Today I review all the major overhaul mods AND some other random ones I've played. Discord: / discord Twitter: / dshakeyx Twitch: / dshakeyx #hoi4 #modding #heartsofiron4
The Morbius Caesar: It's Morbin Time mod is a close second I'll never forget the iconic dance-off between Michael Morbius and Milo Morbius where Michael caused Milo to morb in on himself and thus saved all of Morbitaly
If there’s a HOI4 Mlp mod, and HOI4 is unintentionally centered around war crimes, and I only play HOI4 for war crimes, and I have this GIGABYTE SIZED MOD used and downloaded, does that make me a brony?
I mean I play eaw buuuuut I always play as a human nation with the escalation 84 submod soo I than can commit a little genocide on the animals.....................I mean sapien beings.
Old world blues is definitely not specifically a fallout new Vegas mod in any sense. It’s just a fallout mod that is trying to connect the fallout lore as best as possible. They use lore from every published game (even non canon ones) and they use lore from the many cancelled fallout games to help fill out the world. They just happened to start their map on the west coast and many people think they’re a FNV mod but they plan to stretch across all of America.
To be fair, the most important event in the mod is the second battle of Hoover Dam, starting date is close to F:NV's and I believe at the beginning it was basically just NCR, Legion and New Vegas itself, who had focus trees, so I would say that the notion of it being much closer to Obsidian's game than any other. To be fair, you are not incorrect either - it would be incorrect to say that it is "New Vegas mod", because it is more of general "Fallout universe mod" nowadays
While in my heart Kaiserredux is an S tier mod alongside Equastria and Old World Blues, the lag and the bugs (especially feels worse from recent updates) really puts it down low. Hopefully the team can iron out the technical issues in the future because the amount of replayability this mod has through its countless paths is unrivalled imo.
Old world blues gets an A for effort and it’s work on some lore related stuff. Really overall I’m happy with the effort they put into it. However, lol, I’m a fallout nerd and in a lot of ways it makes very little sense. Research tree makes no sense, some stories make no sense, and attempts at writing non canon factions, while the present creative ideas, the ideas aren’t fleshed out to match lore or in game realities. Game should be way less balanced. Not enough attention given to Arroyo development.
As an active contributor to Kaiserredux, I would say that for the most part, the meme mod reputation we have is mostly vestigial from an older team who had a decidedly different vision for the mod, and nowadays barring the of course meme mode content which is disabled by default, we try to have good grounding for all our content, while of course we still feel that the enjoyment of the mod takes precedence. As for the optimization. yeah, nothing much can be done about it that we aren't already trying to do, lots of old content wasn't made with A+ craftsmanship under the hood but we've been making the effort to slim down when we can, though the vast majority of the team puts the line at cutting actual content. If there was a "make it fast" button we'd use it without hesitation but alas even consulting with other teams, its a difficult problem
Yeah ppl always think of the out there paths like Lovecraft's New England, but forget how other paths are pretty tame and expanded. For example democratic Germany
One of the things that ya'll need to figure out (and myself personally) are targetted decisions, they reduce the amount of tags checked with every decision. Everything performance-wise is incremental - from advisor checks to focus trees to national spirit removal checks to MTTH events to on_daily/on_weekly/on_monthly.
@@zacky1010 We were closely related, I think if my memory doesn't fail me KX split from them over some drama, and ended up coexisting after the fact as different mods, a status quo that holds today but suffice to say their last work was long enough ago I can't remember and we've integrated/inherited most of their work we don't have our own replacements for.
TNO would be so hard for me to rate... I personally love it, and the amount of writing in it is quite literally unbelievable. I've put probably around 500 hours into the mod, and I still can't quite grasp just how much writing is in it in total. The issue is, though... When on a TNO run, most of the time, you don't actually play the game like a HOI IV game, but you are either doing one of their mini-games (which are pretty neat often enough), reading (which is what I personally mostly used the mod for, honestly) or... waiting. And that's a big part of the problem. Especially with like the Russian unifiers; your actual wars are only a few, and you often have to wait until you can proceed to the next step, you can't just keep the game running in the background entirely, since you still need to choose foci and respond to events and whatnot... And also, it runs SIGNIFICANTLY slower than vanilla HOI IV, which doesn't help things. Again, just for the lore and writing alone, I love it, and I will always love what the devs have created, but I can very much definitely see how it's not for everyone. I kind of wish they were able to make some sort of interactive TNO lore thing that everybody could read, didn't require the game in the first place, and thus wouldn't deal with the lag and waiting time. But, at the same time... I have no idea what that would even look like. It is, in a way, not the most accessible thing, if that makes sense. I know a few people who would love the lore and writing I'm sure, but who don't have the game and are not interested in the game, and at the same time, many regular HOI IV players don't want to open the game to read text for dozens of hours. It's really a complicated thing...
When I try to run TNO it is very slow on my pc and it's even worse when playing Russian warlords, you can pass like an hour or 2 staring at the same map as the start of the game. Don't get me wrong, TNO is personally my favorite mod and I appreciate the people that put their effort on the production of the story, gameplay, music and others, however no one can ignore this major flaw.
@@chourisso69 I feel the same about the slowness of the mod especially the game freezing for a few minutes when stuff like the GCW starts. You can play around with the economy a bit but in the end that is just flipping a few toggles and hoping for the best.
TNO isn't really a HOI4 mod, it's more of a geopolitical visual novel that loosely uses HOI4 as a base. I'd say that it's biggest problems stem from being a HOI4 mod. First, the infamously slow speed is because HOI4 was made to be a massive clash between superpowers. Therefore, the AI is naturally going to accelerate its army to a massive size. This, among other factors mostly related to the engine it runs on, is what really slows the game. Furthermore, the constant waiting is because HOI4 is a real-time game, and while I think that some waiting is useful, TNO is already slow. Packing down its events makes an already fast-paced decade feel even faster, and the game grinds to a complete halt, all so other nations can finish more action-packed routes. TNO could benefit from being a turn-based game, if it was independent. TNO's issues stem not only from being a HOI4 mod, but being associated with HOI4. People will go into the mod expecting what HOI4 is, a war-based game of world conquest. TNO is more of a political game. On one hand, since Kaiserreich blew up as a mod, HOI4 mods have completely overhauled the political system to be existent. On the other hand, TNO is perhaps the best of any when it comes to US politics, at least. I have my complaints with elections, but the presidential focus trees, regardless of personal politics, are objectively good. I also like that an action will have a reasonable reaction, compared to the main game or other mods. In the Thurmond Administration, for example, repealing the Civil Rights Act causes the people who supported it to become furious and radicalized, and shatters the unity of your party. In other mods, doing that would just make his party more popular. At the same time, most mods use politics as a strong background to wars. TNO, much like the Cold War, uses wars as a background to politics. That's probably the most important difference. TNO is about an alternate Cold War, not an alternate World War II. While I like the linear feel to it, especially due to the 60s being so consequential and being so full of events, a game made specifically for the Cold War would work much better for the game itself. If East vs. West wasn't cancelled, it could be perfect for TNO. Since it doesn't exist, however, it's probably best for the game to stick to HOI4. If the developers ever receive a lot of funding, many, many more members, more inspiration on mechanics, and ever feel like changing the game, TNO could possibly split from HOI4 and become its own game. Highly unlikely, of course, but not impossible. TNO being on its own would also have plenty of problems. All the different nations going down entirely different paths is standard in HOI4, but would be quite difficult for another game. TNO's player base also stems mostly from HOI4 fans who want a more story-based game. If the mod was its own game, it wouldn't have a good way to get more players. A geopolitical visual novel set during the 1960s in which the Nazis won WWII and there are dozens of demented people who can lead/are leading countries is an insane idea. Regardless of if you think it works or not, most people aren't actively searching for that. No sane person would see Dentist Speer, Verify Your Clock, or Bruhgundy, and think, "Finally! Just what I've been craving!" But HOI4 players are no sane people. This was way longer than I expected, but I'm posting it anyway.
I personally like the economy system in TNO, specifically how you have a much greater indication of running an actual economy with a gdp and debt and spending etc. than when compared to vanilla or most mods
EaW is one of the best, i MIGHT be biased but the amount of messed up shit you can do in a "haha pony mod lol" is insane, hell, even each countries has like 6 different paths the mod is that insane RT56, KaiserReich, New Ways, Red Flood is also one of my favorite, RT56 is the most fun for some reason for me, it feels vanilla
EaW is such a good mod. It has the quality of KR, the chaos of KX, the content of RT56, and writing of TNO. You can meme or play seriously and never run out of paths to play (especially with the Zebrica expansion). My only strife with it is really just its lack of navy focus and as someone who loves playing vanilla Japan or China - I was disappointed not being able to go ham with navy.
Seriously Some notable examples include: BECOME DAYBREAKER CAUSE A CIVIL WAR! BRING BACK SOMBRA! TAKE OVER EQUESTRIA AS BUG HORSES! AND THAT'S NOT EVEN INCLUDING THE DREAD LEAGUE!
TNO is very divisive because it tried to do something very different. If you want to immerse yourself in the world, story and atmosphere you'll love TNO because it does those things really well. If you only care about the gameplay then you'll hate it because all the cool things it does for the sake of atmosphere will only get in the way of the core HoI4 gameplay loop. Personally I love it because I enjoy being drawn into the fictional worlds that authors make, but I realize it's not for everyone. It deserves it's A rating.
TNO's writing is solid overall and downright outstanding by HOI4 modding standards. That particular criticism just doesn't hold water, unless there are some horrendously written paths I haven't seen. Other than its "visual novel" gameplay, I think the TNO hate mostly comes from the constant drama surrounding it and its Discord.
It's actually insane how well EAW runs even when doing some giga late game intercontinental death war. I might not be a full-blown pony enthusiast even after spending over half my HoI4 playtime in that mod, but I believe in pony magic because that HAS to be the explanation.
Should've mentioned Hearts of Minecraft. It's big issue is that cosmetically, it's trash. A bunch of nations don't have flags, most nations don't have leaders, there's little gfx, and I think only 3 nations have names for different ideologies. It shines though in playing, unlike something like Kaiserreich or Millenium Dawn, almost every nation is fun. The only ones that aren't are the ones that are for representing governmentless areas. And the end. But all the rest are fun to play. Wanna play one of the roughly 50 free villages? Go ahead! You'll enjoy it. It has amazing focus trees for the majors. It's two main issues gameplay-wise are a false sense of railroading and manpower issues. Both fixable, the first one by just realizing that it is very open to any ideology for any country (more so than vanilla), and the second by grabbing a coring mod. Definitely needs visual polish, but other than that, a solid B
I definetly like the New Ways mod, but I still have my gripes. Firstly the generic tree uses mostly 70 day focuses, and for it's size that's just ridiculous. Otherwise I'm not a fan of any confusing paths, such as trying to go communist as Iraq, or Hohenberg. Also kinda bummed they removed Einsteins Israel path. Though I do like how there's a customizable global division cap for the ai, which I wish existed as a stand alone mod.
It legit has enough story content to create a movie for most of the focus tree counties. For some of them you could even make several movies based on different paths
the only reason i do not play it very much is the game run so fucking slow, but it has probably the best focus trees in any mod, with Lovecraft and the, now dead but alive in a submod, goebbels path they are so fucking fun i can't even describe, it has so much stupid paths in it that i probably don't played 3% of the mod not to forget, its submods, like goodbye sweet europe, are fucking amazing to
EaW absolutely blows all the others out of the water. The sheer amount of stuff you can do is incomparable. Chirroptera has *576* focuses. There's more secret and not so secret paths than you'll be able to play through in months, and it has *post-war content* filled with mechanics and lore. With the Zebrica update, it has become the gold standard for today's HoI4 mods, and with the upcoming Equus continent rework, it's bound skyrocket in terms of quality. Thank you DrShakey for being like, the only youtuber covering it! You're the real MVP!
I still can't believe Grover VI had content after ascending the throne where you can go full autocrat or become a constitution monarch/less tyrannical monarch. All after you hold most of if not all of an entire continent. Still want the Lunar/Solar Empire to get a similar treatment.
@@dango6266 Exactly. Not to mention the entire Pax Crysalia patch. Every time you finish a major war as one of the newer nations, you think to yourself "ok I guess that's done probs gonna go wc now" and then a new focus tree with 50 focuses loads and you're like "wtf I didn't know that was coming!"
@@AntrozLPs Bruh i played Chirroptera or whatever it's called and after winning the zebrican war i just got even more focuses and i was just like "yo what"
I like TWR but the ultra annoying thing about it is many of the focus trees end in a “Kill Germany!” branch, yet 80% of the time Germany is dead well before that. It has a lot of potential though and you can tell the devs are still working hard to balance the mechanics. Also the German civil war is brutally infuriating…
@@potato88872 In what aspect? Hating on the mod because of the community of the franchise it is based on is kinda shitty when you didn't even played the mod or just steamrolled through outdated faction and called the mod quality same as this one
Just seeing the San Andreas mod being in this list is a great achievement. Thank you for your review of the mod and now including it in list among other big amazing mods.
I think the thing about TNO is that it's not a war mod, it's more of a visual novel or an RPG, if that's make sense. You don't feel like playing HOI4 at all while playing TNO, and I think that's simultaneously what makes it so loved and so hated. You go to TNO think it's going to be like Kaiserreich or something like that, you will be not so pleasured to see that you are not going to be waging major wars anytime soon, but once you overcome that and appreciate the mod for what it is, an history telling, it suddenly become one of the best things ever created for HOI4. It accomplished flawless it's objective of making you feel the terror and existencial dread that people in that universe are suffering, it makes a much better job than the Cold War mod in showing how terrifying the threat of nuclear annihilation truly is. The feeling you get from it, and the total change of pace from the original game... I think is what makes TNO what it is... The best way of transforming an strategy game where war is fun into an horror game where you can feel how much suffering it brings... "War is hell..." Oh, yeah, and there is the funny clock man as well, that's pretty cool too.
From the impressions others have given it, the experience feels similar to something like Fallout Equestria in terms of what world it sets up(I'm not entirely sure of either Fallout or FoE's lore, but it does seem the ministries are by far one of the biggest differences for looking into the lives of individuals living in a nation).
@@nameynamd9212Yep, Fallout Equestria have a surprisingly really good lore and worldbuilding and in some place i'd say it's more interesting than the real Fallout lore (The Enclave and Dashites are a good example of this imo) It's just that the execution is a bit mid, personally i couldn't go over the fact that Littlepip went from "omg ded people it's horrible" to becoming the reincarnation of John Wick in one chapter 😂
@@mrhalloween0283 afaik, it's just being updated to stay in line with hoi updates. I don't think there's been any updates content wise, they do have an upcoming content road map, but that's stayed the same since the forks launch I believe
@@ethanedwards422 Some new content has been added; like India, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and the Great Lakes Republic. But the big update regarding the Soviets, Canada, and Spain is getting a lot of development right now.
@@mrhalloween0283 for the Indonesia one(if some devs is reworking on Indonesia content),i'm pretty sure Ilham Aidit(son of D.N Aidit) should be the leader of Communist Indonesia
Personally, millennium dawn is a top mod for me. I know some people don’t like it, but personally all the new mechanics they added seem extremely fun to me as a person who likes economics, which is probably why i like vicky 2 more than hoi4.
I feel like OWB does a much better job with implementing a lot of new mechanics without it being extremely overwhelming. As every country in MD you will have like 40 decisions you can take, making most players just want to unnotify everything. OWB makes the new mechanics very similar to how they would be if PDX actually made them in HOI4, which is much better for players.
@@edgy22 I assume you mean Old World Blues so yeah you’re right. But something about taking over the entirety of africa as chad just gets something for me
TNO is definitely my favourite although it has started moving in a direction I don't like and updates glacially. Edit: NVM TT3 IS OUT ON THE 14TH, HALHJELEUA!
A problem I have with new ways is the focus trees seem well thought out and interesting, and then you play through them to the foreign policy part, only to get claims and no war goals like it’s a mod from 2016. Not all of them have this problem but the ones that do kill the mod for me.
Something i also had to say is that,twr isn’t necessary more “realistic” as you said,it just makes the characters more “”””””“mean”””””” and less like movie characters,the only thing i see that’s a little more relistic than tno is the russian warlords,also a fun fact,the cold war creators mocked tno by saying that they would be around “for far more than tno”,weird to see how that aged huh? Edit:i feel insulted by the fact that age of imperialism isn’t here 😑
CWIC is still around my brother in christ; it doesnt receive as many updates because most of the "devs" are contributors who just do stuff for the mod on their spare time and theres not many compared to TNO also some people at TNO are incredibly sus people considering some allegations made against them which have a ton of proof but i'm not too sure if you know about that so i wont criticize (unrelated to your comment but more to shakey's video the massive debuffs for china just look scary, its pretty easy to win even after NSB especially now that there is a submod that reduces the debuffs, its just kind of tedious. i made a guide on how to win it and it wasnt hard at all)
@@basedcapybara6967 yeah but i wouldn’t really say that the creators matter in this topic since it’s ranking the mods themselves and not the creators but I respect your opinion
Bro honestly while happy with where OWB ended up, you kind of just slept on ALL its achievements. It’s not just a fallout new Vegas mod, it’s the entirety of the aesthetic of a post-apocalyptic setting. Also, you seemed to ignore the sheer progress it’s had, coming from just the east coast base states to expand rapidly, it’s truly just amazing up there with EAW. Also, I would say it’s the least controversial mod of all, that alone would make it unilaterally S tuer
Since I am a big Metro fan. Metro being my favorite book series and game franchise. I love Metro Genisis. I played it recently and I saw they even updated it! Definitely one of my favourite mods. It's up there with Great War and Kaiserreich.
There's a fork for Führerreich called Führerredux. Updated portaits, focuses and stuff like that, I highly recommend and if it was on the tierlist, for me it would be a strong A
@@edgy22 Does it have a completely unique hand-crafted map with dozens of new game mechanics, unique events, new resources, special interactions, over a hundred modders, and multiple sub-mods? Because Equestria at war has all of these things and more, and they have added extensive lore to nearly all nations, along with unique focus trees.
@@samueltrusik3251 it has like 100 sub mods, hand-crafted map with incredibly complex and unique terrain, incredible new mechanics like a refugee system, bottle cap system with trade routes (economy), a scavenging mechanic, hundreds of new countries (each of which with paragraphs of lore,tens of focus trees, new weapons, new equipment, etc.. it does
A thing I don't like about TNO is that all the radical paths seem to be trap paths. The paths that may seem interesting (Heydrich, Hall, Yockey, Italian Communism, old Kaya, the radical English civil war factions, Tabby etc) all either collapse, get couped, or backslide into just dictatorial stereotypes. Most of this has no warning, the first time I wanted to do an Italian Left run I thought the ballot box revolution looked fun, only to get couped. Like if you're going to give something a path, give it a real path that makes sense.
It *does* make sense, because surprise surprise, radicalism *does NOT* work, just like communism, *especially* in the US. Just be a decent Human being and stick to being a moderate will you?
Keep in mind that the developers of the mod are very anti-authoritarian of any type (plus Hall and Yockey aren't finished yet and Heydrich was really meant to be a Himmler puppet anyways, plus Tabby is literally a psychopathic scitsophrenic Nazi so yeah thats fun) and so many of their more radical authoritarian paths will be difficult to control (as would make sense if your leader vows to bathe the world in nuclear fire.)
Agreed, such a well-made mod yet not included. This seems to be an issue, with him not having a bunch of notable mods here. Like, if he has San Andreas why not Hearts of Minecraft?
Something about twr hits different rather than tno or it is maybe just more like vanilla and easier to lean idk but twr will be the better one for me personally.
What do you guys think about Hearts of Minecraft? Beyond the novelty of having a scripted Minecraft world in your WW2 simulator; I think it’s actually pretty well made with custom textures and models and whatnot. There’s a really interesting nether portal mechanic where the Overworld gets invaded by Piglins and you have to defend against them coming from the portals. I will say that it feels like it’s still in beta (and that might actually be the case, I don’t remember) because the focus trees are pretty short. On my one playthrough I got frustrated because I played as the Fallen Kingdom (yes, that Fallen Kingdom. You can have CaptainSparkelz as a general or even dictator) because I wanted to save the king or whatever. That IS one of the possible paths you can go down, but unfortunately it looks like that’s not really the intended/canon path because it doesn’t have very much content. The canon path is longer but still not very big. Plus the game’s ai seems kind of broken, the Player Empire which is supposed to be one of if not the main country bugged out and declared wars on a bunch of their neighbors without being finished with the ones already declared. I had to go move my whole army over there and then got bogged down with no supply defending them on 3 sides. That’s another thing that’s annoying, there’s really horrible supply through the whole world map, barely any Minecart rails. You have to build up everything yourself, otherwise it’s unplayable (or rather, unwinnable; the AI never seems to have so much trouble with it). Plus decisions often don’t work- if you successfully fight off the zombie horde and save the king you can rename the Fallen Kingdom back to the Eastern Kingdom, however when I selected the decision I got neither the event nor the name change, which was disappointing. Overall I’d recommend it to play at least once or twice, it still needs work done on it but I think it’s playable and I might return to it sometime.
Kaiserredux has to be one of my favourite mods. Sure it runs slowly and there are some unbelievable paths, but that’s the fun of it. I absolutely love it, Socialist Georgia has to be one of my favourite paths, although I do find myself doing the same thing every game, I just find it so fun.
EaW is probably the best HoI4 mod ever made. A friend of mine brought up concerns about a reduction in quality over time and I agree with him. It took years to release Zebrica yet most of the countries don't have their own focus trees (in fact, many in Equus and Griffonia still don't focus trees). Those that do often have gimmicks and mini-games, but these can be buggy in themselves (Chiroptera has border conflicts that will break and cannot be initiated without loading a save). It begs the question, if so much time was dedicated to a new continent, and only a few countries are fleshed out, why haven't even these been polished? The only satisfactory answer is that maybe they have a lot more down the pipe, and want to release frequent smaller updates rather than forcing players to wait for big ones. I enjoy Millennium Dawn, but besides the performance issues it's not fun to the same degree. It's too easy to lock yourself out of focuses (and if you have ahistorical AI the AI will often lock itself out too) and considering the timespan it's too easy to lose a huge amount of progress if you don't save frequently enough. The U.S. AI still doesn't know how to manage an economy, so it descends to "major power" status just five years in. It's too laggy and lengthy to play MP, while there's not enough rivalry or diplomacy by the AI to make up for it. TNO lost appeal to me when it started taking itself too seriously, when its concepts are fantastical in the first place. The Redux versions of both TNO and Kaiserreich are better in my eyes for embracing historical imagination, plus the modders at the helm are better people in my eyes. I agree though, it did break ground for HOI4 modding especially in regards to superevents. I enjoyed The Cold War mod with a couple of playthroughs, and its UN system is quite novel, but again it feels too unfinished. I think a lot of these "long-term" mods would be better if they started out with a limited timespan and dense gameplay, then expanded the time gradually while keeping the world dynamic and interesting (which is what TNO does). What about Hearts of Oak? I was introduced to this "vanilla enhancement mod" by Bokoen and the extra tech does let you fine-tune your strategy more.
Well, EAW doesn't really have any sort of development plans besides already released Zebrica and rework of Equus, besides that every faction is sort of a personal project of few devs rather than one team, and only if nation has any devs, there were suppose to be many other factions that were suppose to have overhaul, like Olenia but the dev quited and Gryncelf but this dev had to take long time off net but might still be continuing. I appears that we will get more and more smaller updates along the big ones, like the "guns of the patriots" expansion that will probably add focus tree for Westkeep,Polar Bears, Adelart and MAYBE Grynclef, alongside the expansion of secret path for Hippogryfia and communist path for Angriver. So it seems that Zebrica was the biggest problem in production was too much ideas for the release, some factions were just too ambitious at the time, but for example some regions are already in good development process, such as Great Lakes or Kirins Realm.
Border conflicts in EaW are pdx fault. They never really worked well to begin with As for content for empty nations, there will be no more map expansions, so all of the devs effort will go into populating the map. A lot of new countries and some old ones dont have content, but those that do are usually massive. Honestly, I would worry more about devs keeping it all working together in balance than new content. Im sure there will be quite a few updates with new trees after next dlc
Bro tf wdym TNO Redux is better than TNO? It was literally only created by neo ņ⁴åzź¹s because normal TNO doesn't paint Germany and its puppets in a very good light, I dont know how you can say you like their people at the lead better
I always loved how Road to 56 is often described as "If your playing with DLC then go Vanilla If you are playing without DLC then go with Road to 56" Edit: I remember going into a MP game and messing around. At some point the majority of the people left and was just me, the host, and like two other people. We were joking around and I recommended Equestria at War. Never played it. Thought it was a meme mod for awhile. We agreed to play it as a joke. But then had a weird amount of fun with it. I think I played as Equestria or something and the Changelings were attacking me and killing me as everyone laughed at me dying to bugs
I swear to god North America Divided is so underrated its insane. I've never gotten bored of that mod, the only things that are crappy are the lack of random events and that not every state has their own focus tree. Other than that is such a great mod
Even one of the mods are amazing in my eyes through the hours I've spent and just how much effort it must take for the quality presented is outstanding!!
I think what really sets EaW apart from so many other mods to me when it comes to my enjoyment, is just the freedom the devs have with literally everything. Yes, this is set in the mlp universe, but outside of equestria, and naming a few mentioned people’s/races, they are literally just making up an entirely new world, all with it’s own lore, history, and entirely unique geography. This scratches that itch for me because as cool as most every other mod is, it takes place on earth. It’s either an alternate timeline that has to explain what changed, tying itself to the world history we’ve heard a billion times, or it’s set in a different time period, and has to railroad itself onto events that have already taken place. Maybe people don’t realize it because they get distracted by the fact it’s set in the mlp universe, but Equestria at War is the highest functioning mod that is as detached from any kind of barrier from story and world building. What the devs have collectively achieved is no less than what Tolkien achieved with Middle Earth.
If ur an average Hungary enjoyer, Expanded Hungary is your dream mode. It literally contains every single scenario how the history could have went, with custom advisors and very accurate leader pictures obv (it was made by a hungarian guy). I recommend it for everyone but especially for my fellow hungarians out there.
I'm pretty ignorant of hungarian history overall, but their old borders and beef with the austrians please my monkey brain, and I had a great experience with the mod overall. Unlike vanilla, all paths are fun imo and you can do some pretty wacky shit with your neighbours. I would say that for what it proposes, it's a perfect (very generalized use of the word) mod
@@apollyon2018 The hungarian history is one of the most impressive ones in the history of Europe , and gamewise the idea of restoring the old borders of the 1000 y o hungarian kingom makes a great base for the mod. The fact that there are not just 4 complete ways (democratic, fascist, communist, monarchy), but 2-3 different ways to play the same ideology, for ALL the ideologies (like for fascists, u can go and reinforce the regency and have Horthy as the fascist leader, or support the hungarist movement and get Szálasi or Imrédy as ur leader). Overall theres over 10 ways to play with Hungary with this mod and u definitely gonna spend over 100 hours exploring it. In vanilla (i mean all the dlcs, no mods), it would be on the same level as Polands focus tree, which is very impressive.
Even though it's slow, EoaNB is one of my personal favourite mods, but I don't understand at all why the devs want such a long time frame despite HOI4 only supposed to go for about 10, maybe more years. Flesh out the Victorian stuff and it will definitely be up there
If it wasn't for Kaiserredux's wacky dumb meme paths (alaska-lichtenschtein and such) and incredibly bad optimization, I'd say it would've been better than Kaiserreich, because it gives more variety and ties up loose ends, like Germany's lacking of any real paths alternate to Kaiser, or dumb Russian politics path, consisting of 3 ideas (the good democracy, the bad tsarism and militarists, and ugly Savinkov), or inability to avoid 2ACW, Communard France having no real differences between their factions, or no Hungary, Czechia, Illyria focus trees. Germany's political party actually makes sense and has variety with it, and you even can bring reds to power. Russian politics are now interesting, with Savinkov being able to ally with fellow SR, like Spiridonova and not just being Russian Shitler in this timeline, and difference between one autocrat to another and one party to another actually being real and relevant, even being able to create coalitions between ideologically similar or close parties. Even Bolsheviks are back with some funny people like Yezhov, Kaganovich, Molotov, etc. People like Cactus Jack now can avoid civil war, and even Hoover can undo his disasters. Jacobites now can not just be totalists, but have either second Robespierre or French Bolshevik. Even Makhno has his mega anarchy path, and Socdem France. Overall, Kaiserredux is better brother than Kaiserreich, but is a little bit autistic.
Imo the Great War Redux mod isn't actually that railroaded. I've seen a fair few amount of interesting alt history happening in it as the focus trees they add are pretty interesting. Would recomend you to play an ahistorical game with it if you can for sure
Twr is an s-tier mod for me just on how engrossed you can get in everything that happens. The aesthetic and design is dark and tone-setting without being painful. Its lore and storylines are interesting yet not boring and mostly optional. The gameplay might not be as plentiful as other mods but it's there It's basically what tno was meant to be combined with elements of kaiserreich
My first play through of that mod I was playing as the Russian Republic. I had sent volunteers to the military Okrug to my west but was unable to make any gains because I sucked (and still kinda do.) Because of this I was locked out of a lot of expansion. What I did do however was send volunteers to rebel states all across Europe as the Reich crumbled. Switzerland? Volunteers. Czechia? Volunteers. Western Russia? Volunteers. Caucasus? Volunteers. It felt nice to invest myself in all these conflicts across the world to fight for freedom.
Hey! The Perfect world mod is pushing out an immersion update soon and we hope this will make our mod look far more finished! I've made a new terrain map, named every state/victory point and our team has done alot of work! hope to one day live up to good expectations! :)
My buddy actually was the developer of metro genesis, it was derived off of an older mod we never got finished and he decided to remake it even though it only got a c rating, i am glad it succeeded, especially since he’s a mostly solo developer
Since you invited us to, I'll happily rant a few paragraphs of my thougths. I totally agree on EaW - it's superb mod, it's alreidy praised in the video. Altough yes, it has an awkward entry point for new players, after I made my far-conservative anti-brony/anti-furry friend get addicted to EaW I believe everyone could get into it. On the other hand I don't get any positive notion anyone has towards TNO. It fails at telling a plausible historical fiction with the amount of political agenda it's packed with. It tries to turn game build around the concept of totall war, with mechanics and pacing designed purposely for it, into cold war experience, where every single mechanic has to be modded in and base game mechanics removed or reduced to shadow of themselves.All that it has to offer is the amount of work that's been put into it, but I don't think that simply the quantity of sweat translates to quality of work. And I have a grudge against it for being so collosal that it permanently influenced almost anything made after it, for worse imo. And lastly I want ot touch Red Flood. Man, it used to be my favorite mod. But opening it now, after the last big patch.. I don't feel it anymore. getting rid of 'meme' paths is a real low. People used to called them meme, but that was just a buzzword, they were unapologetic, wild, they conveyed emotions that swept you in like a Flood. Now when Im looking at my once favorite accelerationsts paths I see them sanitazed, like if the mod itself decided that with the new found fame it must act more 'mature' - less emotional, more cynicall, in turn going a step into losing it's identity. Lmao, if someone read all that rant, congrats.
not to mention that TNO has done away with some of it's only interesting features, such as Atlantropa, in pursuit of being more accurate, when there are some hilariously outlandish ideas still in the mod
@@MazzerFXDesigns Yeah, they're like "We can't make a good storyline for PW without cutting atlantropa, also it's terribly inaccurate, but we're still keeping funni clock man taboritsky as a full Russian unifier." Also the mod is super biased (especially usa) towards liberal democracies and moderate socialists. Yockey is an obvious fail path, but Gus Hall feels railroaded towards dictatorship. Harrington and johnson feel like the "accepted" paths, like speer g04 in germany.
Yeah, I liked Red World before too. Red World is something youd get if you want a TNO that didnt take themselves too seriously and although they couldve just removed the genocidal stuff - pathwise it was one of the more interesting mods to play as
And the Red Flood team still wants to remove some other paths (i think Rosenberg in the Baltic is going away) To be fair i had more fun playing old Austria than the new one since they made it quite generic.
My personal favorite is red flood, though I might be biased because this is the only mod where my home country has content. However, it still has lots of content for many nations, focus trees with flavor events(Italy, Russia, etc), and I prefer the more toned down wacky ness compared to Kaiserredux. Also the game runs really fast for me, even in late game, which motivates me to play further
Red Flood is such a unique and cool mod. There's definitely more work that can be done on it, I'd love to see focus tree's for stuff like Prussia and some reworks for existing focuses would be nice too. But besides that the tone and style really sets it apart, the closest comparison I can think of is maybe Kaisserredux and parts of TNO (Holy Russian Empire, other Russian paths, etc)
As many meme paths exist in KX, I don’t think it’s that big of an issue, since they really never end up happening unless the player chooses to go down that road. Some of the things it does, like returning Italy to the pre-garibaldi’s nightmare state are actually more realistic than Kaiserreich. I was also kind of disappointed that rt56 was ranked so low. It’s my go to vanilla+ mod. That’s really what it is: a more fleshed out vanilla hoi4, and I think it does that job well, and it also doesn’t really lag like most of the overhaul mods.
honestly, im kinda mixed about kaiserreich, i genuinely think it's overrated as hell but at the same time, the american civil war, the stuff in asia and south america are actually a lot of fun to play through the devs also even bothered to add stuff to south america in general, and my country, Chile, which not a lot of devs do in HOI4 mods. So kudos to them for it. (also love how there's a lot of south american, and Chilean music AND marches in the official soundtrack, makes it a lot more immersive.)
Kaiserreich German Focus Tree actually lets you do alot things if you go civil war. You can have a corporate dictatorship, national socialist way, democrat or communist ways and such.
Cold War: Iron Curtain is by far my most favourite mod. With how much I love history I really enjoy going through the 20th century and knowing what historical events are going to happen, or perhaps, change the course of history, it has so much content and tech, I love it, I have played as Israel, the UK and ROC [with KMT submod which adds a lot of content to the ROC, as well as a 60s focus] winning the Chinese Civil War, and focus in CWIC are the BEST in all of HOI4 mods, its art are just amazing, tho it is in developtment and continous improvement currently.
I think the rating of Kaiserredux is actually criminal. I can easily agree with EaW being the best mod. No questions need to be asked there lol. But Kaiserredux is just too much fun. Take Kaiserreich's content, times it by 25 and that it Kaiserredux. Only this time countries are way less rail-roaded, paths for countries like the US and Russia. For example, the US civil war is upgraded to a 4-way civil war (technically 5 and potentially 7 way war), just as fun, dynamic and unforgiving as any nation in that war. After that, if you win, you reconstruct your country pretty much from the ground up. Each successionist state has at least 4 major paths, with dozens of side paths to accompany the main. Each of these paths being so complex that a slightly different decision in an otherwise throwaway event can entirely change the course of your country. This is the same with any country. Russia is another example, there are soo many paths within Russia that it is criminal that these guys are not actual paradox developers. I have never seen so much content in a single mod before, truly. Mongolia, an otherwise laughable nation, with a dozen UNIQUE paths! Sikkim, a genuine one province minor, has a bigger focus tree than base game Spain. This doesn't include the HUNDREDS and I mean GENUINE HUNDREDS of awesome paths in obscure nations. Like seriously, I have seen, playing with my friends, at least 100, yes, one-hundred different, flavor-filled and lovingly crafted, obscure countries which have turned into absolute monsters in their own unique ways, some have insane industrial capability, some have insane lore potential, some are downright CRAZY, like lovecraftian New England and some are MEAT GRINDERS built for those masochists who want to stack 500 2 width divisions to grind down an opponents will to fight. I really, truly recommend you give this shot another try. Example, try communist-Goebells Germany! They are really fun! Maybe the North American Dominion strikes your fancy? Kingdom of Britain vs the Monarchists in Canada, anyone? What about a little bit of World-conquering Morrocans? Anybody for a taste of Anarchist France? Maybe the Black King of Russia? Maybe Zhukov's Russia! Maybe Fascist (totally not Nazi) Austria? Maybe a down-to-earth traditionalist who wants nothing more than to create a New Roman Empire, encompassing all of Europe and to annihilate modern society, just as a side path? Well, if anything there sounded interesting, give it a shot! Their devs legit update the mod every week so i guarantee something new and wacky has been added while I typed this whole thing.
My personal favourite is Kaiserreich, especially how well developed the lore is and the gameplay is very fun, and it's actually playable in affordable pc's unlike KX
Btw for OWB, it was originally focused on NV but has expanded out massively to New Mexico, Texas, Canada, California and other areas like Chicago, Cuba, the east coast and other places planned for the future
In my opinion, Road to 56 should be in the S tier for the simple reason that you can't even tell that it's not the base game as natural as the content is. I still don't understand how they didn't integrate the content into the vanilla game
I know that Kaiserredux isn't S tier but my heart suffer from this video. Other mods are placed very well I guess, but you could put Kaiserredux a little bit higher. All of my best games were at this mod
The Unification wars mod could be good, but the imperium feels kinda unfinished (also its tree is pretty small), and all these other random countries have tiny paths that just turn into a generic tree. The persian one feels like the only finished one, hopefully they keep developing the mod it seems cool.
I believe EaW is one of the best developed mods out there! If TNO had proper content and characteristics work done with KX they would probably be alongside in S tier!
I literally bought hoi4 to play old world blues and to this day I don't have any achievements because of how bad base game is compared to mods (I'm around 900 hours)
@@FeCyrineu well they are (/were if they got replaced) very racist against slavic people and very pro nsdap figures in their discord And they banned people from they discord if they vere slavic or jewish
I just wanted 3 things,an red flood ui that doesn’t bore my eyes,more content to thousand week reich and more reworks to kaiserreich,i would complain about TNO(keep in mind,i love tno and i’m very,fucking,biased) but i would just keep typing for hours
I'm waiting for a mod based on 60's spy movies where an evil genius takes over the world with a big laser beam from his lava island fortress. You could even have multiple evil geniuses from various fiction take over much of the world and then go to war with their exotic super technology. And then of course a growing world wide spy agency to fight them, from literal spy work to nip them before they grow to international militarys to fight them directly when they do get out of hand.
@@Zorro9129 Unfortunately just like most arseholes on the internet I don't really have the drive to do it! That and a day job, it can take thosends of hours to make a proper mod and I just don't have the energy, money, or time to do so.
The Failed Revolution(Similar to Pax Britannica in a way), In the Name of the Tsar, 1984 Redux, Age of Imperialism are some of the smaller overhaul mods that you may have missed. As you have added Rise of Nations, New Ways and Road to 56, Endsieg and Calm before the Storm(1934 start date with alt-history paths) are defineatly in this catogory. The Empire(1700) is another one, although it feels strange for hoi4. Many are not very well polished but they're definately better than some of the other unfinished ones out there (I'm looking at you Godspeed)
Been playing Overhaul mods with my friends recently, nice to see some more mentioend here! Would've been nice to see the Code Geass / 1984 / Minecraft / Novum mods but I am sure you didn't include them for a reason, after all I skipped to the end of the video hahahaha Also why is the best mod A DAMN PONY MOD IN THIS WW2 GAME
The problem with TNO aside from the writing being mid at best and cringeworthy at worst is how the devs clearly have a vision of how they want you to play and you're going to have a bad time if you don't. I've had maybe 4/5 of my leaders kill themselves because one day they decided that they've been a big meanie or they just randomly die and unlike in most mods where you can still play after that if such an event happens in TNO usually it means game over. On top of that most of the minigames they've added are tedious in a mod that feels written by a 14 year old. The reason many prefer TWR is because the mod doesn't push you into any direction, it doesn't give you a "You were a big meanie" game over screen and it feels like an actual sandbox grand strategy experience. You can even prevent the german civil war if you know what you're doing unlike TNO
I mean TNO had it's chance but after deleting so much content to the point that there is less stuff than it was at the start of a game is really something. As for leaders besides the Magadan and the australian tsar they really weren't that engaging as characters in a story focused mod.The mod need fixes but I don't think that it was that much in that direction, maybe the new update with Guanzong be different
@@kaloyandraganov9462 There is no longer any main dev, they abolished the position. Now it's divided into groups who develop the nations they want with the consent of the majority of the other devs.
I dont understand why people are like "TNO is unrealistic making it bad" like, oh no? I don't care? That just makes it better. I don't understand why it has to be super precise, its realistic enough for me, better then any alt history i can make, and id imagine thats the same for many. I have great memories playing as Zhdanov, Sablin, and Bukharina. Buy ig that's my opinion
Not even a Fallout fanboy, in fact, never played through an entire fallout game. OWB is S tier, hands down the best mod available, it is its own game now.
