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!

You shouldn't be sorry to us because you lost... We have to be sorry for you because you had to play this.

>most historical mod >historical strategy doesn't work lmao, amazing work on the part of the devs

The T-38 being amphibious is actually accurate

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

Honestly black ice is a mod that I like but….it really feels like you need to play near perfect to have a chance.

remember chat, we can make him do armored car Ottomans in Great War Redux

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.

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.

Guess you were just roleplaying the events that led to TNO

Watching while waiting for Food hits different.

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

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

The other paid comment I did was funnier but got censored by KZfaq, so just pretend I said something funny

Conclusion: Historical division templates are crap, and become even crappier the more realistic the situation gets.

Equipment and production problems while playing BICE? That's new. ;)

Oh wait members get things early? Huge! I just wanted to support lol

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.

Massive respect to aldrahill to actually do this

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

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).

Ya know, I feel like you should do this but with the alt history paths. Ie, historic German divisions as the Kaiser

Millennium dawn Tajikistan world conquest when?

Can't wait for him to play all the nations that sucked in WW2 BICE France should be about as painfull as this one

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

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.

A Hoi4 gamer with a wife? Somethings not right 😂😂

Play as China.... in Blackice.... with historical calvary divisions

I found Black Ice in HOI3 and HOI4 "historicity" a huge werhboo onanistic fanfic.

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.

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! 🙂

Here's an impossible challenge: Win a BICE game

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.

This is actually historically inaccurate, because the molotov line was the actual decision the Soviet lidership took

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.

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.

Playing as USSR in World Ablaze is even more painful. I suggest you to try it out

This comment has been removed by the NKVD

Oooh, that's gonna hurt. A lot

Using the historical presets is a form of CBT. May God have mercy on your soul, for Black Ice will not

“A lot of these just provide straight debuffs and overall hurts” you’ve summed up the 5 year plans and Soviet Russia in general

Great Video. I love how you did the ad. Keep going.

Cool, now play black ice as Italy!

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!

you need to try this again

I love how you pronounce "Barbarossa" as "Bob Ross-a"

11:28 they were doing space marine divisions before it was cool. Give them a break they had visionary ideas.

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.

now that you know what to expect, maybe try again?

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.

Why do you do this to yourself

BICE is my default HOI4 experience, but mostly because I really like designing navies.

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....:)

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

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

Could you play Finland with historical divisions and designs?

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.

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.

Not gonna lie i would love to see you play Poland with historical divisions only

Should do historical China with Black Ice mod.

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

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.

If you do suggestions can we have the U.K. in black ice?

So, when navy only Mongolia in BICE?

Play Italy in black ice! Its glorious!! Probably one of my favourite focus trees! It's so hard, and it's so rewarding when you make it! Also, dont hamstring yourself too hard with division templates. Hoi4 has its mechanics and not being 100% accurate historically is okay imo

tbh this is why people going "HURR DURR MUH REALISM" should be disregarded 99% of the time

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

This one was fantastic. What a whooping!

i think you still need a ww1 france presets video!

"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."

I would love for you to try this again now that you know about all those missed focuses.

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 will watch this later

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.

8:35 you made me want tushenka for the first time in 20 years, thanks a lot 😡

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

WW1 doctrines in the late 1930s? ::Happy Budyonny noises:: 😂

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

You'll have to give this another try at some point

black ice endsieg

No infantry, no CAS challenge No infantry means no infantry (including mech/motorized), irregulars, special forces, or anything that has battalions of men walking on the ground to shoot rifles at each other in a template. That means arty, cav, support companies and other such things are OK. Cavalry are firing rifles, but are presumably fighting while on horseback, so they're just combat vehicles that are made of meat instead of metal. Artillery/support companies/etc are men on the ground, but aren't shooting a rifle at anyone. No CAS means no planes except proper fighters and and bombers that aren't ever used in the CAS role.

Smoothest sponsor segment I have ever watched.

Give it a redo, now with the knowledge of the focus tree, it should be easier.

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.

GAMER WARNING: Amphetamines are unfortunately required to play this mod. The creators do not apologize for this inconvenience.

FINALLY ANOTGER GREAT VIDEO❤

Try Italy next. Thats the true definition of pain with this mod lol.

Black Ice represents everything I dispise in modern gaming : on-purpose offuscation, artificial difficulty, if-it-ain't-hard-it-ain't-funnism

Lore of Soviet Historical Suffering in HOI4’s Most Painful Mod momentum 100

1000 hours of hoi4 and this is and has been my favorite mod for a while, if you think this is bad then see hoi3 black ice

playing USSR in the black ice mod is just a cry of help at this point…

You already know what I'm about to ask you. But just in case, luxembourg black ice game play

You should check out the World Ablaze mod, it feels perfect for this challenge

No one told the allied AI to be historical as well

It is crazy to see, EVEN WITH HINDSIGHT, how much this play through resembled the Soviet Unions struggle in WW2.

Awesome attention to detail

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.

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.

Great video, will you be making a historical Poland in such mods as Historical Poland: Redux or Black Ice?