems facing country. Let's see what those are now...

Overview

The red boundary shows the approximate territorial extent of the Russian Empire in 1914. Areas in blue are currently claimed by the Russian Republic.

Russia in 1936 is a humiliated nation. Imperial Russia's defeat to Japan in 1905 was followed by its complete collapse in 1917 as the strain of the Weltkreig (Kaiserreich's term for the First World War) proved too much for the tsarist institutions to bear. The subsequent civil war saw Germany impose a peace which created buffer states in the west and the Caucasus, while breakaway states formed in Central Asia and Transamur.

Despite this, the Russian Republic retains much of its Imperial predecessor's population and industrial base. The Republic's core population of 94 million makes it the most populous state in Europe, while the wealth of natural resources it controls holds out the promise of better times to come.

Geographically, Russia is at a nadir, but for all that its physical and human resources are yet able to impress. It is in the realm of politics where the Republic's greatest weaknesses are to be found.

Politics

Stability usually runs from 0-100%, with values lower than 50% causing problems. Russia's starting stability is -21%!

The political landscape is a complete mess. Not only is stability comfortably into negative numbers, but divisions within the army and naval general staffs mean that researching new doctrines is much harder than it should be. Even without Kerensky and the political unrest that plagues the Republic, the country's stability would still be -6% - not only dangerously low, but also a drag on the economy.

The Duma is divided between the parties that support the status quo (to at least some degree) - the SR, the Kadets and Russkiy Soyuz - which collectively control around 39 per cent of delegates. Reactionary parties control 23 per cent of the Duma, while the far-right national populists hold a worryingly large share at 32 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the revolutionary left are little-represented given their defeat in the civil war. Their sympathisers account for just six per cent of Duma delegates, but this probably hides their true support in Russian society.

Focus Tree

Addressing Russia's problems - and choosing its future - will be achieved via the focus tree, but on day one there isn't actually anything to choose that will help. The only available options are to start reforming the army or navy, or to form an intelligence service. All these are important for the future, but going to hold off choosing any right now. Starting the political reform is more important, and we should be able to do that fairly soon. A lot of Kaiserreich's starting focuses are locked behind events, and from previous playthroughs I know that Russia's will kick off pretty early on. We'll go through the focus tree in more detail when we actually have some choices to make.

Military

In military terms, Russia's doing OK - the basic infantry division is very basic indeed, but we have a lot of them, and although we lack infantry equipment we can make good the shortfall in less than a year. Our tank divisions are pretty useless right now - pairing the tanks with cavalry works for now with our 1918-vintage equipment, but as we develop newer armour models we'll need motorised infantry to keep up. Light tanks are really powerful in the early game, so improving this division is a priority.

Most of Russia's navy is based out of Petrograd on the Baltic, although we have a few submarines in the Far East. At present, the navy is the lowest priority branch of the military. Most of our immediate enemies are land-based, so we don't need ships, while countries such as Japan and Germany far outclass anything we could hope to field for years.

The airforce is in a similar situation to the navy. At 125 fighters and 50 bombers (all of inter-war type), its big enough to help out against smaller countries, but far too small to do much against a major.

Given the current disposition of our forces, it makes sense to focus on the army for now as it's by far our strongest service. This has an impact on my economic choices, which are the only meaningful decisions I can actually make right now.

The Economy

Russia starts the game with 10 military factories (MILs) and 13 available civilian factories (CIVs). This isn't a massive number, but I've seen worse. The production queue has a lot of things in it that we don't need right now, and some things that we do need are missing. I cancel the building of fighters and bombers as I don't think we can build enough to make a difference with the number of factories available. I also cut back on the production of artillery and support equipment, freeing up a factory from each which I put on building motorised. One of the cancelled aircraft factories is repurposed for tank production. All naval dockyards are put on convoy production for now.

I went for the standard opening research. With a fourth slot, I'd normally go for an army doctrine, but at a 75% penalty I'll pass this time. Instead, I start on updating our tank models: the T-26 is somewhat better than the T-19s we're currently using, but the next model is a significant upgrade and twice as fast.

Finally, I start building military factories in Moscow and Petrograd. If we had more MILs I'd probably start with CIVs, but I'd like to get at least five on light tank production before trying to expand the civilian side of things.

Coming up next - actually unpausing the game!

s/LaSH - I'm not actually sure how we get to the Soviets from here (I can't go that way via the focus tree), but I know that Soviet revolts are possible and at that point you are often offered the chance to play as them. We'll have to see how things develop.

E Elfwine - I've seen the Ottomans at war with all their neighbours simultaneously, so it's definitely a tough proposition. Germany is another fun country as you can use the build up to the war with France to send volunteers all over the world to try and tip the board in your favour.

Silvercat Moonpaw - The USA is a fun campaign - I don't think you can avoid the civil war in the current patch, but you can arrange it so that your preferred faction is strengthened.

Bremen - I'd definitely be up for following another LP. I've not tried the Ponies mod yet, but I've watched some games of it and it looked like fun.

C ChariotDriver - Sorry, I didn't see this until I'd already started writing this post. Persia's starting position is pretty good, but - as we may see - there's a chance that Russia will come knocking, which would be a challenge to put it mildly.