My review of the Great War Redux mod

Alright, so to begin, I enjoy this mod. However, it does have its flaws.

Positives:

• It's very fast in terms of game speed, much faster than the base game HOI4. In-game years seem to fly by. This is great news for anyone with an older PC and just great news in general cause game go fast good.

• All of the major powers have robust focus trees; there's always something for you to do.

• Lots of fluff in this mod. Everything from obscure colonial conflicts to the Spanish Flu is present in this mod and usually in a meaningful way.

  • For instance, one of the first things you do as Germany and France is negotiate the Agadir crisis, and you can totally provoke a war within the first year of the game if you want.

  • When the Spanish Flu hits, it hits hard, and you need to play a PP minigame to find a vaccine while mitigating the crippling effects of the Flu on your society.

    • I acknowledge this isn't for everyone, but I personally enjoy a bit of historical RP and the representation of the Spanish Flu as the serious threat that it was

• Every nation feels unique to play, however there are a few problems with this that I'll cover later on

Negatives:

• Unfortunately, HOI4 AI is still HOI4 AI and as such is pretty stupid.

  • Nobody ever guards their ports for some reason, meaning that Gallipoli is actually pretty easy most of the time

• There is one particularly bad design decision that can completely cripple your game if you wander into it without knowing

  • Occupying Ottoman core territory will result in a negative malus to resistance and compliance that is insanely bad to the point where I question if the devs were Turks

  • Your gun production goes into the toilet, there is no recovering from it, you cannot produce enough to cover the cost of occupying the territory.

  • This completely destroyed one of my British games where I successfully capitulated the Ottomans. After that I was literally unable to play the game cause no guns

  • However, I will note that I didn't see this in my most recent game, so therefore it may be patched out.

Maybe good or bad depending on pov:

• Trench warfare is the name of the game in this mod. It creates a very slow style of combat that might not appeal to everyone, but I enjoy it because I like a defensive style of gameplay.

  • A key part of this mod is building up to overcome trench warfare, through unlocking doctrines, creating tanks, opening new fronts, building an air force, etc. I feel that it accomplishes this pretty well.

• Some nations get more love than others

  • Now I put this in good or bad cause fundamentally it doesn't really affect the overall game

  • But you'll notice that a French game has more fluff than a British game for example

• The primary bottleneck in-game is industry

  • It takes a very long time to get a strong industry because world tension never spikes high enough before the war starts to get anything more than partial mobilization

  • You'll never have an enormous amount of factories

  • Battles will actually destroy more equipment than manpower

  • So your capacity to fight is effectively determined by how long your stockpiles of equipment will last

  • Building up an army and military industry before the war is thus very hard, meaning that you do most of that during the war

  • However, if you have access to the international market you can totally equip a huge army that way

• Everybody has enormous historically accurate division templates

  • these are bad

  • the easiest way to win the war is by reducing the width of your infantry to like a 6/1 15 width division. then you can build more of them and they hit harder cause you can fit more support companies into a single battle. And the AI will still be using its enormous divisions. Seriously this is so effective it almost feels cheesy

  • I put this in good or bad cause I know some people like the rp and cause the industrial bottleneck still applies here. You can't keep an offensive going forever, and while these divisions are more effective, they tend to suck up a lot of artillery and support equipment.

• Theres a lot of alt history paths

  • Some of them are stronger that historical especially for weaker nations

  • others effectively cripple you if your already strong

  • however I like that the options are there and they all have a bit of fluff

• There is a bit of post war content

  • but most of it involves being hit with massive negative focuses

  • and the stuff that exists isn't fully fleshed out yet

  • The fluff is interesting tho

  • I don't put this as a negative cause its not the main focus of the mod

• Random events

  • I know some people hate these so I put it here

  • They can be positive or negative

  • Nothing crazy just stuff like French political factionalism and army epidemics

• Research is kinda funny in this mod

  • Theres not a lot to research in the early game, everything becomes available in like 1914

  • It means you rather quickly research everything available by like 1912

  • Not necessarily a bad thing cause its part of the mod design of really building up when the war starts

  • you do get a decent amount of research bonuses through focuses that you can use for the funny research zone between 1912 and 1914

  • The mod doesn't have fully updated tech, like for instance it still uses old style planes instead of a designer

• In terms of each nation being unique I'll quickly cover each one here. There are some nations that are much easier to play than others, as you'll soon see

  • France is an absolute powerhouse.

    • The earliest I've ever gotten tanks was as France.

    • You get really good industrial and production bonuses.

    • You can get really cheap doctrines early on

    • Your focus tree is extremely strong with a lot of very nice bonuses

    • Lots of fun fluff

    • You can win the war by sitting back and waiting, something I'll cover when talking about Germany

  • Britain is clearly the junior partner of France

    • unfortunately not a lot of love for tanks in the British tree, which means its very hard to produce them. Which is sad cause the brits were the tanks dudes historically

    • Your options are very open for what you can do, but it does nudge you a little towards fighting the Ottomans

    • Your specialty is navy, and you do have to focus on beating the Germans. However this is not that difficult if you just blob your navy and build anti-sub destroyers. You don't really have to worry about any other naval theatre which means you can concentrate on the germans until you sink enough ships then you can send the fleet wherever.

    • While you are less powerful than France, you're still very strong and once again can win the war by waiting

  • USA

    • If you want to go alt history and get involved early then its pretty fun and can be strong but there's a lot of negatives to deal with

    • The historical path is spectator mode.

    • By the time you can join in historical mode the Germans have already won or they are about to die in like a month.

  • Russia

    • Pain

    • endless pain

    • So as Russia you have a ton of negative maluses to overcome, and you have an enormous frontline to maintain with very poor industry to keep everyone supplied

    • You can go alt history and remove a lot of these maluses, but the industrial bottleneck I talked about earlier will still be present

    • If you start losing hard enough you will just begin to explode

    • The Russian Empire seems hard coded to lose at times

    • Soviets don't really have much to do other than fight the white movement which is painful Siberian no supply fighting.

  • Italy

    • Pain

    • Bad industry, bad army

    • Alt history can fix it

    • and even historical has options to give nice bonuses

    • luckily your main opponent is the Austrians so like its pretty much an even match

    • Like the rest of the entente, you can win just by defending which is easy for you cause mountains

    • Attacking is very difficult for you, cause mountains

    • Invest in strong mountaineers if you want to go anywhere

  • Germany

    • You are pretty strong, but not stronger than the entire Entente

    • However you are also a ticking time bomb

    • If you don't win the war fast enough you start getting increasingly worse negative spirits based on real life events such as the famine that Germany went through

    • Its much harder for you to deal with the Spanish Flu because you have a smaller faction

    • The war is going to get more difficult the longer it goes on

    • You can keep fighting but man its rough

    • AI germany will eventually capitulate in 1918 which is what I meant by you can win the war by just defending as the Entente

    • To win the war as Germany you actually have to break the lines of the entente which means you NEED to engage in costly offensives

    • You have a strong industry but not enough to reliably maintain huge offensives for a long time

    • You need to know enough about navy to beat the British otherwise you will never be able to trade for anything which means no rubber for planes

    • You are also the only competent major power in your faction. The ottomans and austrians will often need your help to not die.

  • Austria

    • More pain

    • once again you can go alt history to get rid of a lot of the negatives

    • however you do feel like a junior member compared to Germany in terms of industry and manpower

    • Your primary opponent will be Italy and Russia. luckily they also have a ton of negatives which means your actually fighting on a somewhat even ground

    • Your weak industry means you have a really hard time sustaining offensives

    • You have to deal with your allies. Germany is a ticking time bomb that will capitulate if it hasn't won by 1918 and the ottomans are the ottomans

  • The Ottoman Empire

    • Hey check it out more pain

    • You are the most junior member of the central powers and oh boy do you feel it

    • industry is pitiful, army is weak

    • once again going alt history can be a better idea

    • The British are going to be very annoying, however you're smart enough to use port guards

    • The limited frontlines work to your advantage cause you're always going to be fighting on small frontlines so you can concentrate your troops

    • Once again, your faction members are active threats to your existence

• I'm not going to cover all the minors but some of them can have a fun time

  • Romania is hell on Earth if you join the entente

  • Greece is the funny zone

  • Bulgaria is actually pretty strong for a minor

  • Serbia is 50/50 easy defense or hell on earth

  • The problem with minors is the industrial bottleneck hits even harder for them so if you don't have access to trade or the international market it can be very hard to sustain your army.

That's pretty much it; I'm sure I've forgotten some stuff, but you can ask about it if you want.