The Inner Path to Peace Through Nonviolence

I must confess something. I love Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday, maybe a little more than I should. The game is a classic, and is mostly recognized as so in the wargaming community today. It is an ambitious game, and it successfully engages the wargamer on a remarkable number of strategic planes. Hence, there are almost countless viable approaches to winning, which is the mark of a truly timeless game. Most players, I imagine, follow the path of military muscle, seeking to conquer, first and foremost. This philosophy can and does work quite often, but it is expensive in every sense of the word.

In the course of my gameplay, I have searched for alternative strategies, in particular, ones that required less micromanagement, and less intensity than the aggressive, interventionist conquest strategy. Quite simply, I sought to find the clearest, most direct route to defeating enemies that were most threatening to my security and to my expansion. And because of the complexity of the game, there are a number of options available for doing precisely that. At first I tried forming massive chains of alliances, but found it imperfect, since in this game, diplomacy relies very heavily upon historical events, and on circumstances beyond the player's control. Very quickly, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that not all diplomatic deals could be bought.

Emphasizing diplomacy certainly did make the act of conquest much easier, however. So, I decided that this was an incomplete strategy. I continued buying up all the allies that I could, all the while spending exorbitant sums on intelligence. One way around this difficulty of establishing alliances was through good, old-fashioned revolution.

I thought that trying to overthrow my enemies was too ambitious, and that it wouldn't be possible, so I first tried to overthrow geopolitically strategic neutral nations. I found that this helped, but was too time-consuming and expensive. Then, just for the fun of it, I decided to try overthrowing my enemies directly, thus avoiding armed conflict, and thus wasteful spending.

The Journey Begins With A Single Step

I tried this daring experiment as the United Kingdom, as the leader of the Allies. I chose the UK so that I could amass as large an alliance as possible, since this intelligence-based strategy was simply a component of that larger strategy.

I obsessively tried to overthrow Russia, Italy, and Germany. I reasoned that avoiding a hot war in Europe altogether along with the Cold War would save me a lot of money and anxiety. I first infiltrated the respective countries with ten spies each, which is the maximum that is allowed. Then I tried every turn to stage a coup. As I did this, I stopped building weapons of all kinds, as can be seen in this screenshot.

This, of course, is a risky gamble. In fact, most logical people would call it foolish. Eventually, however I succeeded, despite my inner reservations. In the following screenshots, readers will see that I overthrew Italy, the Soviet Union, and Germany and put in their places Liberal Democracies which I promptly convinced to join the Allies. This was in 1937 and 1938.

Having done that, and frightening illiberal leaders around the world in the process, I decided that it was time to turn my sights to the remaining world powers. But first, I witnessed the Russian people freaking out about what had just happened to their government. Again.