TheWarRoom

Hello folks,
Apparently there has been some drama in the HoI4 Discord server lately regarding Atatürk being a 'controversial' figure, ostensibly due to him being a CUP member during the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Anatolia (1915).

From a purely historical standpoint, this is incorrect. Atatürk had a falling out with the Committee for Union and Progress in 1909, was extremely critical of the top leadership including the Enver - Cemal - Talat triumvirate, and and was in no position to give any orders regarding the treatment of Armenians in Anatolia, being only a mid-ranking military commander assigned to the Gallipoli Front in 1915. Regarding him as a controversial figure for any supposed involvement at this time is utterly ridiculous. Furthermore, Atatürk even referred to the events of 1915 as 'A Shameful Act' during a speech to the Grand National Assembly in 1920.

While I believe that the initial message sent by the Discord moderator in question was quite reasonable and even apologetic in tone, the follow-up message which deemed Atatürk as a controversial figure is simply not historically accurate.

I personally would not touch HoI4 with a ten-foot pole, so I can't confirm for myself whether other 'controversial' figures (eg. Churchill, Woodrow Wilson etc.) are also subjected to a similar policy in the relevant Discord server. If that is the case, I could at least consider Paradox's policy as being politically 'neutral' and concede that the offer of using Atatürk's in-game picture is a reasonable offer. However, some Turkish members of the HoI4 community claim that figures such as Stalin and Mussolini are acceptable profile pictures in the server. If that is the case, this is clearly a blatant double-standard on part of Paradox and should not be tolerated.

Nonetheless, I don't believe that spamming and review bombing Paradox servers/Steam pages will help with the current situation, as hilarious as the results might be.

What I would expect from Paradox at this point is to clarify their policy regarding 'controversial' figures. I know that the mods can be extremely trigger-happy about it sometimes, seeing as I also got hit with a temporary suspension for having an extremely obscure and totally unrelated Turkish politician/general as my pp in the Victoria 3 server - and I hadn't even sent any messages. If they institute a general ban on using post-WW1 politicians as profile pictures or something objectively enforceable like that, that might be the best solution here. If not, having a subjective criterion of 'controversy' is bound to create more controversy in the future and lead to more drama.

In any case, Atatürk was a great man. He does not deserve to be remembered as 'controversial' along with the likes of Stalin and Hitler. And I say this as someone he would likely have hanged or at least imprisoned for a good while for sedition and anarchism. I sincerely hope that the fine folks at Paradox realize this and reconsider their decision, or at the very least institute a more sensible and uniform policy.

-TWR

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 102

TheWarRoom

The voice of the people is the voice of God! And the people demand that I suffer!
The Italian Wars poll is officially over with 529 votes being cast. Verona emerged as the clear victor from round #1 but we still went through the process of elimination until a simple majority of 254 (265 Minus the spoiled ballots) was reached in Round 6.

Our next campaign - The Kingdom of Italy - shall begin soon. Let us try to survive this madness. Although I'm fairly confident we will succeed, success shall come at great cost to my sanity...

The Papal States and Milan were the other runners-up, and Milan and Montferrat appeared quite consistently as 2nd and 3rd choices of a lot of people. So if I have time, we might also consider doing some extra episodes for those, but no promises there!

1 month ago | [YT] | 106

TheWarRoom

We're getting CANNIBALISM in Afterworld. Isn't that awesome?

Check out the full deep dive here: https://youtu.be/8pajfpSS7j0

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 56

TheWarRoom

Hello folks,
1.3 has changed how a bunch of systems work. Do you have any specific systems you're struggling to understand/play with? Would you want me to create guides about them? And would you enjoy more videos about systems/guides rather than just me playing as different countries? (Except for a general economy guide, everyone wants one of those!)

2 months ago | [YT] | 52

TheWarRoom

It's BATTLE ROYALE time!

We are going to do something different to celebrate the release of patch 1.3! Instead of picking a country and playing a full campaign with them, we are going to have a series of thematic episodes where I play as 8 different Italian states. And then YOU will decide which country we shall play our full campaign with!

The first challenger is Venice - and the video shall be released within the next few hours. And after that... Who knows? ;)

PS: The Sweden campaign will also keep running on Patch 1.2.5, along with daily achievement videos!

3 months ago | [YT] | 147

TheWarRoom

Hello folks!
As of today we will have 3 series running concurrently. We will have alternating videos for the Norse Sweden and Mongol Empire series, and I will keep livestreaming occasionally (once or twice a week) until we reach our goal of making Alexandria the largest city ever in the Mamluk campaign!

And then, we are also going to have a little surprise series coming up perhaps on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. It is *not* going to be EU5 though. Let me just say that the future of the channel... is in the skies!

4 months ago | [YT] | 118

TheWarRoom

Hello folks,
It looks like people want to see me play tall *Shudders* so I'll give you 3 options for populationmaxxing. Pick the one you like best and we'll see about the rest!

4 months ago | [YT] | 33

TheWarRoom

Hello folks! We have officially restored the Mongol Empire and that brings our Golden Horde campaign to a well-deserved ending. The episode will be up tomorrow, with members getting 20 hours or so of early access. We might do more episodes but this is the thematic goal that I had set at the start so anything else will be extra.

Let me know under this post which countries you want me to play as next and we will do a poll between the more popular options to decide where to head next!

4 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 150

TheWarRoom

Hello folks!
Our first ever livestream (Yesterday was just a tech demo) is coming up! And it is a highly-requested fan favourite, the Golden Horde! Since I haven't actually figured out how to survive as them, we will learn as we go. If we actually manage to survive I will turn it into a full series, but of course that is a big IF.

4 months ago | [YT] | 4

TheWarRoom

Hello folks!

Looks like our old Discord invite link expired, so here is the new one if you want to join us on Discord: discord.gg/2QBsHXp2VT

There are special rooms for our members so if you are a member, I'll definitely be expecting you!

Other than that, the Trebizond and Byzantium runs will go concurrently for now. I expect Trebizond to last another 4-5 episodes until we have reclaimed peak Roman Empire borders and Byzantium is going to be a long campaign with a twist near the end so definitely keep watching and find out where we are headed! :)

I'll also do Serbia and Frankokratia runs after Trebizond + Byzantium, which should give us all the content of the new DLC. After that, your guess is as good as mine as to who we will play as. If you have any ideas, feel free to shoot! There have been A LOT OF Golden Horde requests so I'm leaning towards them but we shall see!

5 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 17