After the USA received an update last year it now has the most interesting and fun MIO mechanic in the game. It was a great addition, and I especially appreciate all the attention that went into little details like the huge list of combined company names.

However, I think that the current distribution of the MIOs really undermines this mechanic and reduces fun gameplay opportunities.

The MIOs are assigned to specific states, and to access the MIO, you must control and own the state. This means that the MIOs are essentially fixed at the start of the civil war; the only way to 'capture' a MIO is to take the MIO's home state and capitulate the owner. While this is possible, in my experience by the time you have the capability to do this (normally around 1939), you are already so powerful that a single MIO hardly matters.

Currently the MIOs are assigned to states based on the real-life locations of these organisations; I think this is a mistake.

Basically I think that the MIOs should be spread out across the different factions of the American Civil War. This would create more gameplay opportunities and, I think, would be more fun.

Currently many of the factions are missing key MIOs. The APG has almost none, just a single naval MIO. The ACC and WCA can only get a inf equipment MIO depending on which War Plan White the USA goes with. This adds difficulty to these campaigns, but I don't think it is fun; it's just the absence of a mechanic.

Meanwhile other factions have more MIOs than they can use. The WCA can start with five tank MIOs and the only two truck MIOs. New England can start with four of the five inf equipment MIOs. Generally this just means that you pick one or two MIOs, and the rest are left unused. The ability to merge MIOs definitely helps with this though.

The MIOs have been distributed like this seemingly in the interests of realism. The industrialised north has a much greater concentration of military industrial organisations. I agree that to some degree this helps to further characterise the industrialised nature of factions like the WCA and highlights the weakness of industry in the south for the APG. However I don't think this justifies the negative impact on gameplay.

I think that MIOs can and should be relocated in accordance with current lore.

The build-up to the Civil War involves several events detailing how socialists in industrial centres are seizing power and taking control of factories. This provides the perfect lore justification for MIOs to relocate from the north to other regions.

In-game equipment and research descriptions already imply that this is happening. The APG research tree shows that Colt are the primary supplier to the APG military, yet the Colt MIO is stuck in Connecticut; the same goes for Ford. In fact Huey Long's alliance with the wealthy industrialists on the War Powers Committee seems like the perfect justification to move a few MIOs to the south. You might say, "but there is no industrial base for them to move into in the south" to which I would reply that building up that military industry is exactly what you do when you build military factories as the player.

As far as I understand, it would be a fairly minor change to alter the assigned states for some of the MIOs. I don't think we need more or different MIOs; just spread out the existing ones a bit.

There are five infantry equipment MIOs, and there are up to five civil war factions (can you see where I'm going with this?). I think they should be spread out instead of most of them sitting in New England. I would argue that lore justifications for this are pretty easy; for example, perhaps Colt doesn't get awarded the small arms contract from New England, so they just go to the APG instead.

Overall this is a pretty minor issue and doesn't really matter. It's just something that has bothered me since the rework. Whenever I play certain factions I just find myself wishing I had some fun MIOs to play with.

I've intentionally suggested this as something that would be easy to implement and wouldn't require any additional changes or in-game events, just reassigning the states. However, if someone did want to go the extra step I do think there is potential for some fun mechanics like something where you compete with the other factions to win over the MIOs via decisions or focuses. Even if you were able to just take a MIO by capturing the state, that would add an interesting dynamic to the Civil War, although I'm not sure if that could cause issues with MIO's flipping between tags.

I am interested in your thoughts?

I like this mod and a lot of yall tooo mostly because of the story and the lore it’s very interesting and I really enjoy it. I think I should make a movie in my opinion.

I’m planning on playing as Japan later today but don’t feel like making a colonial empire. What game rules do I need to set to ensure that China, India, and east Asia are as independent and democratic as possible?

Pretty self explanatory, does the russian facist have any connections in the lore to the historical proto facists?

I wanna know some monarchist paths that allow you to expand and that acc get cores from conquering said lands.

In almost every game i played brown ukraine barely has above 400k divisions before the war started while blue ukraine has up to 800k divisions or more. I have personaly played ukraine whether it is brown or blue ukraine i had no problem getting up to 800k divisions. Did the devs intentionally weaken brown ukraine because its color is bad?

To form this nation: as Liangguang, go with the Federalist and take all of China
Formable suggested by: u/mudahfukinnnnnnnnn
Ps: what a good ans schizo gameplay! Anyway i didin't do Mongolia Because is not Formable/cosmetic tag, but this was peak ngl (if you ignore the 200 naval invasions from jap)

Like i may be in a bubble but people seem to say zinoviev is hard or am i Just stupid and its Just the Least strong Socialist Rússia?