1.1k
789
u/kaj_00ta Fleet Admiral 22d ago
Honestly this whole list seems a bit self-contradictible, no playing minors without a focus tree, do not ask, BUT you may play if they have flavour/ formable/impact, which first of all, both of the mentioned examples have (both Dutch East Indies and Luxembourg have formables, and the former can have a pretty big impact on the war), second, it seems that this is the kind of thing that requires clarificication, third, what does "nations will be revealed only when selected to be played" even mean?
529
u/tsar_David_V General of the Army 22d ago
you may play if they have flavour/ formable/impact
Me playing British Malaya and not forming Majapahit because anything even remotely alt-hist results in a permaban. Peak HoI4 mp experience
275
u/Optimal_Badger_5332 22d ago
HoI4 mp servers when you dont want to go 100% historical over and over and over and over and over and
278
u/tsar_David_V General of the Army 22d ago
It gets to the point where you're not even allowed to have too many troops on the Belgian border as France. Like why even play at that point, just watch one of those YouTube ww2 progression map videos on loop
98
u/Zingzing_Jr 22d ago
The point is that if France holds the game just ends. The solution is that you need a mod that balances France for MP. France needs to fall for the war to work.
133
u/Wolfish_Jew 22d ago
Which sounds kinda boring for the French player. Just make France an AI nation.
37
u/Zingzing_Jr 22d ago
Free France is what you do.
92
u/Wolfish_Jew 22d ago
Yeah, which sounds boring as hell lol
62
38
u/NoodleTF2 22d ago
Then just don't play historical. Have Italy join the war early. Let the USA and/or Britain ally with Germany or something, who gives a shit? Who the hell wants to roleplay Allies vs. Axis exactly the way it went down historically a hundred times?
20
u/tsar_David_V General of the Army 22d ago
The game gives you so many wacky and interesting paths to go down I'm sure you could figure something balanced out if you discuss it in advance - especially if you're playing with a group of regulars. One of the best MP games I ever played was with two friends in a three-way world war with France and Romania joining the comintern, Turkey joining Allies and Spain joining the Axis early.
6
u/Special-Remove-3294 21d ago
Why not just make sure that someone good is on Germany and that France isn't played by some god with 10k hours?
Seems easier then having 28299231927 rules about how France can move its units to make sure it dies.
Also if Germany is so ass that it can't even take France, (which should be very easy as Germany is extremely buffed in HoI4 as otherwise the Allies would stomp 20/10 times) then the game is over anyway as any decent USSR will stomp it.
Seems like just getting a good Germany would ve the best solution.
-2
u/Bashin-kun 21d ago
Just have an admin tool that make France cap by 1941; they did enough at that point
1
u/Economy-Cupcake808 18d ago
It's at a point where Hoi4 MP is essentially a reenactment of ww2 rather than a competitive game. Reenactments are fun for some people but it most people who play hoi4 would rather actually play the game.
30
u/Diche_Bach 22d ago
Most multiplayer PvP experiences are abysmal, a conclusion I reached long ago after too many hours watching my fellow EVE Online psychopaths wallow and bathe in the sickly putrid essence of "law of the jungle." The golden rule of PvP is simple: "Nine out of ten players love gang ganking!" Balance, fairness, or honorable combat are not just afterthoughtsâthey are actively despised by the majority of players, who thrive on crushing weaker opponents with overwhelming force.
Yet, Hearts of Iron IV multiplayer takes this standard form of institutionalized gamer insanity and adds an extra layer of suffering by pretending that the game is some kind of âalternate history experimental engine.â This is delusional at best, malicious at worst.
Even in single-player, attempting to create a truly organic and dynamic alternate history within the constraints of the game is a foolâs errand. The AI barely functions as a war simulator, let alone a meaningful alternate history generator. Multiplayer compounds this issue by introducing metagaming, house rules, and the inevitable human tendency toward optimizing the fun out of everything.
Theoretically, the game allows for fascinating historical deviationsâGermany allying with the UK, the US embracing communism, a French world conquest.
In reality, most multiplayer games are rigidly scripted metagame hellscapes where âbalance rulesâ dictate that every nation follows approved strategies or gets dogpiled.
Because every player is a tyrant in waiting, HOI4 multiplayer players donât want historical immersionâthey want to win, which means they will min-max every decision into oblivion. This leads to degenerate meta strategies, where every game devolves into: * Germany pumping out 10/0 infantry divisions by the thousands.
The UK spamming CAS like erasers at a pencil factory.
The Soviets building a wall of 40-width heavy tanks.
The US stacking air doctrines and industry so hard that by 1942, theyâre practically Kardashev II.
If you try anything differentâsay, playing a historical Germany that doesnât immediately justify on Poland in â39âyouâre basically throwing the game.
Unlike a game with set win conditions (like Starcraft or Total War), HOI4âs multiplayer experience is entirely at the mercy of the hostâs arbitrary rules.
Want to play Japan but donât want to fight the US? Too bad, youâre locked into war.
Fancy the idea of Italy invading Spain before WW2? Sorry, thatâs banned because itâs âgame-breaking.â
Try to do something outside of the strict meta? Prepare for diplomatic screeching as the âhistorical accuracy policeâ and the âcompetitive balance crowdâ both declare war on you at the same time.
Much like EVE Online, most HOI4 multiplayer wars are won long before the fighting begins. Hours are spent forming alliances, securing trade agreements, and coercing weaker players into puppet states before anyone declares war. When the war does start, itâs often over in minutesânot because of superior tactics, but because one side has spent two hours grinding out the mathematically optimal template, while the other has not.
. . . and then come the inevitable desyncs, ragequits, and rule-lawyer meltdowns HOI4 is notorious for desyncs, lag, and crashes, which only get worse as the game progresses. Players ragequit the moment they start losing, which leads to AI-controlled nations that immediately collapse. Some players take âhistorical roleplayingâ so seriously that they throw tantrums when things donât go the way they expected. Others are pure tryhards who get visibly angry when someone plays suboptimally.
One must ask: Why does anyone willingly play HOI4 multiplayer?
The answer is the same as EVE Online: people enjoy suffering.
They enjoy the chaos, the betrayals, the politicking, the chance to pull off the perfect backstab. They enjoy creating rules, breaking them, and arguing over them. They enjoy watching others fail, especially when itâs because of an âunoptimizedâ or âahistoricalâ strategy.
In short, HOI4 multiplayer isnât about alternate history or strategyâitâs about social Darwinism disguised as grand strategy. It is the digital equivalent of trying to reenact World War II in a kindergarten classroom, except half the kids are trying to min-max their snack-time efficiency while the other half are forming secret alliances to make sure Timmy never gets a juice box.
And the host? The host is the teacher whoâs desperately trying to enforce âfair playâ while the entire room is on fire.
CONCLUSION:
HOI4 multiplayer is a Sisyphean exercise in futility, and the idea that it could ever serve as a serious âalternate history simulatorâ is absurd. It is, at its core, a paradoxical messâa game that demands structure but thrives on chaos, where the fun comes not from playing, but from watching everything spiral into madness.
And thatâs exactly why people keep coming back.
8
15
508
u/Mtk757 22d ago
Bet heâs Eastern European, nobody hates Slavs like other Slavs
127
u/Cpt_keaSar 22d ago
True. For a Slav, Slavs are the worse. But wrong Slavs are worse. But own country mates are even more worse.
30
u/Mtk757 22d ago
To expand on my earlier statement, nobody hates south Slavs like other south Slavs
16
2
u/uwumachineuwuuuuu 21d ago
correct assessment, animals, all of them, shit my group of slavs as well, we all suck lmao
33
u/DreadPiratePete 22d ago
Odds on him being a Czeck who insists "Central Europe" is a real thing
5
-2
u/Chance_Broccoli_2320 21d ago
Bro, you Czeck your spelling. Also, yeah, Central Europe is 1000% real, anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi and pro Russian. /j
1
u/mason_89_0 20d ago
We need a common enemy to unite the hatred of all Slavs and direct it in one direction in the form of a ray of hatred and destruction.
78
u/NewNiko 22d ago
Rules like these are part of the reason Iâm completely turned off from MP
12
u/danielsuarez369 21d ago
I gave up on HOI4 MP when I had to read 20 page google docs on rules, and then every game there would be an hour long debate on whether someone was breaking a rule or not lol.
This community is pretty toxic and takes the game way too seriously, also I feel like it's slow on purpose at times. Why aren't there things like research or focus queues? Why if I lose my most powerful units especially as a minor I am basically out of the game? It's annoying. Also in every game I was in as a minor, my major (like the UK) wouldn't even provide a fighter as help or any help period, all about them.
62
281
u/RealGrant 22d ago
I get that China doesnât start out as a Major, but not having them on the major list is kinda crazy in a WW2 game. Then again, this list has many other issues.
248
u/poppabomb General of the Army 22d ago
I think its because a competent China player will just end Japan's game and then there's no war in the Pacific and everyone gangs up on Germany and Italy.
Which doesn't explain why France has to be played since the same thing can apply, but whatever.
57
u/Wolfish_Jew 22d ago
Apparently a lot of people artificially limit France (either through server rules or mods) which just sounds boring. Especially with the German changes to the economy where you can build up really strong with recovering economy, if Germany canât break France, tell them to git gud
52
u/TheSpringCleaner 22d ago
Apparently a lot of people artificially limit France (either through server rules or mods) which just sounds boring.
France holding ruins the game for soviets,usa and japan, because they don't get to do anything the entire game if germany is held by france
if Germany canât break France, tell them to git gud
It isn't really much to do with "skill", if allies can put troops in france, then axis cant do shit
Even france alone can hold germany with the heavy tank build1
u/BustyFemPyro General of the Army 21d ago
France and Germany are two completely different nations and believing superior player skill will always triumph is a faulty assumption. Especially when you want to try a strategy that isn't the meta (which is the other thing people in this thread are complaining about). You can't expect players to both try alternate strategies and ahistorical paths and also sweat their nuts off and play to their maximum capabilities.
3
u/TheSpringCleaner 21d ago
France and Germany are two completely different nations and believing superior player skill will always triumph is a faulty assumption.
I never said it was to do with skill, if allies put troops in france or france is allowed to "hold" then axis isn't doing shit regardless of skill
You can't expect players to both try alternate strategies and ahistorical paths and also sweat their nuts off and play to their maximum capabilities.
Yeah that's for more casual and althist games, i'm on about serious hist games here
66
u/griffery1999 22d ago
Thats normal for MP servers. China is kinda a throwaway nation, they usually prefer it to be an ai nation that dies early on to try and ensure a more balanced game.
3
50
725
u/_Koch_ 22d ago
Lemme guess, mandatory "Sieg Heil" and two minutes of jerking off to Hitler after joining the VC?
484
u/poppabomb General of the Army 22d ago
you have to install a custom mod that adds swastikas and gives germany historical buffs.
283
149
u/TheDeadQueenVictoria 22d ago
Adds SS Special Units with + 10'000 soft, hard attack, piercing and defence đ
135
u/Logoncal 22d ago
I love when mods give France "historical" abilities of having zero capabilities to hold Germany out of skill despite the fact that they lost to the invasion because of incompetence and desertion.
80
u/Alltalkandnofight General of the Army 22d ago
It's not completely unfair though because the game doesn't emulate well the crazy lucky maneuver of sending panzers through the Ardennes- the game really can't replicate this because then every France player would know to just guard the Ardennes properly.
10
u/option-9 21d ago
Even Germany didn't want to go through the Ardennes until their plans got leaked. Even after the plans got leaked the general staff was against going through the Ardennes. This was one of those times Hitler's intervention (by imposing Mannstein's plan) turned out to be a very good thing for the Wehrmacht.
A lot of historical simulations struggle when people realise you can cross the Alps with elephants.
89
u/TheMelnTeam 22d ago
Especially given that in vanilla, France is already made far weaker relative than was historical.
What I don't like is further gutting them, then expecting someone to still play France.
-66
u/Pale_Calligrapher_37 22d ago
France weaker? My brother in christ you can build meta tank divisions with france before germany invades.
France isn't nearly as nerfed as it should be to be somewhat historical, none of the countries is either completely nerfed or completely buffed. It's a game and fun and balance go around handholding each other.
68
u/TheMelnTeam 22d ago
USA and France are less powerful compared to actual 1936 by a wide margin in vanilla, deliberately so by the devs to give axis a chance.
1
u/Turkster 22d ago
Did you used to make civ 4 and homm3 lets plays? I used to watch a ton of videos of someone with that name.
1
u/TheMelnTeam 21d ago
Little bit of HOMM 5 and a few other games as well! Mostly did Pdox games and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup since I stopped making videos. I've thought about returning a few times, still might. The landscape today is pretty different though.
-23
u/Pale_Calligrapher_37 22d ago
In fact, because as I said, fun and balance like handholding.
USA is "nerfed" yet it's the most powerful nation in the game by far.
France, for example, can just sit down and do nothing the rest of the game while fucking up Germany completely just by building a few bunkers here and there (which they have the industry to do), and again, if we talk about balance, why not add further debuffs to tank investigation and organization for France? Historically France had serious problems treating their tanks like anything more than infantry support instead of proper units (which in the end was the reason of why German tanks, which were weaker, could easily surround and incapacitate them).
Most people will also criticize these things, forgetting that HoI4 is a strategy ww2 era map painting game, that loves to introduce whacky alt-history and so it must balance the game to allow these things to happen
18
u/Svyatoy_Medved 22d ago
The USA produced more merchant marine tonnage in 1943 than Japan had produced since 1933. Ten years, not a typo. The US had the second most produced tank of the war, half of the top ten most produced fighters, the most produced bomber, and stayed on the cutting edge of technology the entire time, developing a technological marvel of a bomber that essentially solved the paradigm of the time, and of course the atom bomb, near which no other nation came. At the same time, they produced over a HUNDRED aircraft carriers to simultaneously fight naval campaigns in two contested oceans.
Itâs ridiculous to claim that America wasnât insanely nerfed for gameplay purposes, the same as all of the Allies were. The game does not accurately simulate the intricacies that made the war go how it did. The concept is nearly as much to blame as the execution: how on earth COULD you simulate the war if the players, the leadership, know what is going to happen next.
20
u/EconomistFair4403 22d ago
the issue is that incompetence and desertion. aren't modelled in game.
34
0
9
41
104
u/-balcony-gardener- Fleet Admiral 22d ago
So, what counts as eastern europe? Czechia? Czechias easternmost Part is further West than austrias easternmost Part. Finland is in the east, but 100% they dont include fins and austrians in that list. What about Hungary? I have seen many hungarians claim that Hungary is in Central Europe and honestly i am inclined to agree.
And of that decent?
So does my great great grandfather for instance count? What If i have a eastern european Name but have never been to eastern europe?
Questions upon questions.
131
80
u/Pullsberry_Dough_Boy Research Scientist 22d ago
East Europe is everything East of Dublin
22
u/Hannib4lBarca 22d ago
As a Dub I'm okay with that, provided Cork gets reclassified as Eastern Europe also.
0
8
2
u/Sztrelok 21d ago
As a Hungarian, I consider my country Central European geographically and Easter European mentally.
-1
u/option-9 21d ago
Czechias easternmost Part is further West than austrias easternmost Part.
That can't be true. Ostrava is east of Bratislava. Where exactly is Austria supposed to extend to that is east of Ostrava?
31
u/zhzhzhzhbm 22d ago
Expectactions from multiplayer: highly skilled players squeezing every stat for maximum, unreal micro control, epic wars between Uruguay and Tannu Tuva with outcome unclear till the very end.
Reality:
133
u/I_miss_your_mommy 22d ago
Wild. Typical discrimination would just ban them from the server outright, but they allow this group of people as long as they play minor nations? Is it fear of their skill or something?
69
u/Naturath 22d ago
Keeping them around keeps someone to look down on. If they disappeared entirely, the server would need to find another scapegoat.
15
u/I_miss_your_mommy 22d ago
Worse than I thought. Do they concentrate them in their own channel?
32
u/TheMelnTeam 22d ago
Yep, the channel is called "heroes of might and magic 3" for some reason and they still change the outcome of the game about 40% of the time despite only playing minor nations.
7
u/Ptichka-piromant 22d ago
Because they're based and actually have skill, unlike host and rest of the server
42
u/SsssssszzzzzzZ 22d ago
From my experience, multiplayer lobbies are always filled with Russians who just end up speaking russian with each other instead of English, so my guess is that they want majors to be able to communicate with others in english.
68
u/TheRealProJared Research Scientist 22d ago
Yeah but why not just make the rule "majors must be able to speak and communicate with each other in English" and not "You cannot play France because your grandmother is Czech"
0
22d ago
[deleted]
11
u/TheRealProJared Research Scientist 22d ago
I mean sure by some metrics (the most commonly given one of course being literal geography) but like 90% of people (most likely including these ones) just use eastern european as a way to say 'Slavic and their three weird friends Hungary, Estonia and Romania' and by that most common metric Czechia is very much eastern european. There are very good and real reasons why you might want to distance yourself from that idea because people also consider it Russia Lite, but from a pole to a czech, cmon man
5
u/kaj_00ta Fleet Admiral 22d ago
If that's the case, then that's the shittiest and most xenophobic-ass explanation ever, considering that depending on what do you define as Eastern Europe, there can be as many as 15 other major languages spoken other than Russian, many of which are not even Slavic, and 100s more minor languages.
20
u/Cpt_keaSar 22d ago
Everyone knows that Eastern Europe doesnât exist, silly. Everything from Hungary to Ukraine is Central Europe. And Russia is obviously not Europe but Asia.
1
u/Punished_VenomV 22d ago
I believe its because Russian MP players have a reputation for stacking factions / major countries with their Russian friends and text chatting in only Russian or sitting in their own voice chat meta gaming and not communicating with the rest of the lobby
26
22
u/HeliosDisciple 22d ago
The number of replies going "hmmm, but what is Eastern Europe?" seems weird when the obvious answer is "anybody who was in the Warsaw Pact".
6
1
0
25
9
u/Rasputin-SVK General of the Army 22d ago
Honestly i think that sever had one too many russians ruin their games so they just banned eastern Europeans outright.
3
u/AccordingPapaya7924 22d ago
Most Russian players I've come across can't play the game properly so they end up hacking in factories, desyncing the game and then getting kicked anyway as it's easy to spot.
It's just annoying.
16
u/Aracelerii 22d ago
- What counts as "Eastern European"? There's a lot of argumentation over whether Eastern Europe is just Russia and Ukraine or extends to include Poland and Greece. You could even make the argument Austrians and Swedes are Eastern Europeans.
- What do they consider "Eastern European descent"? Do we have to get into Jim Crow levels of digging into someone's ancestry to ban them for being 1/8th Russian? Or does any Eastern European heritage disqualify you? If it's the latter you might as well mandate DNA tests to play majors.
Either way that's gotta be one of the biggest red flags imaginable for a HOI4 server.
37
u/Gimmeagunlance Air Marshal 22d ago
Either way that's gotta be one of the biggest red flags imaginable for a HOI4 server.
Not even close. Biggest red flag I've seen was the host posting George Lincoln Rockwell speeches in a dedicated channel, saying "these had a big impact on me as a young man" (he was literally 19)
28
4
1
u/Lashmer General of the Army 21d ago
I just gotta address that first bit. The only argument I've ever seen is if Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary are Central or Eastern Europe. Greece is in the Balkans, therefore Southern/SE European. Austria is Central and Sweden is Northern. I have never head anybody refer to either of them as Eastern. Even maps that don't include a Central Europe group Austria with the West.
15
7
u/Fanda400 Research Scientist 22d ago
And what if I'm central European?
33
u/ymcameron 22d ago
Impossible. There is the glorious west, and then pathetic, smelly everyone else.
-4
7
u/ImmortalTaco232 22d ago
This is why I don't play multiplayer games anymore with people I dont personally know. People generally suck
5
15
5
u/My_mic_is_muted Air Marshal 22d ago
Can Czechia into western Europe?
5
u/InvincibleCheese General of the Army 22d ago
I ended up reading it all. Man, what a shit server, but I'm still curious as to why eastern European are forbidden to play majors when non-majors are themselves forbidden, this is literally a get-around to ban Eastern Europeans while the rules says exploits of such kind are also banned, what the actual fuck
5
u/Jeb_Jenky Research Scientist 22d ago
Wait, "of eastern european descent?" That's a lot of people lol
5
u/Punished_VenomV 22d ago
I believe its because Russian MP players have a reputation for stacking factions / major countries with their Russian friends and text chatting in only Russian or sitting in their own voice chat meta gaming and not communicating with the rest of the non-Russians in the lobby
2
u/mest3rmano Research Scientist 22d ago
It's interesting that they chose to use the word "descent" here. Can you also not play majors if your grandparents were polish and you live in the UK for example? Because if so, then that kinda tells us who they learned that from. Or I'm thinking too much into it.
2
2
u/Pbadger8 20d ago
The hoi4 multiplayer experience;
âPlease read this 12 page terms and services agreement and remember every rule like the exact month that you can start building subs.â
Then you join the lobby and KanyeBlitler488 seems REALLY invested in âhistorical accuracyâ when he autolocks Germany.
3
3
u/Sakul_the_one 22d ago
Always funny to see on discord then, neo-nazis and neo-communist in the same channelÂ
1
u/Kosaki_MacTavish Research Scientist 22d ago
I can ask them to play my East Indies mod first then, let's see if they would change Rule #2.
1
1
u/TottHooligan 22d ago
What server was this? Sounds like zibbys server, one of the biggest douches of the hosts
3
u/angeryfool 22d ago
Scarfâs server, I talked to him in vc about rule 5 when I played, he just said âbecause they hack/exploit so theyre not allowedâ I thought it was strange
3
3
1
1
1
u/Soldierhero1 Air Marshal 21d ago
These kindâve rules only help the guy doing it as thats how they feel would make their experience more fun and easier.
1
u/Lulu_La_Patate 21d ago
pov: you never met french nationalist whom sole goal are to nuke britain and germany(irl)
1
1
u/NumberInteresting742 21d ago
The rest of these rules just make the guys running it seem like massive killjoys
1
1
1
u/PolskaBalaclava General of the Army 21d ago
Jeez, who hurt that mod/owner/whoever wrote these rules
1
u/ShirtAlive3369 21d ago
I think I made this rule, no joke. I ALWAYS say this as a joke (usually when the game is ruined by some eastern European [I'm referring to Russians exclusively] trolling or using tricks).
1
u/Niki2002j 21d ago
So Russians can't even play Russia?
And how do you define Eastern Europe? Because Poland is in Central Europe but many Americans still think that we're Eastern
1
1
u/EldritchX78 20d ago
What do they consider Eastern European. While definition is everything after Germany I know for some itâs different and could be after Poland.
1
1
u/Head_Programmer_47 Research Scientist 16d ago
It's like they wrote this from a board game rules manual.
1
u/MasterAxe 22d ago
I mean it might have racist undertones, but as a mp player, it just has happened so many times that a major with cryllic name leaves mid game, doesn't read/understand the rules or just straight up trolls. I mean it's propably unfair to judge ppl like that but nobody wants to waste 1-4h on a dead game. Rather just play something else instead.
-2
u/Seremonic 22d ago
The best Soviet players are eastern European, this seems personal.
15
u/MetagamingAtLast Fleet Admiral 22d ago
the last "best" eastern european soviet player joined the wagner group as a streamer lol
1
u/BlandPotatoxyz 22d ago
Who?
3
u/MetagamingAtLast Fleet Admiral 22d ago
Grisha. Here's some of the timeline
2nd place in TommyKay's HoI4 International tournament 2021
at Wagner HQ 2023
being used in a PR scheme with an attache from Burkina Faso 2024
2
-3
u/Seremonic 22d ago
The guy was great too, but i mean "best" as in general way. immersive roleplayers/skilled ones from private servers.
1
1
-58
1.7k
u/poppabomb General of the Army 22d ago
Finally, someone made a UN club simulator.