u/Accentillia

What I mean by the last tier is that these cases still make me sad at the end cuz its danganronpa but when compared to the cases above em im relatively fine

Not a lot of overlap between these communities but I still wanted to do this because why not. Also, for those who know the series this might be slightly anachronistic because of a certain factors but its fine :P

Hello! As you can see I decided to put all the OFN mandates of Africa (Angola, East Africa, Congo AND the CAR) in one "special" episode because the core gameplay loop was kinda the same for most of them (except the CAR) and i thought itd be annoying if days 14-17 were JUST OFN mandates and I wanted to get them out of the way.

So the corpus is going to be kinda different, im just going to explain the core gameplay and then what made each mandate slightly different.

I was originally planning to rate them all under one banner as like an "average" of how much fun I had with story and lore but after finishing them I feel like they're at least different enough to warrant different ratings so yeah i'll just rate all 4 separately.

For some reason Angola is the only mandate to have the "And so dusk approaches the new order" screen lol

-East African Interim Unity Government and the core gameplay loop
-Coalition Government of Angola and the UNITA-PLUAA power struggle
-OFN Provisional Government of the Congo and the congo crisis
-Central African Republic and Operation African Freedom

--East African Interim Unity Government and the core gameplay loop--

I technically played Angola first but I'm choosing to start with the EAF because they're the mandate with the least amount of mechanics, they have the basic mechanic thats unique to all mandates and nothing else.

So you have 2 metrics that are called Regime Stability and Administrative Hold. The former dictates how likely your mandate is to collapse prematurely, the latter dictates the change of the former. High hold means you gain stability, low hold means you lose it. You have decisions for PP that can increase both, increase one at the cost of the other, or increase your money reserves. I ignored the money reserves since I'm pretty sure that bit is for the US after you decolonize which isn't useful to someone whose playthrough stops after decolonization, like me.

There are 2 decisions that boost both metrics and i just spammed those and it was fine. Otherwise that's pretty much it for EAF, its focus and decision simulator. At the end though you do get to choose between 3 paths:

-American-like Federation Model
-Native Socialists Cooperation
-Warlordism Elimination.

I chose the third, which led to the end screen above, East Africa succesfully decolonized into OFN partner states. For curiosity though I went back and did the other 2 choices with a save I made just before

Socialist Cooperation keeps the same states as Warlordism Elimination, but their ruling ideology is Reformist Socialism

American-like Federation Model keeps the same ideology as Warlordism Elimination, but the East Africa Federation also holds Mozambique, Rwanda-Burundi and Uganda

--Coalition Government of Angola and the UNITA-PLUAA power struggle--

Angola is the same as EAF but with one other mechanic: Later into the game you have the power struggle between UNITA, a big tent OFN-aligned faction coalesced around their leader Jonas Savimbi, and PLUAA, which is a more stable socialist faction but less OFN-aligned.

You can choose one or the other to increase the power of, or even both if you want, and their rivalry makes you lose stability but not that much tbh. Every 60 days you also get an event that can result in UNITA victory (they gain power), PLUAA victory (they gain power), or stalemate (both equally gain power). Your decisions to boost their power make you lose stability, but there is one decision called "Peacekeeping Mission" that boosts stability and the power of whichever faction is in the lead.

It wasn't that much harder just slightly more annoying to manage PP, also I "chose" to back the UNITA which was frustrating because the 60-days Radio Angola events kept powering up the PLUAA.

I spammed Peacekeeping whenever UNITA was in the lead and when they weren't I spammed a few other decisions (while keeping in mind my stability) to make them get the lead again.

The problem is because Radio Angola kept powering up the PLUAA by the time the Decolonization started they were so similar in power that I actually unintentionally got the secret third path, where neither party has enough for you to outright support them so instead you support a coalition government with the FNLA in charge. This is also a path that leads Angola to join the OFN outright which I guess is cool.

--OFN Provisional Government of the Congo and the congo crisis--

I could have played normally and gotten Congo decolonized peacefully but that would have been a repeat of the EAF mostly so instead I decided to lose intentionally to unlock the congo crisis. I basically just spammed decisions to lower my Administrative Hold, and once it was at 0 I alternated between a decision that lowers stability in exchange for AH and a decision that lowers AH outright.

So eventually Congo collapsed and I got to play the congo crisis, which is a proxy war that can happen for the US, where Congo falls into civil war and you get to play as the remnants of the OFN administration to try and conquer everything back.

It honestly wasn't that hard, just some snaking and encirclements here and there. What was annoying is that when Beafrika declared war on the Japanese-backed faction (Zaire I think its called?) they...somehow...won...despite Zaire having already killed the commies and thus being the biggest faction...with Japanese volunteers...they lost. This means that I couldnt have beeg Congo because you can never declare war on Beafrika, if they win against the one state they go at war with they get to keep all the land. Which is kinda stupid, you're telling me I wanted that land in the first place but since its owned by Beafrika now I suddenly am fine with leaving it there?

--Central African Republic and Operation African Freedom--

The CAR is the Mandate you can choose instead of the 3 separate OFN mandates. Its always doomed to fail, because your AH starts at 0 and you have another thing called Military Hold which you also need to keep high except it also starts at 0 and Regime Stability starts low so unless you play extremely well (which I didn't) you will collapse one month after you start.

So once that happens, all of the CAR rises up against you except some small territories in East Africa and you have to either abandon the territory or fight your way to control all of the CAR again. I chose the latter since thats where the content is.

You have to defeat every country that rose up (there are a LOT) and establish US-friendly governments in them, and once everything is dealt with you win.

Thankfully they dont all join in an alliance together which means they cant enter eachothers territory so you won't get a mass of 100+ units at your border immediately BUT you still border 2 countries almost always so you have to spread your limited units thin which means they outnumber you anyways. It's just really tedious and grindy but if you keep at it you'll win. You can probably have an easier time if you play well and delay the collapse until the end of the 2nd focus tree but meh.

The hardest parts were Uganda because they have a small territory but lots of units so you cant push well and Angola because they camp units at their capital so you cant snake for VPs.

Once you win Operation AF, you get a small focus tree for the decolonization and the same end result as if you succesfully decolonized the 3 OFN Mandates but with thousands of deaths on your conscience.

--Ratings--

Gameplay:

EAF: 6/20 (Just decision spamming and taking focuses every 35 days, doesnt help that i played Angola beforehand)
Angola: 8/20 (Same as EAF but I guess i'll add a point or two because they have a second mechanic to engage with)
Congo: 10/20 (Mandate part is whatever but the war is short and sweet and probably the most fun i had in all of this but its nothing special, some short standard hoi4 gameplay basically)
CAR: 9/20 (Kinda like Congo but WAY more annoying.)

Lore:

EAF: 8/20 (It honestly didn't strike out to me as anything much, EAF is basically "Standard Mandate")
Angola: 14/20 (I quite liked the UNITA-PLUAA feud and the Schenck storyline and you get a nice steady flow of events all throughout)
Congo: 11/20 (The most morally dark of the 3 mandates CAR aside, guy in charge doesnt even bother learning the names of the native leaders and he seems to keep most German infrastructure in place which...yeah. Nice narrative but a few more events would have been nice.)
CAR: 12/20 (The narrative of this US that clearly doesnt care much for African self-government considering they set up this one large mandate that is doomed for failure, and fighting a war you know you're clearly the bad guy of and winning, is pretty nice. Again though, more events would have been nice but i'll be lenient since I collapsed VERY early).

Total:

EAF: 14/40 (F Tier - Bottom of the Barrel)
Angola: 22/40 (B Tier - Decent/Okay)
Congo: 21/40 (C Tier - Mediocre)
Central African Republic: 21/40 (C Tier - Mediocre)

This took me all day lol, but stay tuned for Day 15 where we'll delve into the new update with the Iberian Union

Guess who's baack!

If you're wondering what happened to me, it was burnout, mainly, plus the stress of daily life and schoolwork. But I decided to take this series back up because I'm in a TNO mood so...might as well, plus new update released today so what better way to celebrate than to restart the series?

Also, this is my new account. I deleted the old one for personal reasons

As for the country, I chose to go back to the original day 13 plan, SA, but not in requiem, just base TNO since i wanted smth more chill and requiem's content is way more expansive. I might go back to it eventually though.

As an aside, I forgot to take a pic of South Africa with the end screen like I usually do, forgive me lol, its not too bad since it was just the generic one

-Monarchy Referendum, the Boers and the ANC
-South African War

--Monarchy Referendum, the Boers and the ANC--

South Africa is the only shining light of Democracy left in the African continent, but that light is threatened on all fronts. On the exterior, the presence of the German Reichkommissariats forces South Africa to toe the line of neutrality, stopping them from approaching the US any further, while on the interior, two rebel groups tear the country apart: The African National Congress, a group by natives for natives that wish to see the end of apartheid, and the Boers, the Dutch colonizers that wish to see a new, independent, more German-aligned state.

The early game centers around the referendum on the monarchy, where the two rebel groups are, somehow, united in their wish to become a republic, as opposed to the Anglos who obviously want to keep it. You get a minigame that shows you the % of people who support the monarchy, alongside ANC strength and Boer strength. You have 3 spammable decisions for PP to increase monarchy support, and other decisions to increase monarchy support or decrease ANC/Boer strength at the cost of some referendum support. You pretty much have to sacrifice either referendum support or Boer strength cuz you cant keep the first high and the other low at the same time, or at least I couldn't. I focused on the referendum for roleplay points but gameplay wise focusing on the Boers is probably easier.

You also have the "Legacy of Rhodes", where you gain diamonds each month and can use diamonds to spam decisions that give you GDP growth, infrastructure, more diamonds each month, Pakt guns, etc. You can also trade with the OFN but that increases Pakt anger so I didn't. I mainly clicked the decisions for more diamonds first so I accumulated enough diamonds to keep spamming the other decisions.

Lastly is operations you can do covertly with the American Intelligence, but I mostly ignored these, idk if they really do much tbh.

In the focus tree you can choose to either ally with the ANC or beat em up, and I went with the former cuz I wanted to be more wholesome and also it was probably easier on the civil war. Speaking of, once Germany collapses you'll have your final challenge where the Boer state rises up and the Reichkommissariats come to their aid:

--South African War--

As soon as the war started I spammed out african volunteers to man the frontline, but I wanted them to be fully trained, so the early game was the toughest part because you're outnumbered and it takes sooooo long for the OFN to send you volunteers. Once the OFN locks in and my volunteer divs got pushed out though, it was easy sailing from there. I looked for holes in the frontline to make encirclements and slowly worked my way up to cap the Afrikaner Volkstaat. Then I basically snaked my ways through the three Reichkommissariats and looked for as many VPs as possible to cap them in quick succession. Not hard, just long, slow and annoying.

--Ratings--

Gameplay wise, meh. You can tell its old content, imho the early minigames really aren't that engaging and its basically Focus and Decisions Simulator until the war. As for the war, the early part is kinda fun but once the Boers go its just slow and grindy. I'll give it a 10/20 just cuz the content is short enough to not be too much of a bore (unlike *cough* Italy *cough*)

The lore...some events are nice to read up on but nothing too special and they completely stop once the war starts so I can't really give this smth more than a 6/20.

16/20 brings it just barely into C Tier - Mediocre, which I think makes sense. As for the next nation, Iberia is definitely the main one BUT finishing South Africa made it so I have a save for the 3 OFN mandates so I thought why not try them out? Depending on how different the mechanics are I'll either do them 1 by 1 like normal or group them all in one "special" episode. For completionism sake I'll do a CAR playthrough too (same thing, either in its own day or grouped with the others). Once we get through the Mandates, we'll set our eyes on Iberia.