Beating the game in May 1937 - Hoi4 World Record Speedrun Explained

welcome everyone today we're taking a look at the new world record speed run for World Conquest in Hearts of Iron 4. the strategy that I'm about to show you would have been deemed nothing short of impossible not too long ago I'll try my best to explain all key aspects of the run on the fly but might have to insert short breaks here and there to get into more detail anyway enjoy I'm playing on the current version of the game Iron Man and historical mode enabled and no mods to comply with the rules for hoi4 on speedrun.com luckily there is little preparation needed during the campaign setup and I've come to appreciate that very very much I'll explain why in a minute the Soviet Union starts with very few transport convoys and we're going to need quite a few of them early on hence why we concentrate our Naval production solely on convoys same with military factories and equipment we only need guns and trucks at the start of the game we Face a sizeable equipment deficit which we are resolve by deleting all Cavalry and Mountaineer divisions the first Focus we take is from the political branch called the path to Marxism leninism it'll take 35 days to finish and provides us with a bit of extra political power and that's it that's all the setup we need while we wait for the current and subsequent Focus to finish let's quickly go over the first big milestone of this run we plan to start a civil war in the Soviet Union as soon as possible to get the left opposition in power with Leon Trotsky as the new leader it's rather trivial to achieve but getting it done fast is a bit of a challenge and requires a ton of good RNG for the perfect outcome the Civil War automatically kicks off after Stalin's paranoia is high enough we therefore want to reach that Mark as quickly as possible instead of delaying to improve our starting situation after we've unlocked the ability to expand territory that's loyal to our cause from finishing the left opposition Focus we're going to solely use the territory mechanic to increase Stalin's paranoia they only cost 25 political power and increase Paranoia by 10. the big big downside of this approach are the random perch events depending on the specifics of the event the effects will delay the start of the Civil War at best all will impose serious penalties as mentioned before avoiding the effects costs political power which we don't have much of and also need for the territorial decisions but here's the kicker since we only require a short amount of time to surpass the needed threshold of 90 paranoia to get the Civil War started there's a very slim chance for no perch events to occur at all if the odds are in our favor we are going to be able to start the Russian Civil War early without having long-lasting penalties imposed on us but more importantly we're going to have the least amount of political power invested and that's vital since we'll need plenty of it throughout the Run I cannot stress enough just how small the odds are for no Purge events to happen unless you're willing to grind restarts over and over again you should not expect this result meanwhile we hired the chief of army to increase our passive Army experience gain since the experience we get from training our divisions isn't sufficient for what's coming and opted for addressing Internal Affairs after the left opposition Focus was done the subsequent focus and KVD Primacy increases Stalin's Paranoia by 20 amongst other things combined with the paranoia from weekly growth and our territorial decisions nkvd Primacy is going to bring the meter up to 90 just a few days before the focus is completed we get hit with a purge event but it's too late we've already beaten the odds the event comes with a grace period of 14 days which means we don't have to take one of the options immediately and can ignore the event at least for now since I know that the Civil War will break out before the grace period ends in anticipation of the upcoming conflict there are two steps we need to take first we're going to create two new templates tiny artillery and Cavalry divisions this is what we required the additional Army experience from the advisor for since we otherwise would not have accumulated enough in time next we select all divisions except the nkvd divisions which we cannot change at the moment and convert them to the artillery template immediately after we set up a land lease with Italy I only sent over guns but you can hand over as much as you like since we do not intend to have it actually arrive in Italian ports anyway it takes about a month for the shipment to arrive but we plan to cancel the land lease after the Civil War has begun by doing so we prevent the game from allocating equipment to start inside neither template swap nor parking equipment before a civil war are new or newly found exploits those come later don't you worry but they are quite useful here and other first Cornerstone of the Holy Trinity that make this record possible we let the game Run until the Civil War triggers and take the focus the new Soviet woman after nkvd Primacy has completed just a day before the ultimatum for The Purge event runs out the war finally begins our first action is to convert all our divisions from artillery to the tiny Cavalry template to which I'll refer to as spam divisions from here on out canceling the landlies with Italy Returns the equipment back into our stockpile allowing us to supply our current divisions but also enabling us to begin recruitment of as many spam divisions as possible after assigning generals under Field Marshal we unpause the game all focuses related to the Civil War are now automatically bypassed there really isn't any challenge to a quick Conquest because the AI doesn't have equipment to revert its useless artillery divisions into anything else and poses no threat whatsoever in return the few remaining nkvd divisions are so small in numbers that Dale just gets formed I'm going to speed through most of the Civil War since it really isn't that exciting the only noteworthy thing here is that you need to do quite a lot of micro to aggressively take territory and encircle divisions early on since battle plans and orders alone are too slow and make our units too keen on fighting instead of taking territory once we've deployed our first batch of new spam divisions Frontline management becomes trivial and although we already have quite a few of them we keep recruiting more shortly after we can select a new focus and go for the commentary the previous Focus new Soviet woman provided us with 70 political power the common turn rewards us with another 50 and unlocks the path to an important Focus for this strategy before we get to the spicy part of the Run let's quickly end the Civil War with over 100 spam divisions in the field we can simply select a bunch of them at once and send them off towards distant victory points the majority of Soviet VPS with the exception of Vladivostok are located here and become more and more sparse the further east we go capturing the main blob of victory points in the west is enough to push Stalin's Soviet Union below the surrender threshold they finally surrender on July 14th time to move towards our actual goal achieving complete World Conquest we merge all divisions into a single stack for convenience split off a total of 40 and convert them to regular infantry divisions while this may appear like preparations towards a conventionally fought War are left to thoroughly disappoint you this Speed Run is essentially nothing but exploits change up in a row and the worst or best depending on your personal preferences is yet to come next we deploy another batch of fresh spam Cavalry and keep recruiting even more when the common turn focus is done we take policy of collective security another key ingredient for the strategy after the focus has been completed we gain access to a special advisor called The People's commissar for foreign affairs in most circumstances this advisor is pretty worthless but for some odd reason his modifier acceptance of democratic diplomacy is applied directly to the opinion of democratic nations towards us we immediately hired the people's commissar for 150 political power and make use of his unusual skills namely taking advantage of the opinion modifier to request military access from the United Kingdom France and the United States at the same time our Zerg swarm of now 400 spam divisions is ready to move out the military access granted from the major democratic nations enables us to put divisions on Garrison orders across their countries as soon as these nations joined the war against us our units will spring into action and are hopefully going to overwhelm their militaries quickly this technique was coined Order 66 and has been around for a while The crucial aspect of it is that it only works if the AI jumps to another nation's Aid not when the target country or one of its faction members is declared on directly in that case the divisions would magically get teleported back to their country of origin Order 66 against the Allies is the second Cornerstone of this round around 200 divisions are sufficient to backstep the United States by painting Garrison orders on the whole nation with only ports and victory points selected as Garrison priorities we make sure the divisions go where we need them to in terms of troop deployment we're constrained by the amount of convoys that we have at the moment that's why we try to improve Convoy production from the start it's nevertheless going to take a bit of time for all divisions to make it to their destination meanwhile let's address the focus tree after policy of collective security we took bring old trotskiers back which unlocks another important advisor and then went for the permanent revolution the advisor we're after is the international revolutionary caloradic and we get them on board as soon as we've accumulated another 150 political power we'll talk about them and the purpose of the permanent revolution in a short moment but first we need to finalize our preparations for order 66. after all divisions destined for the United States have left Port we take aim at the other major democratic nations the UK and France need to be handled slightly differently in essence they get the same treatment but we use our infantry divisions this time since we'll have to do some actual fighting here when drawing Garrison orders on the United Kingdom we make sure to leave out the greater London area we don't want to accidentally have them surrendered too quickly back to Carl radek and the permanent revolution they are part of the third crucial aspect of the strategy which is breaking the time it takes to justify War girls we've been optimizing for that from the get-go but now it all comes together the focus nkvd Primacy comes with a cost reduction of subversive activities which includes justifications of War goals on other countries karatek also reduces the cost of subversive activities and so does Leon Trotsky all modifiers combined bring the justification time down to the hard-coded minimum of just 10 days with the cost of only two political power each but there's more in order to Showcase that we need to bank political power first you can now clearly see why losing political power during Stalin's Purge has such a negative impact on this run we desperately require political power in order to hire the needed but costly advisors and also have enough of it to pull off our next trick on the 22nd of January we begin justifying on everyone yes that's right on everyone well nearly everyone usually stacking justifications comes with a hefty penalty on cost and time required but we've successfully broken the mechanic to the point that the stacking modifier gets completely ignored this allows us to start justifying on as many nations as we like and can afford and since it's dirt cheap and we have enough political power in the bank there are no limits to this madness even Switzerland's neutrality modifier is overruled but there's one exception we need to look out for some Nations or a nation's leader can have traits that impact justification times negatively although it's rare this early in the game we also make sure to only justify on Democratic non-aligned and communist Nations fascist Nations can join the Allies but it doesn't happen reliably and if they do it takes them a while to do so but we absolutely want all nations that we justify on to quickly join the allies additionally we do not fabricate War roles against the US UK France Germany Italy Spain Albania and Japan we also ignore Nations that will join the war anyway because of present guarantees of Independence the biggest challenge here honestly is to not forget about some Nations and although I really try to not mess it up again at this point I'm over 100 attempts in I do indeed Miss some countries but as long as the important ones are covered that's not an issue we'll get a chance to fix that soon at this point I want to give credit and a big thanks to Reddit user docket who first discovered this exploit and helped me with the setup of the Soviet Civil War This Record would not have been possible without them I'll put a link to their Reddit post in the description of the video we still have some political power left at the end of the justification Marathon so we can safely take another Focus this one called long live the workers government is optional but I highly recommend taking it in case Italy decides to pull a funny one on us later our war goals are ready to go on the 1st of February and we're making use of all of them immediately the mass amount of justifications has brought wall tension up to 100 in no time and made the United Kingdom dish out guarantees on some countries that we've Justified on France guarantees Yugoslavia by default during the early game similarly to the United States who guarantees the independence of all South American nations in turn they'll all joined the upcoming War by themselves circumventing the teleport back home mechanic and making Order 66 possible as soon as we unpause all three major democratic nations immediately jump to the protege8 our job now is to manage order 66 in those countries for the UK this means deleting the Garrison order and micromanaging towards full control of the island and creating an encirclement around London taking care of France this way is Trivial the surrender threshold is set so low that it only takes a day for our units to become available again for another operation their shipped to Britain and help secure the island after France's folder but first we begin training additional divisions with the newly captured equipment over on the other side of the pond the situation isn't any different the US doesn't have enough divisions to defend against orazerk's bam Army but we can't defeat them in combat directly in order to nevertheless force a quick surrender we need to control major cities on the east and west coast with Superior numbers on your side come a couple of tricks you can try with the AI to avoid fighting for those victory points baiting units off of their position is arguably the most effective one in order to achieve that you simply need to retreat your backstabbing divisions away from the target Province more often than not the unit is going to receive orders for a different spot and just leave if that doesn't work you can offer a situation in which the AI can recapture territory but has to leave the victory point in order to do so after the United States surrendered we put even more infantry divisions into Recruitment and delete all divisions in North America afterwards to get the equipment back because we're at war with the Allies which includes the Ethiopian government and Exile that the Italians technically are still at war with Italy also likes us to the point that we can request military access by now London is surrounded most of the island is under our control and more importantly All Nations that we are at war with have joined the allies there's only one thing preventing us from marching into London we're still waiting on the war goal against Spain which I began fabricating a bit later to make sure that I don't accidentally use it while Mass declaring on other nations the reason why we need all nations from the enemy side in a single faction is because of the rules around faction Wars and the current patch generation 1.12 the important bits for us are that a war with affection ends whenever all its major Nations have surrendered and that all minor nations of that faction are automatically up for grabs during the peace conference as long as they've joined the faction any time before the war is over no matter the amount of participation in the conflict with the Castle's belly against Spain in hand we send our divisions into London the UK is the last major nation that needs to surrender in order for the war to end we want to reach the city during the day to have some hours left before the surrender at midnight during that time we declare on Democratic Spain they will join the Allies just before the peace conference starts and most crucially before they can call the Allies into their Civil War which would create a huge mess instead of the nice and clean conference that we get here as with most tasks around this war even the peace conference is somewhat tedious as we click to All Nations and afterwards their fleets to Annex them so let's talk about the elephant in the room China despite what many players think they do not start out as a major nation in arts of iron IV they only rise up to the status of major once they've created the Chinese united front faction which hasn't happened at this point the other ways to become a major Nation other than leading a faction involve total factory count and industry comparisons to other nations but I only checked for at the start of each month and if that happens after even one of the major Nations has lost a decent chunk of their factories to an Invader China Rises up to Major status this is why the timing of this war was so important we had all justifications lined up on the first day of the month and ended the war before the major Nation check could fire on day one of the subsequent month as a natural consequence China is still being treated as a minor nation that does not need to surrender and can instead be annexed by proxy the aftermath of the conference reveals the um very tiny and easy to miss countries on the map that God always got free during the first war we're going to fix that don't you worry we captured nearly half a million pieces of equipment from enemy stockpiles that are coming in quite handy to keep snowballing to prevent all that equipment from going to Garrison duties around the world we need to set the management of occupied territories to no Garrison instead we use it to convert all of our parked spam divisions in Europe into infantry divisions and organize them together with the infantry divisions that are still in the UK into two full Field Marshal groups the plan is simple overwhelming numbers and attacking aggressively it's going to take a week or two until the converted divisions have been fully supplied in the meantime we deploy 10 divisions from training in Vladivostok and plan Naval invasions into Japan I should have improved infrastructure ports and Railways in this region but decided to not care about it suffering from Bad Supply and low organization as a consequence later on The Invasion is going to be supported by our Fleet which because of the capture vessels from the peace conference is pretty big by now after the other infantry divisions are ready for deployment We Begin the setup for Order 66 against Italy we now start justifying against the remaining Nations that have forgot about plus all fascist Nations except Japan and its puppets lastly we start fabricating a war goal against Albania which is guaranteed by Italy after our divisions have spread out we declare on Albania the big difference here is that Italy is prone to plummeting into Civil War once they've lost a couple of victory points I'm not 100 sure about the details but it appears as if the Civil War fires relatively fast once you control all victory points of a region and takes a while longer to trigger if only some provinces in a region have been captured could very well be a false conclusion so take it with a grain of salt either way I've seen both variants during my attempts a Civil War in which the uprising Nation automatically becomes a puppet as we are the strongest neighbor and at war with Italy or no Civil War and a quick annexation instead luckily we get the letter outcome this time and can Annex them before the Civil War mechanic can fully kick in the attack of the nation has nevertheless already changed and the event to potentially give socialist Italy its territory will fire shortly after the conference is over before surrendering Italy rang up their pals up north and successfully joined axes and Germany joined the war no questions asked our divisions at the German border aren't fully supplied across the board but most units are ready to go you could just let the AI solve this by activating the orders but spotting openings in the front line and doing some manual pathing here and there works wonders to make fast advances we rushed Germany from all sides to forces surrender as soon as possible meanwhile we declare on the remaining Nations which are all going to join the access none of them have yet reached the minimum requirement of 35 factories and therefore cannot become a major Nation yet unless we declare too early Brazil and Spain can surpass the threshold quite easily if they are given the opportunity to take adjacent regions from us after Germany has fallen we can again Annex everything and delete our divisions in Europe afterwards only Japan and their puppets are now standing between us and finishing this one our massive Fleet allows us to gain Naval Supremacy and lend invasions on the Japanese mainland from here it's just a question of avoiding bad terrain supply issues and narrow choke points the vast majority of the Japanese Army has been deployed on our land border allowing for an easy conquest of the main islands if it wasn't obvious already there's still plenty of room to optimize this strategy even further even this run that you're currently watching is already an improvement to the rather sloppy run that I submitted to speedrun.com I've done this in the hopes that it encourages some of you to try to beat my record the total run time is only about an hour long which is huge compared to previous world record strategies which require at least three to eight hours I've listed some possible improvements here and I'm sure there are more that I may have missed our war with Japan comes to an end on May 22nd 1937 marking the end of this run unfortunately the war didn't yield enough score to also capture the fleet but that would have been just a bonus for a fancy final screenshot what matters is territory and as of right now we're the only remaining Nation left on the planet I hope you enjoyed the speedrun commentary please let me know in the comments if the video was worth the effort of put into it and don't hesitate to ask questions either thank you very much for watching stay safe and have a great day

Channel: m3an

Views: 320,206

Keywords: HoI4, Paradox Interactive, 4X games, Map-based games, Speedrunning, Speed playthroughs, Record runs, WR runs, WR speedruns, Strategy gaming, War games, World War II games, Military strategy games, War simulations, Alternate history games, PC strategy games, Tactical games, Paradox games, Paradox Development Studio, Strategy game tutorials, Game strategy guides, world conquest hoi4, hoi4 guides, hoi4 tutorials, hearts of iron

Id: xOKZ0BmakwE

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Thneitor]

My noob friend when i stop looking half a second (we have state transfer tool)

[u/xSweAzy69]

Bist du m3an?