u/BlueStingray8

Because of the nature of peace in HOI4 in order to win a war (excluding a few nation specific events) you have to totally capitulate an enemy nation. The main problem with this is the axis is left in the awkward position of needing to invade and capitulate all major allied powers

This is incredibly difficult depending on which country you play, not impossible, and I’m sure there’s going to be someone with 5k hours who says “it’s easy bro!”. But it is obviously difficult to do

As Germany you’re expected to invade and capitulate the uk, this is difficult but not wildly so as long as you get it done sooner rather than later. If you did this before the USA joins the war then well done! You can now use Canada to invade the USA and win the game. This is the only way I’ve ever managed to do a world conquest, it works but relies on speed, cheese, and a lot of bad rp. I personally think it would be better if after taking out the allies in Europe you can get an event to negotiate peace with the USA and commonwealth.

It would be more realistic and give you something to do after the USSR is out of the picture, paving the way for a much more fun and even fight with the USA later.

As for Japan, the situation is much worse. A decent Japan player can have China squared away before 1938. After this? Well if you try to take on the USA directly it will probably go very badly. To actually win it takes much more cheese than Germany. I find it’s best to join the war with the allies alongside Germany and then naval invade the UK from France. This obviously makes zero sense as far as history and rp is concerned and it’s boring but it works. Afterwards you can repeat the Canada strategy against the USA and then you can take over the world etc etc

I better way for the game to go would be if as Japan you take all allied and American territory in the pacific and East Asian you can get an event to negotiate peace with the USA and commonwealth before presumable joining Germany in a second war to finish them off later if you so wish

These are just my personal thoughts and suggestions, I’m sure someone can think of a better solution than me but my original point stands, the current system is a bit shit and is basically intended to let ww2 happen as it did in real life while not providing reasonable and non-cheesy methods the axis to win the war. Thanks for reading you’re welcome to call me an idiot in the comments if you’d like