This is how you form the Roman Empire in 1936 - Hoi4 Italy Speedrun Commentary

[Music] god incoming welcome everyone today we're going to try something slightly different i'm doing a post commentary on my recent roman empire igt speedrun this time this allows me to talk about the reasons behind certain actions and strategies a bit more in detail so that maybe you can learn something along the way or find some new ways to improve on my final time i was rather obsessed with realizing roman ambitions as early as possible measured by the in-game date and think the results are also interesting to people outside the hoi for speedrunning community the run was done on the current version and on iron man with all dlcs enabled i tried to explain everything on the fly but i will address some things like the overarching key strategies whenever there's time in between input heavy segments enjoy let's select italy in the 1936 scenario and begin with our setup we start with going for electronic mechanical engineering and paratroopers to have them at our disposal as quickly as possible construction really doesn't matter this time production wise we focus on transport planes and infantry equipment i put in the convoys just to get rid of the dockyard notifications we now select all of our air wings and bring them over to ethiopia this will temporarily clog up the airport but we'll take care of that in a moment to later have an easier time managing them we send all ships to sicily and all of our divisions to a fallback order in genoa don't forget to trade for some oil and rubber for plane and fuel production our divisions in ethiopia are sufficient to end the ongoing war there quickly so we just assign a general and field marshal prepare the front lines and do some manual pathing if we rely on the ai tool in this things will take way too long our goal is to end this conflict around early to mid-february and grind at least 15 army experience for template changes later on while our army is on the offensive we wait for 25 political power once we have enough we justify on albania our battleships have the longest range with 3 000 kilometers which is why we split them from the main fleet and sent them to somaliland for naval invasion support later down the line since all planes have long arrived at the airport we send the naval bombers back to italy and split up the fighters into two wings of which we are sending one off to an adjacent airport if you ever wonder why i'm doing things that seem a bit odd like taking the naval bombers with me to ethiopia despite not needing them please know that i've been grinding the strategy hard and needed to keep the input down to not become insane over the many restarts ethiopia is about to fall and we have more army experience than we need we could finish the war a bit quicker but it would not change the timeline of the campaign with the end of january approaching our two unused research slots are about to reach the maximum buffer of 30 days as soon as that's the case we replace electronic mechanical engineering and paratroopers with a different research and put them into the pre-buffered research slots this saves just enough time to finish the research before our first war which will kick off on the 18th of may and the war with ethiopia is over now it's important that we do not puppet or annex them instead we just hit done this allows us to skip the focused triumph in africa which is necessary to quickly get a claim on yugoslavia and the war role on greece later usually you don't want to bypass the focus and instead get the bonuses on stability and war support to avoid reassignment penalties i already swapped out the armies for general but that's just a habit and not actually necessary after sending our italian boys home we join the axis which is possible now that we are no longer at war and apply some changes to our division templates we first need a two-width placeholder division and cavalry is perfect for that our fighting divisions will use the former colonial template but get reduced to 10 with a null support since i plan on using them in the immediate future i'll leave out the tank and cavalry divisions here and change all others to the 10-width template now we select 10 of our divisions to plan the naval invasions 10 is the maximum limit we can use for naval invasions without additional research but we will work around that limit soon with access to german territory we plan to naval invasions all along the eastern coastline of the united kingdom and another one into south africa the game notifies us that we have empty orders but that doesn't stop the game from planning the orders anyway allowing us to make use of it on the fly later let's not forget to send the divisions over and recruit plenty of the placeholder divisions that we previously made the equipment that we got from changing most divisions to the 10 width template is enough so that we can recruit an army and a half worth of placeholder divisions and for good measure we throw in some additional infantry divisions as well after our units left ethiopian territory we can swap their templates to to gain some more infantry equipment we're going to have a lot of borders to cover in the future so we need as many divisions as possible early on one of the divisions will stay behind for the naval invasions of south africa the divisions will come under attack before being able to leave the port which is why we cannot use the placeholder placeholder template here the division would simply die before being able to depart for south africa while we wait for our fresh recruits to get out of basic training let me address research and some other stuff real quick since it doesn't really matter for this campaign i won't comment on the selection of research from here on out because it has no impact on the run if you plan to continue to play after forming the roman empire i highly advise to not repeat every shortcut that i take since it sometimes sacrifices a lot just to shorten the campaign by a couple of days or to minimize the input this is especially true for how i handle the navy as you'll see soon enough unfortunately after reaching the minimum training limit of 20 we deploy our placeholder and infantry divisions and sort them into armies 24 of those placeholder divisions as well as 9 of the infantry units will move to germany the leftover infantry will have to hold the borders we then spread the remaining placeholder divisions across the mediterranean in anticipation of the upcoming war against the allies and move our navy to northern germany as well to support our naval invasions of the united kingdom most of the setup is now done the war is still two months ahead of us so while we wait let me explain why we are justifying on albania i already stated the most important reason earlier it is the fastest way for italy to start a war ethiopia aside and since this is an igt run and in-game time is our primary scale by which we measure success getting into a war fast is an absolute must but just fighting albania won't get us anywhere of course it's a tiny conflict as long as there are no major nations involved which is why we're going to justify on the united states we have absolutely no intention of letting the war go finish but it allows us to artificially spike world tension way beyond the 25 threshold at which the leader of the allies starts spamming guarantees naturally the uk will therefore give out a guarantee to albania allowing us to escalate the conflict as you probably have guessed already we are going to change some of the placeholder divisions into paratroopers by using placeholder divisions we can move the units into position long before the research for paratroopers is actually finished since we plan to drop on french victory points we relocate 12 of the 2 with cavalry into germany onto three different airports the focus claim on yugoslavia is about to finish which combined with high world tension reduces the justification time to only 10 days once we're at war with the major nation we will continue our way down towards war on greece for a free war goal since we are already in affection with germany we can skip another focus later down the line the 8th military factories on transport planes mean that we end up with five produced planes if you want to min max three are already enough to get the job done but require a little more micromanagement as soon as the fifth transport plane is manufactured we delete the production line and solarly focus on infantry equipment when the war starts all divisions will be fully equipped although very poorly trained after deleting the production line with station 3 transport planes in germany one in italy and another one off of the coast of turkey not all five will be needed simultaneously which is why i mentioned that you can get it easily away with fewer our divisions air wings and ships are in position and ready to go all that's left now is the paratrooper research as soon as the paratrooper research is finished we create a two-width template for them this is what you need the other five army experience from the required 15 from the war with ethiopia for but we have more than enough in this case one battalion of paratroopers per division means that we can have 24 of those divisions in total under the current special forces limitation war with the allies is just one day ahead of us now so let's dive into the final preparations let's activate the invasion order split up our fleet into four task forces and assign them to naval invasion support in the north sea i'm sorry to all you navy experts out there but streamlining this was my main goal here so i'm sorry for the gore that you're about to witness the fleets now provide the needed naval supremacy for our invasion orders to get the green light so we unpause and wait for midnight it is crucial that you pause the game again at 1am the next day when the justification on albania is finished what follows now is crucial and time-sensitive after declaring war on albania we prepare and launch paradrops before switching our focus back to the uk the ai somehow does not perceive a guarantee that might trigger as a direct threat keeping divisions overseas and fleets in the port as consequence that way we create a brief window of opportunity during which we can retain naval supremacy and fire of naval invasion after naval invasion we achieved this by waiting one in-game hour until the first batch of 10 divisions leaves the port select them all and unassign them from their order this immediately frees up the 10 division cap on naval invasions allowing us to assign another batch of 10 who won't need additional preparation time instead they leave the port with just the next tick we do this three times until all of our 30 divisions are on their way to the british coast let's not forget about our naval invasion into south africa and assign the division we've left for exactly this purpose as expected it is currently under attack by the british but they won't be able to kill it you can see here that the battleships barely have the needed range but it works after executing the order we perform what's called anglo-spike at this point in time britain has not yet called their subjects into the war but since we are at war with their overlord we can straight up just declare war on all their puppets and each time while tension rises a bit making the justification on the us obsolete so we can just cancel it as a consequence we now no longer have ongoing justifications while world tension already sits at 100 percent the claim on yugoslavia through the focus tree combined with our war with imagination and high wall tension means that the justification on hugo will only take 10 days since the start of the war barely any time has passed so just let's increase game speed again the stacked badges of divisions are now leaving the port towards the united kingdom this is the signal for france to enter the stage while tension is high enough for them to be able to join the allies which is exactly what we want it's one less nation to justify on let's address the title and core idea of the strategy real quick while our divisions make landfall the strategy is called blood for the blood god because we are making use of a game mechanic that rewards suiciding divisions into the enemy as you all know wars in hoi4 end whenever there's no major nation remaining on one side but whether or not we are able to annex or puppet the nation is determined by the following factors we need to hold at least a tile of the territory have inflicted damage on their buildings or have suffered casualties from them to make demands on them during the peace conference this only works though if the miner nation is a member of the faction that just capitulated we don't have to worry about minor nations becoming majors through their factory count in this campaign but we have to make use of the fact that a minor nation is automatically considered a major once they are a leader of a faction this means we want to have absolute control over who becomes a major nation and over when they will capitulate as long as we are at war with a major nation we get cheap and fast war goals as fascist italy we can decrease the justification time even further if the target nation is currently doing a land lease to a hostile nation in that case we get another time reduction resulting in a 10-day justification similar to having a claim you'll see me check different target nations during certain segments for specifically that reason to check for land lease this is also why we want to overrun britain quickly leave them powerless but alive that way we can keep justifying in rapid succession since all nations required to form the roman empire are either democratic or non-aligned they all will join the allies as soon as we declare on them but why haven't we forced france into total surrender by now you may ask well we could and it would make things in britain easier since our divisions are currently fighting without any supply from back home for that we would need to either control gibraltar or france thing is spain will land lease france eventually but only if it hasn't surrendered yet spain will start the land lease at a random point in time but it happens earliest right after the beginning of the war against the allies and latest when the justification on turkey is finished without having supply in the uk things are only moving very slowly on the british islands at the moment that isn't a problem as long as we try to pin enemy divisions and move around them to quickly gain a bit of local supply and block the ports against reinforcements the run was recorded after midnight which led to a couple of small mistakes just a second ago i accidentally sent over a transport plane to the uk for example this small error doesn't really have consequences but others that i'll make shortly absolutely do with the war goal against euro in the back we send our paratroopers to capitulate albania we do this in a two-step process instead of straight-up dropping on our victory points since the capital is sometimes occupied afterwards we set up a drop deep into yugoslavian territory to make sure that we will suffer covered casualties from them we activate the order immediately so we can forget about it since yugoslavia is guaranteed by czechoslovakia and romania we can drag both of them into the war for free without any prior justification just checking here if spain is doing an early or late land lease and after seeing that it's a late one we instead start the justification on turkey which will take 15 days as usual spain is pain and multiplies on the 17th of july at precisely 1500 hours if we let them start their civil war we will need to justify on at least one more nation so we need to declare on spain before the civil war breaks out create a next conditions and end the war with the allies on the 16th of july at the latest obviously this will create a problem if our goal is to speedrun the roman empire if both the uk and france are defeated we need a new major involved but none of the current majors that we aren't at war with is actually required for imperium romanum never mind the additional challenges luckily i've got a solution for that as well something that i should have done earlier is tending to the vulcans we are going to send our bombers to southern germany and northern italy to reach both czechoslovakia and romania with our air wings on strategic bombing here we make use of the third possible requirement for getting an x conditions on a minor of a faction you want to do this a bit sooner to give your airwings enough time to guarantee some damage i was lucky and it all worked out we need to keep up the speed of the justifications and get rid of france shortly before our war goal on turkey is ready france will finally get the land lease from spain with a five-day time save in the back we immediately prepare our airborne assault against france you'll see me assign 12 paratrooper divisions in total but that's actually overkill for this situation we only need that many of spain land leases early allowing us to start the assault before france redeploys its garrison divisions in that case you want to drop lots and lots of airborne divisions over paris since it's often defended the war with france has been going on long enough in this case so paratroopers won't face any resistance whatsoever after france has fallen we finally have a supply route into britain we also get a nice little share of their stockpile which we use to put additional infantry divisions into the recruitment queue to maximize the amount of divisions we pass the game directly after the peace conference ends if we leave the game running most of the surplus equipment would be used for garrison demands we can reduce that effect by giving garrisons a lower supply priority but even then some equipment gets taken away from the stockpile and we still need plenty more divisions having a supply connection to britain restores the movement speed of our divisions amongst other things allowing us to take britain quickly our main focus is to now secure the island and surround london since there's nothing noteworthy going on let's jump ahead a couple of days after declaring a war on turkey we move on to our next target spain turkey gets the same treatment as any miner in this run as with yugoslavia a couple of paratroopers have to be sacrificed in order to create guaranteed casualties there is only enough time left to finish one last justification before the war ends our war goal on spain is ready on the 22nd of june but i forgot to redeploy transport planes which is why i delayed the start of the war here until they arrive on the 24th we can nevertheless just keep justifying austria is going to be the last nation that we declare on during this war our mission in britain went pretty successfully we have taken all relevant ports with the exception of a single one far up north and surrounded london with plenty of divisions after the focus befriend bulgaria is done we go ahead and bypass pact of steel but won't start the next focus just yet the reason for that is a bit muddy and i'm not 100 certain that it's a fact and not just a coincidence with something else during my test runs but i'll get back to this question again when the war ends by now our transport planes should have redeployed to southern france and i don't think i've ever played a campaign in which i was looking that much on redeployment and arrival times anyway we prepare our sacrifice to the blood god and get on with it right away or as mussolini once said i don't think he and i meant the same thing though there's nothing of relevance happening until the war goal on austria is done so let's skip ahead a bit we quickly clear london without actually moving into the tile before switching over to the alps again i've made another mistake here it really was getting late at this point i usually have already deployed the divisions that are in training right now but i totally forgot about it this time and i didn't even notice until after i declared the war luckily this doesn't really pose a problem we just spawned the divisions close to the border give them a general and a frontline order all they need to do is hold and that shouldn't be an issue against so few divisions next up we start the justification on hungary it will take 15 days the spanish civil war breaks out in 10 so it's about time that we end this war there is an additional requirement in place in regards to the next conditions and faction wars that i haven't told you about a minor faction member needs to be in the war for at least seven days otherwise they won't be part of the peace conference and the war with them carries over to after the peace deal while there is enough time to fulfill that requirement for austria we don't actually want to do that because it would seriously delay our next move instead we drop some paratroopers without the intention of capitulating austria we just want to make sure that the war continues if we don't hold a piece of their territory the war with austria might just end canada new zealand and australia will not be present for the same reason neither us nor them have created any war score against the other party they shouldn't feel too safe though we might not require them to be able to form the roman empire but they are an easy grab so we will at least attempt to annex them in the future the war goal against hungary is what will start our second war that way we do not lose any days in between the problem of course as previously mentioned is to get another major into the war fast so that we have reduced justification times beyond the bonuses from high world tension the first step towards that important milestone is to end this war soon which is why we move our troops into london right after paratroopers landed in austria we end the war against the allies on the 9th of july the war goal on hungary finishes on the 21st so far everything went according to plan a few mishaps aside in our first peace conference we spared ethiopia in this one we will again spare a nation but for very different reasons leaving ethiopia independent was necessary to bypass the focused triumph in africa this time we will leave romania unharmed completely so no puppeting no annexing no nothing not even a tiny bit that's because we want romania to become the new faction leader of the allies if you simply annex everything right now canada would become the new faction leader while this wouldn't make things impossible we absolutely want to avoid it since we aim to repeat what we just finished waging war against the major and keeping them alive while justifying on all other required nations in the meantime by allowing romania to stay independent they will take over faction leadership as the next strongest nation on the list of members alternatively you can do this with czechoslovakia i cannot guarantee the same outcome though since i haven't tested it as much with the peace conference done we can move onwards to the final piece of the puzzle while i recruit additional divisions and reorganize army navy and air force in the background it's nice in all that romania is faction leader now but they also need to give out a guarantee to hungary declaring on hungary and waiting for them to join the romanian-led allies is rather hopeless since romania will not join the war for quite a while i think that's because of the post-war truth period but it might just well be the dangerous border modifier romania will also not guarantee hungary if we annex austria before it's not about austria really but about us being at war while justifying it was quite the pain to find the perfect setup here that's also why we didn't continue towards the war with greece focus since i believe it would make romania not join the next war or at least not instantly long story short we will start the focus as soon as romania joins the war on hungary just to be safe as promised we will spread our influence further across the globe not because we have to but simply because we can while i'm setting that up in the background let's give a shout out to all the people that contributed to the strategy because if you think that i'm smart enough to pull this off on my own i sadly have to disappoint you here this strategy is the brainchild of the hoi 4 speedrunning community and i want to give a special shout out to survivor michi who helped a ton with this run amongst other things he pointed out the possible shortcut to a free war goal on greece and a faster justification on hugo through getting the claim on them in time anglo-spike is also something he came up with in previous runs i was able to form roman empire in december 1936 michi's advice helped me to push this time to october which is just phenomenal unless you do yoga stratch another impressive strategy for very early wars that mihi conceived you would have barely just started your first war as germany with a manual justification at this point i've linked his channel down below as well as the hoy4 leaderboards on speedrun.com if you enjoy this kind of playstyle come pay us a visit on discord and maybe attempt to speedrun yourself be it rta or igt now back to the game the second war of the campaign is about to start but the part that needs a long explanation is pretty much over moving forward we just need to make sure that the justifications keep on coming that we fulfill the next conditions surround the romanian capital cover all hostile borders and make use of reduced justification time from land lease wherever possible in case you want to watch the one and a half hour long original video for whatever reason it's linked in the description as well next on the menu is hungary we leave them a bit of breathing space so they move away from the victory point in the south that way we can again snipe vps to capitulate them quickly romania joins the war immediately so we can safely go for war with greece it will take 60 days to finish but that's still within our time limit we already deployed a full army along the border with portugal and we'll justify on them right away 15 days later and we're ready to go they don't have enough divisions to cover the border so you can just snake through the lines moving on to iraq belgium which gets landlis switzerland greece the netherlands which also gets ledlies and bulgaria now all that's left is luxembourg they also get land lease from switzerland in this case finding ways to reliably have all three benelux nations get reduced justification time was a real headache especially for luxembourg making this work requires a long checklist starting with taking out south africa in the first war and ending with justifying on switzerland before we go after the benelux states it is very tempting to go after them in the first war already since they all get lent lease during that time as well but we absolutely need luxembourg as the last optimization in this igt speedrun but first we need to end the current war for that to happen romania has to capitulate which we planned for by taking all victory points and encircled bucharest already it's at this point in time that i get the first little heart attack thinking that i might have to restart all over again i already cleared the last defending divisions in the remaining capital but waited a bit too long to send my divisions into the city tile if we want to realize our campaign goal on the earliest possible date we have to end the war before the 20th of october the day that we get the last war goal on luxembourg but all the visions will apparently take multiple days to move into that tile that's way too long so i think about alternatives and think and think it's 2 am by now and i was really looking forward to finally getting it done luckily we have paratroopers in range of bucharest which will finish the job in time and that's the end of the second war this time there are no shenanigans involved we just straight up and acts everything in the meantime let me explain why it's so important that luxembourg comes last it's the only nation relevant to the formation of the roman empire that consists of just a single tile that means we can take over all of the territory of a nation before the end of the first day of conflict and thereby unlock the decision towards imperium romanum in any other case we would have to wait until at least midnight for when the game checks whether or not a nation has fallen below the surrender limit as you can see we can annex most of the former dominions as well as the dutch east indies thanks to our tiny naval invasions canada didn't join the second war unfortunately despite being a member of the allies so the planned naval invasion against them never fired it's now the 20th of october and we own all of the required territory for the formation of the roman empire well all except luxembourg which we have a war go on i'm really really really looking forward to going to bed at that point already dreading how tired i'd be in the morning when my kids wake up so let's just declare on luxembourg and get it over with there's nothing that could go wrong now anymore well wrong i have to again come to the realization that none of the divisions will be able to enter the tile fast enough so paratroopers to the rescue one more time well they are in range but the transport planes aren't well damn panic is setting in is this a reset on the last goddamn day of the run testing the arrival times of all divisions infantry and tangs nothing works with a bit of delay my brain finally reacts and provides a solution i just need to change the division into cavalry maybe that will work and it does the division makes it onto the tile just barely before midnight but it is still the 20th and we now hold everything that we need this means there is only one more thing left to do let's open up the decision tab scroll to the very bottom and finally enact the decision to realize roman ambitions et voila we have successfully brought back the roman empire and we did so in record time i've submitted the run to the leaderboards of speedrun.com and it has been officially verified as the igt world record in forming the roman empire and hearts of iron 4. if you plan to play a campaign beyond this point i highly recommend you do a couple of things differently first of all take better care of your navy secondly do not fully enact the uk and france puppet them instead but only leave them territory that isn't required for the decision after that you can annex both nations through the autonomy system to gain control over their fleets getting canada into the peace deal something you should definitely aim for and either justify directly on them or wait until they join the second war that way you have a direct border with the united states and it's pretty easy to capitulate them if you come down from canada the soviets are a bit harder to crack without choosing it and require an upgrade to your templates but don't pose a real challenge either well no nation is actually a challenge anymore for augustus mussolini and the roman empire it's the first time that i've put this much effort into a single video so i really hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments below and if you have questions about the campaign please go ahead and ask till next time

Channel: m3an

Views: 330,975

Keywords: speedrun, world record, imperium romanum, augustus mussolini, postcommentary

Id: ACRxTCb_TbE

Length: 33min 5sec (1985 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021