Thanks to Holzkern for sponsoring this video! Make sure to use my code ALDRAHILL for 15% off everything with my link www.holzkern.com/aldrahill I really do love their stuff, so if you're looking for a great gift for your mother or anyone else, check it out!
I know i'm a bit late to the party, but I thought of this yesterday and it's probably so bad, it's not even possible. Airborne Attacks ONLY. Not AIRBORNE only, AIRBORNE OPERATIONS ONLY. As in, you must take every province that you take with Para landings. At first blush it feels needlessly punishing and impossible, but it might be doable? Maybe? Love your content, you're the best HOI4 youtuber to come out of the scene in a while. Keep it up buddy~!!
6:28 you picked the wrong option during the Wrecker event, it was Valery Mezhlauk (chairman of the Gosplan at the time) who was purged, not Kaganovich, who was a close ally of Stalin until the end of WW2. literally unwatchable, I am in tears
@@Aldrahill the worst part, is the very first time you noticed hidden focus' you didnt keep looking for more of them. you should have been looking for them more the moment they sprung that on you.
All you need in this mod is air supperiority and CAS. The mod removes line AA battalions, so you can only add support AA. Add to that massive nerft to air defence of AA and you get NO defence from CAS (even if you stack both light and heavy AA in support of you div you will get only around 30 air defence which is easily overcome by any ingame CAS). Just focus on air and you will be fine.
I love BI, but one thing that makes no sense is the fact that the USSR is still stuck in WW1 era doctrines, when in textbook military thinkin, they were already developing the deep battle plan doctrine, a very advanced (for the time) model on combined arms wafare.
I guess you could say that the purge slowed down doctrine development, but the knowledge didint outright dissappear, as they used deep battle successfully against the germans.
@@quan-uo5ws more like purge just cut 90% of command staff, in such conditions anything more complicated than dig in here and wait would fail when facing Germans in 1941. And also ofc without cheats and miracles no country could fully go from agrarian country to industrial leader in 20 years, and nearly all new doctrines heavily relied on very technological parts like advanced communication equipment or total motorization.
Well to be fair, the Soviet army upon the start of ww2 was completely horrible and in no condition to fight a war. To simulate this they nerf your progression until 1942 when you can click a few arbitrarily appearing buttons to remove all your problems to get a chance.
the only difference is that Stalin is the leader of the USSR, and not bukharin, but is funny that Aldrahill technically did worse than AI, becuase i assume that in historical the USSR should push back Germany, but the AI probably get a lot of buffs, so no matter
@@Daniel-sj2hq Because soy devs rewritten own lore to make Stalin looks bad, lol (Old version of lore imply that he is actually capable and without him USSR are doomed.)
@@CalvinNoire Bukharin leading for the entire war was true for most of the mod's history. Bukharin being definitely not couped by Stalin (it was legal I assure you,) halfway through the war was a retcon the devs did a few months back.
in Russian textbooks the second five year plan is considered a success because frankly it was its just that coming after first five year plan the expectations were entirely unreasonable
@@pablojn4826 Yeah generally speaking all Five Year Plans (not counting the 3rd for obvious reasons) were highly successfull and lead to massive economic gain for the USSR. It's just that the goals were set so insanely high that technically speaking they are classified as failiures.
It was successfull basically across the board, industry, agriculture and economy boomed thanks to it and turned the USSR from agrarian backwater state to developed super power. It's just that the goals were so insanely high that on a technical level the plan could be considered a failiure.
I have now experienced the pain of BICE production. To use tanks you need engine assembly plants, tank assembly plants, military factories, steel refineries and power plants. Seeing your power go down was painful, once the negative spiral starts you can't get out of it. You have to prepare perfectly to win
Hah, yes indeed! I really try to get every video up 24 hours early to show my appreciation for the support! Thanks buddy :) More than welcome to still come along to the premiere to chat shit though :P
This just shows the importance of a good test game, always good to blitz through a run once just to make sure you know mostly what you're doing and the pitfalls you might end up in (like not seeing the invisible focuses).
The reason why there is tank battalion in soviet rifle division is because soviet military for some reason remove their mechanized corp (division sized mechanized formation) but later dissolve it and attached the dissolved mechanized unit into Soviet infantry formation. They later reversed and reestablish mechanized corp after the fall of france just before the german invasion
Well, those mechanized corps were terrible. They lacked the necessary infantry, technical and pretty much all other forms of support. Despite Kulik's comittee being completely filled with people who disliked the tank. Their conclusion was kind of correct, a more infantry heavy (Similar to a German tank division) unit with increased logistics support and all that would have performed signifincantly better then the under equipped Soviet mechanized "corps"
Stupid challenges:Play Black Ice and manage to have surplus equipment in all fronts,(Choose any country you want) Play Argentina on Black Ice or with the new DLC.
"iT'S hISTORICALLY aCCURATE!1!" It can basically just be summed up as "The author of the mod read Cold War era histories of the Great Purge that were 40+ years out of date and decided to discount anything published afterward as liberal nonsense."
You can do the 2nd five year plan quite easily on normal with some pre planning and micro if you know what you are doing. The requirements for it depend on the difficulty you pick. Constantly doing "Pripska" can help, since that randomly makes one of the conditions easier. There is a video on my channel where i do the plan, though it might be a bit outdated. Giving tractors to the peasants, slowly, over time, removes the industrial debuffs you have and gives you more manpower and such. You'll have to take the decision quite a few times before they are fully removed however. Soviets are rather hard, in a sense that you have to know what you are doing to mitigate the purges. For example, you can rush ww2 techs and get 1 maybe 2 out the door before the purges hit and they start taking like 900 days to research. But you have to know which one to pick. Pick the wrong one, and you'll have a bad time. But for all this you have to grind the SCW for XP, constantly train your units, spend PP on advisors and do whatever you can to get XP to rush the ww1 techs out the door. They don't take long, probably a year or so if you rush them. You also don't need all ww1 techs, there are some that aren't needed to start the WW2 ones. Again, you have to know what you are doing here. Winning the SCW will also make the purges slightly less punishing, but good luck with that one. I also found "NKVD Primacy" to be much better in the long run than "Rehabilitated Military" Now, defending right at the border is also a really bad idea. You have to defend behind rivers, in forests, fortifications and in bigger cities well behind the border. This is why you lost so many men and divisions at the start. Let the Germans slowly come to you and give up some of the western land. This buys you time and drains German supply and planning bonus. For this reason, you need to build all your factories around and behind Moscow, so you lose less to the eventual invasion. Personally i build no infras and only civs, then only mils mixed in with air assemblies, and plane assemblies after the 2nd five year plan ends. Maybe improve some of the railroads around Moscow. You also need a lot of planes to contest the air and mitigate the German CAS. I recommend producing only fighters at first. You really picked the worst country to play with as someone who is new to the mod. EDIT: Oh my god, you manually declared war on the baltics! That is one of the WORST things you can do as the soviets and it's a guaranteed one way ticket to lose the game because the purges are going to be a hundred times worse! You must use the focuses to annex them peacefully. They become available (and visible) once the MR pact is signed and you even get all their divisions intact this way, so more men to fight the germans later on. It is quite odd you did this, since you were going all historical, but the soviets never declared open war on the baltics in real life. I'm surprised you lasted until 1943 to be honest. I recommend joining the Black Ice discord for discussion and tips and tricks.
I’ve actually watched your video xD I tried following along but clearly fucked up - and holy shit I did not realize about peacefully doing the baltics that’s TERRIBLE why does the game obfuscate things like this?! That’s my biggest difficulty with this mod, it seems to want you to fail and deliberately hides info from you at every turn. Good advice though, I’ll keep it in mind if I revisit :)
@@Aldrahill If you do annex the baltics peacefully i believe they first become your subjects. Then you need to put units into their capital to increase communist support before they can be fully annexed.
Strangely enough, I think a game like this would be very well suited to a fantasy/alternate earth setting. You either have to remove the abstractions baked into HOI4's code, or embrace them fully and design your divisions around it.
@@thr33d50 Well for BICE specifically it only has the historical paths pretty much. There's extremely minor alt history stuff like Walther Wever and Amelia Earhart having a chance to live, but the focus paths basically all follow the historical path. So no Kaiser in BICE, sadly.
If you run out of historical runs on your to-do-list, would you consider doing the "Lost Lamb Challenge"? The Idea is simple. Start as you home nation using the "Random Country Placement" mod. The goal is to find your way home, which means taking over approximately the territory that your country is supposed to own according to its historical borders. The mod also randomizes all ideologies and resources on the map, as well as manpower. It has great replayability, since no to starting positions are ever alike. If you want to try it out, playing as the UK and finding your way home (owning all of the British Isles) would make for a nice challenge. Remember that you could end up starting in Hawaii. Or Siberia. You never know what you get! 😃 PS. The mod also has the option to give nations a couple of random starting technologies, which I highly recommend clicking "yes" on,. Although the mod makers haven't updated the list of free techs to include tank/plane designer stuff it is still a lot of fun even though you might just get a pre No Step Back -style "Fighter Plane 1" or Light Tank 2". Oh, and the mod currently needs you to save on day 1 after after randomizing the world and then load that save, so that the game refreshes and understands where your new core provinces are. Other than that, it works fine. Hope you give it a try at some point! 🙂
Took me some 3 games until I finally managed to win as the soviets in WA but it was one of the best experiences I've had in hoi4. Best historical realism mod for this game that doesn't overcomplicate it too much imo.
It's too railroaded imo. You are basically forced to lose with Finland because of some really bs modifiers, and Barbarossa is borderline impossible. I refuse to believe anyone won it legitimately after I've covered my entire country in lvl 10 forts and still somehow got my army destroyed. But idk if I'm not confusing it with another overhaul mod
@@maciekGTR yeah i also cheated and made lvl 12 forts behind the Dnieper river line and the ai pushed me out in 1 month and only took 200k casualties lol
Don't worry, this mod is so railroaded it's a nightmare.. It's possible to win if you played at elast once as the USSR, or know how to cheese this mod And I've read somewhere that it's supposedly possible to finish the 2nd 5 y.p. but you need to have a lot of luck and follow a lot steps literally perfectly down to the hour
My insane challenge for 50k: Soviet Union, but you don't get to research ANY focuses or ANY new tech! Have fun with defending against the Germans with ALL the starting debuffs and 1936 tech pal!
@@Aldrahill Damn, I didn't know someone else would be so crazy to attempt that. Then I guess, you could try doing it with Germany? Though that entails no Anschluss and no Czechoslovk expansion. I wonder how would that work.
@@Aldrahill do you want it harder? If yes, do it with only 2 width Infantry divisions called "The Worker" so that everyone is truly equal. And yes, every soldier needs to get the same equipment to feek equal, so no support companies and if you use mios on a rifle, to use a upgraded version, you have to equip every soldier with it, as in communism, everyone is equal.
You can change your infantry Template before 1942! The Soviets changed the infantry ToE 3 times in 41, especially the July one would be a big help. Once again I recommend Nigel Askeys works in order to find the proper ToEs. Also the Soviet Cavalary did not disappear during the War. the divisions did, as most were reduced to brigades, but the soviet build lots of those bridgades in order to gain mobile forces.
The algorithm has sent me here, and good god do I feel your pain sir. Like, HoI IV in default can be number fiddly as all get-out, and even as someone with...disturbing amounts of time in it. I struggle to make divisions that don't fold like Moustachio Man when the slightest application of force. The level of fortitude, skill, and sheer bloody-minded determination for this is beyond me. Take your thumbs up you madman, and keep shining you crazy diamond.
Here is a nice challange, You have to beat Royal Navy as Germany, you must use Vanila Navy Rework mod (you can play it with r56 if you like) and you are only allowed to make historical designs or designs based on historical concepts (never built), you can have land based torpedo bombers but you can not have more than 300 (or 200 if you are using medium bombers). You can not sealion until you have more capitals and screens than UK, you also have to Barbarosa in 1941, you can not steal ships from other nations. You win if you cap UK by Jan. 1944.
I just thought of something that is possibly truly pain, not only are you limited to only historical templates but also historical battle plans, doctrines and factories meaning you have to use the exact number of factories that were used historically for say rifles
There is no winning in black ice. Only suffering. Also I think the devs expect you to be A. Perfect at playing base hoi4 and B. Playing at 1 speed. Also the hidden focuses are complete horseshit and the only time they work is when it’s for jokey Easter egg focus trees.
Have you ever tried to hold the line against Italy as Albania? Not even with historical divisions only, since I imagine the whole surrendering thing probably would make it moot what they used.
I swear, those "historical" mods would make the USSR infinetly easier and more enjoyable to play if they just gave the USSR their historically added industry which completely eclipsed the Axis one. That way you could at least compensate for those countless debuffs with lots of good equipment, but in the current state, you have neither industry nor stats as the Soviets
Hello Aldrahill! Thank you very much for the very high quality content on my favorite game, HOI4 I am from Russia myself and wanted to talk about the “winter war”, the fact is that it is considered a failure due to the ratio of losses by the Soviet army during the years of this war, as well as in conjunction with lost equipment. And that’s why we consider it a failure, thank you if you read this comment, for me English is very easy to understand and I want to wish you good luck in mastering this space hoi4.
You were in a malus for electricity from 1940 onwards basicly, all the time you surpass the 100% usage you get maluses in your factory production, conversion speed and material refinery production, thats why you werent producing enough rawmaterials or even equipment as fast as you could have been, whenever it approches 95% consumption I would suggest building 2 electric production facilities so that you dont have to think about it again for a bit
The 'Ambhibious tankette' thing threw me for a loop too until I looked on the tanks wiki page and found it actually was amphibious and for some reason the garrison templates use them so I'm back to being confused again.
Amazing video. Btw i forgot to tell you. In Bice in custom settings, you must "allow to spawn historical units" (i normal its not allowed)...then you will get units trough focus tree....:)
Really interesting how looking at these historical divisions, it becomes quite clear why the Soviets had such bad supply problems early into the war in real history.
considering you played the HARDEST BICE nation in the game, following the ON PAPER divisions (with a sprinkle of "in practice" modifications) the result isn't surprising. the soviets require MASSIVE meta knowledge on top of huge logistical planning, it is pain. i had to retry them 3 times before the 4th time did it. if you ever retry this challenge you have to follow the 41 to 45 a LOT closer to their "in reality" situacion and keep making modifications to your divisions to ensure your divisions keep to 90%+ strength (hoi4 punishes low strength divisions severely) by removing artillery batallions (the soviets irl had so little artillery pieces they ended up being used as direct fire instead of indirect), downgrading your infantry to militia as your mortar and mg stockpiles diminish, as well as only use MEDIUM tanks as "necessary". another important tip to keep in mind is that the actual "health bar" between Germany and the soviets is: Germany has low manpower while the soviets have low equipment. who ever runs out of its respective "health bar" first loses. so you know those severe winter modifiers both parties get? make sure to attack the germans during winter so those modifiers kick in, specially the attrition, to ensure they bleed more and more manpower.
If you're planning to do this with the US later on, the channel Battle Order has a really good video about the evolution of their armored divisions during the war.
The soviets realized the value of SMGs in the winterwar. And as a finnish officer that swapped sides brought along blueprints for suomi drums, they could actually fix the main issue they had with their native designs. Till 42 they used SMGs as sparringly as the US or the Nazis though. The full SMG units from 1942 onwards are ON TOP of the SMGs distributed among the regular troops like squadleaders or tankers
First time I played Black Ice as the USSR. I had a fun Spanish Civil War where I pump the Republicans full of weapons that I don't have a deficit of. Tried, and failed, to reach the production quota. Held Spain until the Polish German War broke out. Then when the Winter War happens, entire armies get stopped by one Finnish division. I tried paradropping behind them to cut off their supply and all my paratroopers die in the process. It was a fun experience, if 'fun' means getting an urge to lobotomize yourself.
Well you can't really expect historical approaches to work with a system that's not historical. Besides the mod still not being historically accurate (even if it is _a lot_ better than Paradox' meme-based history), the simple fact is that mechanically it is still HoI4, not real life. It still requires the approaches of a game.
I really wonder how strictly the actual ww2 divisions followed these templates. For example, how many infantry divisions actually had light tank battalions in them? From what I've read, not many.
My own experience with the Soviet union in this mod was great!… except the part where my southern central front was completely open and half my army died. Also, TYSM FOR REMINDING ME OF MOTHERS DAY
if there is a dedicated meat shield divisions thats purposefully not given guns or anything just to cause the germans to run out of ammo you will earn my like
I'd be interested later down the line if you came back to these for a better informed run of Blackice, it seems like the sort of mod you'd need to play a couple times before you understand it's... Nuance.
Thanks to Holzkern for sponsoring this video!
Make sure to use my code ALDRAHILL for 15% off everything with my link www.holzkern.com/aldrahill
I really do love their stuff, so if you're looking for a great gift for your mother or anyone else, check it out!
Next historical Poland
What do you click on to introduce equipment.
bro try to add the link to the mods in your videos (there is a ton of mods)
Wouldn't you rather to play "World Ablaze" historically? it's kind of a compromise between Black ICE and Vanilla
I know i'm a bit late to the party, but I thought of this yesterday and it's probably so bad, it's not even possible.
Airborne Attacks ONLY. Not AIRBORNE only, AIRBORNE OPERATIONS ONLY. As in, you must take every province that you take with Para landings. At first blush it feels needlessly punishing and impossible, but it might be doable? Maybe?
Love your content, you're the best HOI4 youtuber to come out of the scene in a while. Keep it up buddy~!!
You shouldn't be sorry to us because you lost... We have to be sorry for you because you had to play this.
i agree
Shouldn't it be easier playing as the Soviets/Allies instead of the Axis?
All the Allies have to do is not do the stupid moves they did in Real Life
6:28 you picked the wrong option during the Wrecker event, it was Valery Mezhlauk (chairman of the Gosplan at the time) who was purged, not Kaganovich, who was a close ally of Stalin until the end of WW2. literally unwatchable, I am in tears
FORGIVE ME COMRADEEEE
Bro, can you give me the source of your pfp? Thanks.
>most historical mod
>historical strategy doesn't work
lmao, amazing work on the part of the devs
Honestly it’s my fault, I didn’t play optimally enough!
so historical that Iran invades and the US wont lend lease anything
@@Aldrahill the worst part, is the very first time you noticed hidden focus' you didnt keep looking for more of them. you should have been looking for them more the moment they sprung that on you.
this is exactly what would have happened irl if the soviets weren't propped up by massive amounts of lend lease haha
@@ttnrg6778 revisionism
Black Ice: Requires huge meta-strategies and wiki to know where the good focuses are. Obvious no fun minmaxing.
Bro: Lets try to play historical here.
The T-38 being amphibious is actually accurate
Whaaaat
@@Aldrahill yea it was a lil goofy boat tankette, i only know about it because it was a starter tank in a WW2 shooter
@@lohenriksson9698 Heroes and Generals?
@@luna_macaroni Yeah, I was thinking in H&G (RIP)
@@luna_macaroni yea
The other paid comment I did was funnier but got censored by TH-cam, so just pretend I said something funny
Awww what, I lost out on peak YumSuc humour?!? And thank you very much for your support
Such a funny
@@viligerm6592 what can I say I’m a bit of a comedian
TH-cam Is evilv
And then TH-cam gets 30% of your donation 😢
Honestly black ice is a mod that I like but….it really feels like you need to play near perfect to have a chance.
Agreed! It’s so punishing
All you need in this mod is air supperiority and CAS. The mod removes line AA battalions, so you can only add support AA. Add to that massive nerft to air defence of AA and you get NO defence from CAS (even if you stack both light and heavy AA in support of you div you will get only around 30 air defence which is easily overcome by any ingame CAS). Just focus on air and you will be fine.
HOI4 bice is a far cry from the quality and historiocity of HOI3 bice
@@Aldrahillno , you missed bunch of historical things that Soviet did, this is actually a much more realistic take than hoi 4.
or just cheat
remember chat, we can make him do armored car Ottomans in Great War Redux
I love BI, but one thing that makes no sense is the fact that the USSR is still stuck in WW1 era doctrines, when in textbook military thinkin, they were already developing the deep battle plan doctrine, a very advanced (for the time) model on combined arms wafare.
I guess you could say that the purge slowed down doctrine development, but the knowledge didint outright dissappear, as they used deep battle successfully against the germans.
@@quan-uo5ws more like purge just cut 90% of command staff, in such conditions anything more complicated than dig in here and wait would fail when facing Germans in 1941. And also ofc without cheats and miracles no country could fully go from agrarian country to industrial leader in 20 years, and nearly all new doctrines heavily relied on very technological parts like advanced communication equipment or total motorization.
Well to be fair, the Soviet army upon the start of ww2 was completely horrible and in no condition to fight a war. To simulate this they nerf your progression until 1942 when you can click a few arbitrarily appearing buttons to remove all your problems to get a chance.
Guess you were just roleplaying the events that led to TNO
the only difference is that Stalin is the leader of the USSR, and not bukharin, but is funny that Aldrahill technically did worse than AI, becuase i assume that in historical the USSR should push back Germany, but the AI probably get a lot of buffs, so no matter
@@llama878actually no in tno stalin couped bukharin soon after the germans invaded
@@Daniel-sj2hq Because soy devs rewritten own lore to make Stalin looks bad, lol (Old version of lore imply that he is actually capable and without him USSR are doomed.)
@@Daniel-sj2hq Really? I thought Bukharin was the leader through out the entire war, and that's why they lost.
@@CalvinNoire Bukharin leading for the entire war was true for most of the mod's history. Bukharin being definitely not couped by Stalin (it was legal I assure you,) halfway through the war was a retcon the devs did a few months back.
in Russian textbooks the second five year plan is considered a success
because frankly it was
its just that coming after first five year plan the expectations were entirely unreasonable
That’s fair, but still technically a failure!
@@AldrahillThis video shines more sources and data to that claim, historians like Getty arrive at similar conclusions
@@pablojn4826 Yeah generally speaking all Five Year Plans (not counting the 3rd for obvious reasons) were highly successfull and lead to massive economic gain for the USSR. It's just that the goals were set so insanely high that technically speaking they are classified as failiures.
It was successfull basically across the board, industry, agriculture and economy boomed thanks to it and turned the USSR from agrarian backwater state to developed super power. It's just that the goals were so insanely high that on a technical level the plan could be considered a failiure.
@@dwarow2508 shoot for the stars, aim for the moon
Conclusion: Historical division templates are crap, and become even crappier the more realistic the situation gets.
100%
Watching while waiting for Food hits different.
Literal peak goals for a TH-camr - be something people enjoy with food or while waiting for a meal
I have now experienced the pain of BICE production. To use tanks you need engine assembly plants, tank assembly plants, military factories, steel refineries and power plants. Seeing your power go down was painful, once the negative spiral starts you can't get out of it. You have to prepare perfectly to win
Equipment and production problems while playing BICE? That's new. ;)
It was never ending :(
Can't wait for him to play all the nations that sucked in WW2
BICE France should be about as painfull as this one
Yeah it’s going to be torture xD
YES IT IS . (I'd like to see your approach)
Oh wait members get things early? Huge! I just wanted to support lol
Hah, yes indeed! I really try to get every video up 24 hours early to show my appreciation for the support! Thanks buddy :)
More than welcome to still come along to the premiere to chat shit though :P
This just shows the importance of a good test game, always good to blitz through a run once just to make sure you know mostly what you're doing and the pitfalls you might end up in (like not seeing the invisible focuses).
The reason why there is tank battalion in soviet rifle division is because soviet military for some reason remove their mechanized corp (division sized mechanized formation) but later dissolve it and attached the dissolved mechanized unit into Soviet infantry formation. They later reversed and reestablish mechanized corp after the fall of france just before the german invasion
No one can understand the genius that is Soviet military thinking pre 1942
@@Aldrahill Good thing they corrected themselves juuuuuust before shit body slammed the fan.
Well, those mechanized corps were terrible. They lacked the necessary infantry, technical and pretty much all other forms of support. Despite Kulik's comittee being completely filled with people who disliked the tank. Their conclusion was kind of correct, a more infantry heavy (Similar to a German tank division) unit with increased logistics support and all that would have performed signifincantly better then the under equipped Soviet mechanized "corps"
Stupid challenges:Play Black Ice and manage to have surplus equipment in all fronts,(Choose any country you want)
Play Argentina on Black Ice or with the new DLC.
Literally impossible xD
@@Aldrahillnot if you’re the Swiss
Massive respect to aldrahill to actually do this
A Hoi4 gamer with a wife? Somethings not right 😂😂
11:28 they were doing space marine divisions before it was cool. Give them a break they had visionary ideas.
This is actually historically inaccurate, because the molotov line was the actual decision the Soviet lidership took
Using the historical presets is a form of CBT. May God have mercy on your soul, for Black Ice will not
"iT'S hISTORICALLY aCCURATE!1!"
It can basically just be summed up as "The author of the mod read Cold War era histories of the Great Purge that were 40+ years out of date and decided to discount anything published afterward as liberal nonsense."
Pretty much I guess :P
You can do the 2nd five year plan quite easily on normal with some pre planning and micro if you know what you are doing. The requirements for it depend on the difficulty you pick. Constantly doing "Pripska" can help, since that randomly makes one of the conditions easier. There is a video on my channel where i do the plan, though it might be a bit outdated.
Giving tractors to the peasants, slowly, over time, removes the industrial debuffs you have and gives you more manpower and such. You'll have to take the decision quite a few times before they are fully removed however.
Soviets are rather hard, in a sense that you have to know what you are doing to mitigate the purges. For example, you can rush ww2 techs and get 1 maybe 2 out the door before the purges hit and they start taking like 900 days to research. But you have to know which one to pick. Pick the wrong one, and you'll have a bad time. But for all this you have to grind the SCW for XP, constantly train your units, spend PP on advisors and do whatever you can to get XP to rush the ww1 techs out the door. They don't take long, probably a year or so if you rush them. You also don't need all ww1 techs, there are some that aren't needed to start the WW2 ones. Again, you have to know what you are doing here. Winning the SCW will also make the purges slightly less punishing, but good luck with that one. I also found "NKVD Primacy" to be much better in the long run than "Rehabilitated Military"
Now, defending right at the border is also a really bad idea. You have to defend behind rivers, in forests, fortifications and in bigger cities well behind the border. This is why you lost so many men and divisions at the start. Let the Germans slowly come to you and give up some of the western land. This buys you time and drains German supply and planning bonus. For this reason, you need to build all your factories around and behind Moscow, so you lose less to the eventual invasion. Personally i build no infras and only civs, then only mils mixed in with air assemblies, and plane assemblies after the 2nd five year plan ends. Maybe improve some of the railroads around Moscow. You also need a lot of planes to contest the air and mitigate the German CAS. I recommend producing only fighters at first.
You really picked the worst country to play with as someone who is new to the mod.
EDIT:
Oh my god, you manually declared war on the baltics! That is one of the WORST things you can do as the soviets and it's a guaranteed one way ticket to lose the game because the purges are going to be a hundred times worse! You must use the focuses to annex them peacefully. They become available (and visible) once the MR pact is signed and you even get all their divisions intact this way, so more men to fight the germans later on. It is quite odd you did this, since you were going all historical, but the soviets never declared open war on the baltics in real life.
I'm surprised you lasted until 1943 to be honest.
I recommend joining the Black Ice discord for discussion and tips and tricks.
I’ve actually watched your video xD I tried following along but clearly fucked up - and holy shit I did not realize about peacefully doing the baltics that’s TERRIBLE why does the game obfuscate things like this?! That’s my biggest difficulty with this mod, it seems to want you to fail and deliberately hides info from you at every turn.
Good advice though, I’ll keep it in mind if I revisit :)
@@Aldrahill If you do annex the baltics peacefully i believe they first become your subjects. Then you need to put units into their capital to increase communist support before they can be fully annexed.
Play as China.... in Blackice.... with historical calvary divisions
No plzzzz
@@Aldrahill (A hooded figure stands before you. With ominous music playing in the background.) Do it.
Yes sir :(
@@jonathanfabela739 "dew it"
Strangely enough, I think a game like this would be very well suited to a fantasy/alternate earth setting. You either have to remove the abstractions baked into HOI4's code, or embrace them fully and design your divisions around it.
Ya know, I feel like you should do this but with the alt history paths. Ie, historic German divisions as the Kaiser
In base game I assume? That could be fun!
@@Aldrahill yeah totally I don’t want you going insane.
Unless you want toooooo??????
Using WW1 divisions as the Kaiser in WW2
@@thr33d50 Well for BICE specifically it only has the historical paths pretty much. There's extremely minor alt history stuff like Walther Wever and Amelia Earhart having a chance to live, but the focus paths basically all follow the historical path. So no Kaiser in BICE, sadly.
@@johnteixeira6405 oh no I mean in base game in black ice that would be torture
GAMER WARNING: Amphetamines are unfortunately required to play this mod. The creators do not apologize for this inconvenience.
Millennium dawn Tajikistan world conquest when?
Here's an impossible challenge: Win a BICE game
If you run out of historical runs on your to-do-list, would you consider doing the "Lost Lamb Challenge"?
The Idea is simple. Start as you home nation using the "Random Country Placement" mod. The goal is to find your way home, which means taking over approximately the territory that your country is supposed to own according to its historical borders. The mod also randomizes all ideologies and resources on the map, as well as manpower. It has great replayability, since no to starting positions are ever alike. If you want to try it out, playing as the UK and finding your way home (owning all of the British Isles) would make for a nice challenge. Remember that you could end up starting in Hawaii. Or Siberia. You never know what you get! 😃
PS. The mod also has the option to give nations a couple of random starting technologies, which I highly recommend clicking "yes" on,. Although the mod makers haven't updated the list of free techs to include tank/plane designer stuff it is still a lot of fun even though you might just get a pre No Step Back -style "Fighter Plane 1" or Light Tank 2". Oh, and the mod currently needs you to save on day 1 after after randomizing the world and then load that save, so that the game refreshes and understands where your new core provinces are. Other than that, it works fine. Hope you give it a try at some point! 🙂
Playing as USSR in World Ablaze is even more painful. I suggest you to try it out
Took me some 3 games until I finally managed to win as the soviets in WA but it was one of the best experiences I've had in hoi4. Best historical realism mod for this game that doesn't overcomplicate it too much imo.
Playing any nation in World Ablaze is painful.
It's too railroaded imo. You are basically forced to lose with Finland because of some really bs modifiers, and Barbarossa is borderline impossible. I refuse to believe anyone won it legitimately after I've covered my entire country in lvl 10 forts and still somehow got my army destroyed. But idk if I'm not confusing it with another overhaul mod
@@Militiaa so how did you win? like for real can you provide a guide lol
@@maciekGTR yeah i also cheated and made lvl 12 forts behind the Dnieper river line and the ai pushed me out in 1 month and only took 200k casualties lol
Don't worry, this mod is so railroaded it's a nightmare.. It's possible to win if you played at elast once as the USSR, or know how to cheese this mod
And I've read somewhere that it's supposedly possible to finish the 2nd 5 y.p. but you need to have a lot of luck and follow a lot steps literally perfectly down to the hour
My insane challenge for 50k:
Soviet Union, but you don't get to research ANY focuses or ANY new tech! Have fun with defending against the Germans with ALL the starting debuffs and 1936 tech pal!
Do I have a present for you! I already did it!!! Can NO Focuses & NO Research Beat Germany In HOI4?
th-cam.com/video/YZXxT4kGv20/w-d-xo.html
@@Aldrahill Damn, I didn't know someone else would be so crazy to attempt that. Then I guess, you could try doing it with Germany? Though that entails no Anschluss and no Czechoslovk expansion. I wonder how would that work.
@@Aldrahill do you want it harder? If yes, do it with only 2 width Infantry divisions called "The Worker" so that everyone is truly equal. And yes, every soldier needs to get the same equipment to feek equal, so no support companies and if you use mios on a rifle, to use a upgraded version, you have to equip every soldier with it, as in communism, everyone is equal.
You can change your infantry Template before 1942!
The Soviets changed the infantry ToE 3 times in 41, especially the July one would be a big help. Once again I recommend Nigel Askeys works in order to find the proper ToEs.
Also the Soviet Cavalary did not disappear during the War. the divisions did, as most were reduced to brigades, but the soviet build lots of those bridgades in order to gain mobile forces.
A good point! But I was trying to stick to a sort of arbitrary once a year idea that definitely shot me in the foot! Good tip though!
@@Aldrahill But that probably killed you, as that way you were unable to field sufficent units in 41 and 42
The algorithm has sent me here, and good god do I feel your pain sir. Like, HoI IV in default can be number fiddly as all get-out, and even as someone with...disturbing amounts of time in it. I struggle to make divisions that don't fold like Moustachio Man when the slightest application of force. The level of fortitude, skill, and sheer bloody-minded determination for this is beyond me. Take your thumbs up you madman, and keep shining you crazy diamond.
Thanks bud! It truly was hellish xD but appreciate your comment and welcome! Lots more BICE coming soon :)
I love how you pronounce "Barbarossa" as "Bob Ross-a"
Is he welsh?
Here is a nice challange,
You have to beat Royal Navy as Germany, you must use Vanila Navy Rework mod (you can play it with r56 if you like) and you are only allowed to make historical designs or designs based on historical concepts (never built), you can have land based torpedo bombers but you can not have more than 300 (or 200 if you are using medium bombers). You can not sealion until you have more capitals and screens than UK, you also have to Barbarosa in 1941, you can not steal ships from other nations.
You win if you cap UK by Jan. 1944.
Great Video. I love how you did the ad. Keep going.
Thank you so much! It was a lot of fun to make :D
Oooh, that's gonna hurt. A lot
I just thought of something that is possibly truly pain, not only are you limited to only historical templates but also historical battle plans, doctrines and factories meaning you have to use the exact number of factories that were used historically for say rifles
Cool, now play black ice as Italy!
It’s coming!
@@Aldrahill Nice, good luck you going to need it 🍀
BICE is my default HOI4 experience, but mostly because I really like designing navies.
There is no winning in black ice. Only suffering. Also I think the devs expect you to be A. Perfect at playing base hoi4 and B. Playing at 1 speed.
Also the hidden focuses are complete horseshit and the only time they work is when it’s for jokey Easter egg focus trees.
you need to try this again
Not gonna lie i would love to see you play Poland with historical divisions only
tbh this is why people going "HURR DURR MUH REALISM" should be disregarded 99% of the time
Have you ever tried to hold the line against Italy as Albania? Not even with historical divisions only, since I imagine the whole surrendering thing probably would make it moot what they used.
I swear, those "historical" mods would make the USSR infinetly easier and more enjoyable to play if they just gave the USSR their historically added industry which completely eclipsed the Axis one. That way you could at least compensate for those countless debuffs with lots of good equipment, but in the current state, you have neither industry nor stats as the Soviets
I found Black Ice in HOI3 and HOI4 "historicity" a huge werhboo onanistic fanfic.
Hello Aldrahill! Thank you very much for the very high quality content on my favorite game, HOI4
I am from Russia myself and wanted to talk about the “winter war”, the fact is that it is considered a failure due to the ratio of losses by the Soviet army during the years of this war, as well as in conjunction with lost equipment.
And that’s why we consider it a failure, thank you if you read this comment, for me English is very easy to understand and I want to wish you good luck in mastering this space hoi4.
You were in a malus for electricity from 1940 onwards basicly, all the time you surpass the 100% usage you get maluses in your factory production, conversion speed and material refinery production, thats why you werent producing enough rawmaterials or even equipment as fast as you could have been, whenever it approches 95% consumption I would suggest building 2 electric production facilities so that you dont have to think about it again for a bit
The 'Ambhibious tankette' thing threw me for a loop too until I looked on the tanks wiki page and found it actually was amphibious and for some reason the garrison templates use them so I'm back to being confused again.
Bro whyyy history is confusing
Amazing video. Btw i forgot to tell you. In Bice in custom settings, you must "allow to spawn historical units" (i normal its not allowed)...then you will get units trough focus tree....:)
… fuck
@@Aldrahill im sorry I forget about this 😞
Really interesting how looking at these historical divisions, it becomes quite clear why the Soviets had such bad supply problems early into the war in real history.
Yeah it’s cool how much conforming to something like and organisational chart can show the realities of history :) that’s why I love making these!
It is crazy to see, EVEN WITH HINDSIGHT, how much this play through resembled the Soviet Unions struggle in WW2.
Right?! It’s pretty cool just how real it felt
Watching you play this mod makes me want to play it too and thankfully watching you teaches me the basics of this mod so thank you
Like Bokoen1 said, you need Aderall to play BICE.
now you need to give this a shot again now that you know about the secret focuses
Should do historical China with Black Ice mod.
considering you played the HARDEST BICE nation in the game, following the ON PAPER divisions (with a sprinkle of "in practice" modifications) the result isn't surprising. the soviets require MASSIVE meta knowledge on top of huge logistical planning, it is pain. i had to retry them 3 times before the 4th time did it.
if you ever retry this challenge you have to follow the 41 to 45 a LOT closer to their "in reality" situacion and keep making modifications to your divisions to ensure your divisions keep to 90%+ strength (hoi4 punishes low strength divisions severely) by removing artillery batallions (the soviets irl had so little artillery pieces they ended up being used as direct fire instead of indirect), downgrading your infantry to militia as your mortar and mg stockpiles diminish, as well as only use MEDIUM tanks as "necessary".
another important tip to keep in mind is that the actual "health bar" between Germany and the soviets is: Germany has low manpower while the soviets have low equipment. who ever runs out of its respective "health bar" first loses. so you know those severe winter modifiers both parties get? make sure to attack the germans during winter so those modifiers kick in, specially the attrition, to ensure they bleed more and more manpower.
If you're planning to do this with the US later on, the channel Battle Order has a really good video about the evolution of their armored divisions during the war.
Oooo yes plz, put the link in my discord under historical divisions if you have time! Always good to record sources :)
This one was fantastic. What a whooping!
Thank you so much!!
Smoothest sponsor segment I have ever watched.
Ayyyy thank you! Trying to make them funny and enjoyable at the same time :)
I would love for you to try this again now that you know about all those missed focuses.
You gotta play Italy in this, dude. It will be absolute fucking pain.
It’s coming ;)
Awesome attention to detail
Thank you! I try :)
You already know what I'm about to ask you. But just in case, luxembourg black ice game play
You should play with the anime mod, and try to survive all the angry comments
Truly impossible to survive
@@Aldrahill i know, it's harder than endsieg or black ice
But you did survive black ice ;>
The soviets realized the value of SMGs in the winterwar. And as a finnish officer that swapped sides brought along blueprints for suomi drums, they could actually fix the main issue they had with their native designs. Till 42 they used SMGs as sparringly as the US or the Nazis though. The full SMG units from 1942 onwards are ON TOP of the SMGs distributed among the regular troops like squadleaders or tankers
now that you know what to expect, maybe try again?
First time I played Black Ice as the USSR. I had a fun Spanish Civil War where I pump the Republicans full of weapons that I don't have a deficit of. Tried, and failed, to reach the production quota. Held Spain until the Polish German War broke out.
Then when the Winter War happens, entire armies get stopped by one Finnish division. I tried paradropping behind them to cut off their supply and all my paratroopers die in the process.
It was a fun experience, if 'fun' means getting an urge to lobotomize yourself.
Oh btw the 5 year plan is possible really fucking hard but possible
Yes! I saw a guide how to on the discord :) wanna try it at some point
FINALLY ANOTGER GREAT VIDEO❤
Well you can't really expect historical approaches to work with a system that's not historical. Besides the mod still not being historically accurate (even if it is _a lot_ better than Paradox' meme-based history), the simple fact is that mechanically it is still HoI4, not real life. It still requires the approaches of a game.
i think you still need a ww1 france presets video!
Definitely on the way!!
I stand by the recommendation of mixing nations and historical divisions.
You'll have to give this another try at some point
Definitely!
playing USSR in the black ice mod is just a cry of help at this point…
Plz… halp:(
I really wonder how strictly the actual ww2 divisions followed these templates. For example, how many infantry divisions actually had light tank battalions in them? From what I've read, not many.
Try Italy next. Thats the true definition of pain with this mod lol.
Could you play Finland with historical divisions and designs?
I’m gonna!
This mod build up your pain threshold
Give it a redo, now with the knowledge of the focus tree, it should be easier.
My own experience with the Soviet union in this mod was great!… except the part where my southern central front was completely open and half my army died. Also, TYSM FOR REMINDING ME OF MOTHERS DAY
'we will do historical!'
6:29 be like
black ice endsieg
That’s just regular black ice :P
Italy Historical BICE when?
Coming soon!!
@@Aldrahill Yippee!!
Hmmm... Sounds like an alcoholic/workaholic Stalin simulator.
Too true
Lore of Soviet Historical Suffering in HOI4’s Most Painful Mod momentum 100
So, when navy only Mongolia in BICE?
The paaaain
@@Aldrahill Just noticed Tibet has a focus tree...
I will watch this later
If you do suggestions can we have the U.K. in black ice?
Always suggestions! And absolutely, it’s coming! :)
if there is a dedicated meat shield divisions thats purposefully not given guns or anything just to cause the germans to run out of ammo you will earn my like
I'd be interested later down the line if you came back to these for a better informed run of Blackice, it seems like the sort of mod you'd need to play a couple times before you understand it's... Nuance.
Great video, will you be making a historical Poland in such mods as Historical Poland: Redux or Black Ice?
Yes!