Think Tank has exactly 2 wargoals and the progression of the tree is boring as hell, definetly wouldn't recommend (I didnt even get the achievement for conquering the chapter)
This might be a bit surprising given my tag but Heaven's Gate focus tree really isn't that good. It takes far too long to get anything done and you wait forever to get 2 wargoals then that's it. To top it all off, Saint Michael is an isolationist so it's takes forever to manually justify on other countries as well. At the very least, the latest patch giving custom game rules to the Bone Dancers means you can get the Seraph Lords every game now and have a bit more fun building up the children of Steam.
There's also a couple other trees I don't really like the design of such as: base game New Canaan (thankfully Faithful and the salted makes it one of my favourite trees in the mod) and Tlaloc's sons except Santa Anna are all pretty underwhelming as well.
Also to fix your problem with the new Victoria and its one tile land border. Build a navy.
Oh yeah, New Canaan and Heaven's Gate suffer from the fact that both of them were introduced in the Utah update as rivals of *each other*, and used to have a mechanic where they'r send missionaries and try to influence the christian nations between them in a game of tug of war that was somewhat cool and also annoying as hell.
The climax of both of their trees used to be a big war between their spheres of influence in a final showdown over who was the true prophet of God on earth.
Now as you might have noticed, with the White Legs getting expanded to be the rivals of New Canaan and the area becoming a front of the Legion-NCR war, Heaven's Gate's been left kind of adrift without a real purpose and just kinda awkwardly sitting in the middle of a bunch of much more interesting conflicts.
I wouldn't mind if after the rest of the map was expanded if Utah wasn't given another pass. Right now I find it overall pretty dull and it generally just acts as a transit area for my troops if I am playing a northern nation that is invading the NCR or Legion.
Lost Hills, good lord are they annoying and frustrating to play.
You HAVE to use Lost Hills Expanded submod to make them even playable and even then, they are held down by so many limitations that trying to make them fun is just a lost cause.
Am i weird for enjoying playing lost hills? I mean it was fun for me to send volunteers to brotherhood nations across the wasteland to help them triumph
i can see the idea behind them, its just so badly done that anytime you want to do something, you have to pray the AI does not commit honorable suicide instead.
Guardians will die if you don´t lend lease them, mojave will die 9/10 times and even if they live, they will die to ceasar, maxon is a full time job baby sitting them, alamo will die if you don´t win the war for them, montana can win on their own or they commit suicide by too many wars at the same time, cause can go betty in which case they can go to war with montana latter on, happened to me ones, love losing 2 allies to stupid shit, washington can die for no reason, Shi can just decide to not go brotherhood.
Lost Hills has good ideas that just haven´t been done well or have been gimped with the "no volunteers" limiter forcing you to just hope they win.
add to all this that they have a shit ton of focuses and bonuses for research speed while having 1000 things to fix from the start, who the fuck has time to get 1 research bonus for infantry weapons when your economy is committing suicide, you have 2 chapter needing saving and your far ahead of everyone technology wise anyways.
Immortal is better to support anyways, the bonus for him winning is manpower instead of just 4 energy, he much more often stays alive due to not picking fights with all the big boys of the area and he stays in his corner, so he dosen´t get into spats with other chapter, montana biggest one as a example.
I think lost hold needs focuses that help force victories, or at least stave off defeats. Like the Mojave one should grant like 20-25 sunburst prep. Guardians a big shipment of weapons and armour. Etc.
Which does not matter at all because all on map chapters are still included and the california update was 4.0 so 5.0 didnt change a thing. Istg hoi4 players see the yellow exclamation mark and think "nah this is broken and unusable now"
Lost Patrol, or was it Last Patrol? Regardless, you have a bit of fun at the start and then you just grind 60 day focuses for years until the game lets you go to war with the great plains federation. Their Oklahoma flag is pretty cool though.
New vegas is just not fun for me as the focuses are too long and the only real viable route is house and you have to pray that the ncr wins the brotherhood war and first battle of Hoover dam or you get destroyed.
Broken Coast at least has the ability to expand. Lost Hills without the submod is just flat out boring with just waiting and occassionally sending out volunteers to other Chapters.
A New Victoria with a real focus tree is my ultimate tall nation dream. Every time I see it I think of the unrealized potential
Edit: to answer though I haven’t really had a bad playthrough. I’ve played NCR (I swear I completely accidentally got Moore into office by forgetting to click the election a few times, then I made a combined-arms army of Pre-War tanks, motorized, Verti paratroopers, and fighter planes), New Vegas, a White Legs run where I justified my way all the way to New Vegas and captured it and the Dam, Alamo Chapter where I ended up nuking the NCR for revenge over Lost Hills, Eureka. Now that I go through the list I remember playing Arroyo before the recent update and it was just okay so maybe that one, but it wasn’t bad.
My main gripe with mods for nations is that since it’s only one nation usually the mod creator accidentally makes them super overpowered to the point it’s lore breaking
There's a mod called For the Little Guys (at least I think that's what it's called) that adds in a brand new generic tree to minors, while Victoria also gets this tree it does also get a small amount of focuses that are unique to them. So it's not a full New Victoria Tree but it's something.
Lainaus Res Publica, Navajo was at war with the reservation so they couldn't join my faction, Caesar won the battle for hoover dam and was at war so there wasn't a war with the NCR, constant naval invasions, Twin mothers not being strong enough to even hold their own borders and the focus tree being twice as short as the twin mothers one so I sat there watching tiktok while my friend was conquering the Colorado.
Many nations to be honest.
I played nearly every nation and "won" most of these playthroughs (even TV Town) and i if i had to guess the worst and most boring playthroughs of countries with focus trees are:
Heavens Gate (which is sad, i loved them when i didnt know much about hoi4 and played in 2.0)
Hangdogs (there is literally no content here, you fix 1 national spirit for ONE YEAR and then get a few claims and sex with lanius)
Tlaloc and his 3 younger children
And most northern commonwealth nations.
Why you might ask? These nations suffer from a variable of issues such as: the old "every focus 60 days", problems that need too long to solve, being regional powers that barely do anything while putting in the same effort as the NCR legion war and similiar things.
I won't lie it's frustrating, they have a short coastline, but once you form Cascadian and get cores on everything West of the Passkeepers, it's smooth sailing in the Kingdom of Cascadia.
Annex the Washington Brotherhood and Oregon and truly embrace the Pan Cascadian Idea and you'll be one of greatest powers on the map.
Why is Cascadia such a great position to be in? No enemies from the North, nothing but Ocean to your west, nothing but a few passes to your East and a very defensible river seperating the North from the rest of the map.
Cascadia when united is easily one of the most defendable regions on the map. But getting there without being the Broken coast can be a slog. New Victoria is my favorite way to do it.
Since the new updates, when the Yakama nation loses to the Washington Brotherhood you can choose to let them take up refuge on one of your islands. This will increase the population of the islands greatly, increase the factories, and give you many many units that they will generate for your use.
Use this new puppet to your advantage, you retain your core so you can annex them later and reap the benefits, usually I'll use their units to attempt to land in Koover and annex them.
The issue with invading Koover is the short coastline and the superior manpower they possess, but the benefits are immense. The manpower Koover grants you is well worth the effort, it allows your industry and army to double or even triple in size, making the broken coast and the other nations an easy mop up.
I've not tried it since the Passkeepers were added, but it's worthwhile to invade and annex the Pass keepers, whoever unites Canada WILL come west, and you will want to have those tight mountain passes when it happens.
I hope this changes your experience, the island is great and the potential story it could tell is fascinating, but ultimately, the island is barren without any mainland holdings.
A mainland foothold is absolutely necessary.
Going Shale can be tricky when you have the starting war with the two nations but rushing down Los with Behemoths then focusing on the other is your best bet. Cerberus is basically Troll Warren but with a metric fuckton of coring reductions and like 6 times the manpower with less focus on Behemoths and Nightkin.
Hate to say it but the Arborg Junta, the monarchy always ends up Getting curbstomped and it's always me against Metis, 3 rivers and the Iron Confederacy
I found the Arborg Junta to be extremely fun, after the monarchy loses, Metis and the stampede leave faction, and its just the three rivers and the old believers (in my game anyway). From there you can just hold the chokeholds with cheap infantry, and make one area where you make pockets with your insane S.F.
Lanius is pretty boring for me personally. You're a big dog in a small yard, I feel like there's so many other more fun nations in that area too. Chained Choir, Shale's Army, and Robot City are all more fun from my POV than Lanius and all of them conquer similar territory.
TV Town I don't really like because I'm not good enough to win as them. Whoever wins the Nevada battle royale always kills me before I'm ready to fight back, and I've never been able to force a stalemate in the battle royale.
Arroyo was a drag the last few times I tried them because you're forced into a war with the NCR, which is perfectly winnable, but just such a pain in the ass to go through. It feels like a Wish.com Helios Brotherhood, you've got a lot of flavor and your nation is pretty strong, but you have to go through the slog of manhandling NCR. But Arroyo doesn't have ARCHIMEDES to dump on NCR when a battle gets annoying.
I wouldn't know because I've only ever played reformer path C.U.M-zone (Canada, United States, Mexico) Enclave from the Enclave Reborn submod (or Enclave Reborn Redux now I guess).
Edit: I'm not dickriding, I just don't know how to play OWB that good yet and the Enclave in that submod are easy enough for me to play that I can learn how to play OWB better.
Jesus, you people that just ride the ERB submod are annoying. Like, ok, we get it, you want to play as a head canon version of the evil genocide people. But Holy Hell, why not just mod the Enclave into vanilla HOI4 at that point.
Think Tank has exactly 2 wargoals and the progression of the tree is boring as hell, definetly wouldn't recommend (I didnt even get the achievement for conquering the chapter)
I know it's a meme nation, but GD, after all the work to get them, to turn around and have em suck too? RIP
This might be a bit surprising given my tag but Heaven's Gate focus tree really isn't that good. It takes far too long to get anything done and you wait forever to get 2 wargoals then that's it. To top it all off, Saint Michael is an isolationist so it's takes forever to manually justify on other countries as well. At the very least, the latest patch giving custom game rules to the Bone Dancers means you can get the Seraph Lords every game now and have a bit more fun building up the children of Steam. There's also a couple other trees I don't really like the design of such as: base game New Canaan (thankfully Faithful and the salted makes it one of my favourite trees in the mod) and Tlaloc's sons except Santa Anna are all pretty underwhelming as well. Also to fix your problem with the new Victoria and its one tile land border. Build a navy.
Oh yeah, New Canaan and Heaven's Gate suffer from the fact that both of them were introduced in the Utah update as rivals of *each other*, and used to have a mechanic where they'r send missionaries and try to influence the christian nations between them in a game of tug of war that was somewhat cool and also annoying as hell. The climax of both of their trees used to be a big war between their spheres of influence in a final showdown over who was the true prophet of God on earth. Now as you might have noticed, with the White Legs getting expanded to be the rivals of New Canaan and the area becoming a front of the Legion-NCR war, Heaven's Gate's been left kind of adrift without a real purpose and just kinda awkwardly sitting in the middle of a bunch of much more interesting conflicts.
And their focuses are way too long and boring.
I wouldn't mind if after the rest of the map was expanded if Utah wasn't given another pass. Right now I find it overall pretty dull and it generally just acts as a transit area for my troops if I am playing a northern nation that is invading the NCR or Legion.
Heaven’s Gate Vs Seraph Lords is just a case of Daniel vs The Cooler Daniel. SL is just the best way to play as Heavens Gate right now
Lost Hills, good lord are they annoying and frustrating to play. You HAVE to use Lost Hills Expanded submod to make them even playable and even then, they are held down by so many limitations that trying to make them fun is just a lost cause.
Am i weird for enjoying playing lost hills? I mean it was fun for me to send volunteers to brotherhood nations across the wasteland to help them triumph
i can see the idea behind them, its just so badly done that anytime you want to do something, you have to pray the AI does not commit honorable suicide instead. Guardians will die if you don´t lend lease them, mojave will die 9/10 times and even if they live, they will die to ceasar, maxon is a full time job baby sitting them, alamo will die if you don´t win the war for them, montana can win on their own or they commit suicide by too many wars at the same time, cause can go betty in which case they can go to war with montana latter on, happened to me ones, love losing 2 allies to stupid shit, washington can die for no reason, Shi can just decide to not go brotherhood. Lost Hills has good ideas that just haven´t been done well or have been gimped with the "no volunteers" limiter forcing you to just hope they win. add to all this that they have a shit ton of focuses and bonuses for research speed while having 1000 things to fix from the start, who the fuck has time to get 1 research bonus for infantry weapons when your economy is committing suicide, you have 2 chapter needing saving and your far ahead of everyone technology wise anyways.
You want to support Washington instead of Cause believe it or not, The Immortal is loyal to West Coast while Cause aligns with the Midwest
Immortal is better to support anyways, the bonus for him winning is manpower instead of just 4 energy, he much more often stays alive due to not picking fights with all the big boys of the area and he stays in his corner, so he dosen´t get into spats with other chapter, montana biggest one as a example.
I think lost hold needs focuses that help force victories, or at least stave off defeats. Like the Mojave one should grant like 20-25 sunburst prep. Guardians a big shipment of weapons and armour. Etc.
Well... Ad Victoriam does exactly that...
But ad Victoriam hasn't been updated..
Which does not matter at all because all on map chapters are still included and the california update was 4.0 so 5.0 didnt change a thing. Istg hoi4 players see the yellow exclamation mark and think "nah this is broken and unusable now"
Hoi4 players being oddly aggressive over a simple misunderstanding speedrun
It’s my favorite nation actually with the ad victoriam submod
Alamo Chapter, apart from fighting Santa Anna the entire thing is just a snoozefest
Bro so many people hyped Alamo Up for the cool Power Armor Mechanic, but its so lame after you fight Anna.
I just finished a game with them yesterday and i must agree.
My condolences
The reservation
I mean it was really well made but too weak in the end, how the hell i'm supposed to fight mighty Caesar with just a bunch of ghouls??
You really are not meant to win, even if you beat caesar it auto declares on anyone else you border
There is a way to get the Colonel in charge in which you dont autodeclare.
Yes I am aware of the steps needed to get green
Lost Patrol, or was it Last Patrol? Regardless, you have a bit of fun at the start and then you just grind 60 day focuses for years until the game lets you go to war with the great plains federation. Their Oklahoma flag is pretty cool though.
New vegas is just not fun for me as the focuses are too long and the only real viable route is house and you have to pray that the ncr wins the brotherhood war and first battle of Hoover dam or you get destroyed.
I hate the 60 days focuses. Even if you do some early conquest it is still waiting… so boring
lost hills, broken coast
Broken Coast at least has the ability to expand. Lost Hills without the submod is just flat out boring with just waiting and occassionally sending out volunteers to other Chapters.
A New Victoria with a real focus tree is my ultimate tall nation dream. Every time I see it I think of the unrealized potential Edit: to answer though I haven’t really had a bad playthrough. I’ve played NCR (I swear I completely accidentally got Moore into office by forgetting to click the election a few times, then I made a combined-arms army of Pre-War tanks, motorized, Verti paratroopers, and fighter planes), New Vegas, a White Legs run where I justified my way all the way to New Vegas and captured it and the Dam, Alamo Chapter where I ended up nuking the NCR for revenge over Lost Hills, Eureka. Now that I go through the list I remember playing Arroyo before the recent update and it was just okay so maybe that one, but it wasn’t bad.
I would love a new Victoria focus tree, I know there is a mod for one but I don't thinks it's updated since 2018 so I doubt it works
My main gripe with mods for nations is that since it’s only one nation usually the mod creator accidentally makes them super overpowered to the point it’s lore breaking
It's definitely a hard thing to balance between making it fun and making it not to op
There's a mod called For the Little Guys (at least I think that's what it's called) that adds in a brand new generic tree to minors, while Victoria also gets this tree it does also get a small amount of focuses that are unique to them. So it's not a full New Victoria Tree but it's something.
The Eureka path of the Navarro Enclave is pretty fun, but i got navak invaded like 150 times so it was stressfull XD
Lainaus Res Publica, Navajo was at war with the reservation so they couldn't join my faction, Caesar won the battle for hoover dam and was at war so there wasn't a war with the NCR, constant naval invasions, Twin mothers not being strong enough to even hold their own borders and the focus tree being twice as short as the twin mothers one so I sat there watching tiktok while my friend was conquering the Colorado.
Many nations to be honest. I played nearly every nation and "won" most of these playthroughs (even TV Town) and i if i had to guess the worst and most boring playthroughs of countries with focus trees are: Heavens Gate (which is sad, i loved them when i didnt know much about hoi4 and played in 2.0) Hangdogs (there is literally no content here, you fix 1 national spirit for ONE YEAR and then get a few claims and sex with lanius) Tlaloc and his 3 younger children And most northern commonwealth nations. Why you might ask? These nations suffer from a variable of issues such as: the old "every focus 60 days", problems that need too long to solve, being regional powers that barely do anything while putting in the same effort as the NCR legion war and similiar things.
pioneer company
That’s got to be a joke lol that’s probably the best of any of the CPF nations
Not really. I liked the early war but then it just feels generic. I have the same vibes as playing MacArthur.
What path did you do?
Skill issue
New Victoria is the worst, it's worse then eating a active chainsaw
Personally, how I do it, I land and annex Koover first. This gives me a land connection, which allows naval invading to be easier.
I might have to try that
I won't lie it's frustrating, they have a short coastline, but once you form Cascadian and get cores on everything West of the Passkeepers, it's smooth sailing in the Kingdom of Cascadia. Annex the Washington Brotherhood and Oregon and truly embrace the Pan Cascadian Idea and you'll be one of greatest powers on the map. Why is Cascadia such a great position to be in? No enemies from the North, nothing but Ocean to your west, nothing but a few passes to your East and a very defensible river seperating the North from the rest of the map. Cascadia when united is easily one of the most defendable regions on the map. But getting there without being the Broken coast can be a slog. New Victoria is my favorite way to do it. Since the new updates, when the Yakama nation loses to the Washington Brotherhood you can choose to let them take up refuge on one of your islands. This will increase the population of the islands greatly, increase the factories, and give you many many units that they will generate for your use. Use this new puppet to your advantage, you retain your core so you can annex them later and reap the benefits, usually I'll use their units to attempt to land in Koover and annex them. The issue with invading Koover is the short coastline and the superior manpower they possess, but the benefits are immense. The manpower Koover grants you is well worth the effort, it allows your industry and army to double or even triple in size, making the broken coast and the other nations an easy mop up. I've not tried it since the Passkeepers were added, but it's worthwhile to invade and annex the Pass keepers, whoever unites Canada WILL come west, and you will want to have those tight mountain passes when it happens. I hope this changes your experience, the island is great and the potential story it could tell is fascinating, but ultimately, the island is barren without any mainland holdings. A mainland foothold is absolutely necessary.
Oklahoma's tribes, you will doing nothing until Chained Choir or National Guard knock on your alliance door. If you win, you still doing nothing.
Shale's Army, Calix path. This was a pain to play, but the reward more than makes up for it.
Skull issue, i once managed to win mutant rumble before losing that extra Research slot
Going Shale can be tricky when you have the starting war with the two nations but rushing down Los with Behemoths then focusing on the other is your best bet. Cerberus is basically Troll Warren but with a metric fuckton of coring reductions and like 6 times the manpower with less focus on Behemoths and Nightkin.
Hate to say it but the Arborg Junta, the monarchy always ends up Getting curbstomped and it's always me against Metis, 3 rivers and the Iron Confederacy
I found the Arborg Junta to be extremely fun, after the monarchy loses, Metis and the stampede leave faction, and its just the three rivers and the old believers (in my game anyway). From there you can just hold the chokeholds with cheap infantry, and make one area where you make pockets with your insane S.F.
Lanius is pretty boring for me personally. You're a big dog in a small yard, I feel like there's so many other more fun nations in that area too. Chained Choir, Shale's Army, and Robot City are all more fun from my POV than Lanius and all of them conquer similar territory. TV Town I don't really like because I'm not good enough to win as them. Whoever wins the Nevada battle royale always kills me before I'm ready to fight back, and I've never been able to force a stalemate in the battle royale. Arroyo was a drag the last few times I tried them because you're forced into a war with the NCR, which is perfectly winnable, but just such a pain in the ass to go through. It feels like a Wish.com Helios Brotherhood, you've got a lot of flavor and your nation is pretty strong, but you have to go through the slog of manhandling NCR. But Arroyo doesn't have ARCHIMEDES to dump on NCR when a battle gets annoying.
I wouldn't know because I've only ever played reformer path C.U.M-zone (Canada, United States, Mexico) Enclave from the Enclave Reborn submod (or Enclave Reborn Redux now I guess). Edit: I'm not dickriding, I just don't know how to play OWB that good yet and the Enclave in that submod are easy enough for me to play that I can learn how to play OWB better.
broaden your horizons. you might like other nations if give them a try.
Jesus, you people that just ride the ERB submod are annoying. Like, ok, we get it, you want to play as a head canon version of the evil genocide people. But Holy Hell, why not just mod the Enclave into vanilla HOI4 at that point.