My friends, welcome to the Jerry Banfield Show. I'm so grateful you're here today. Am I the second worst Hearts of Iron player ever? You'll love this whole thing because it's so much more than a game. It's inspiring. It's a great show. It's like a vlog and a podcast, plus gaming. It's amazing.
I love real time strategy games. Now, to transition into talking about the actual game: I love real time strategy games, and I love World War II. It seems like this may be the ultimate thing for me, because it's an extremely detailed World War II real time strategy game. The last time I played it, I was Germany and I got my butt kicked by Poland. Literally got just annihilated going to war with Poland.
Choosing Germany Again
So I'm choosing Germany again, because since I played last time I've watched over an hour of tutorials, plus there's what I learned just playing last time. We're gonna do a lot better this time. According to the tutorials I watched, the USSR and Germany are two of the easier countries to start with because they're right in the middle of the action. And who doesn't want to give it a try? Looking at Germany in World War II, you think, "I could have done that better." Apparently, I couldn't have — at least not on the first try.
So we're gonna go in on regular difficulty, and we're going in with Germany. Leader: Adolf Hitler. Fascist. And then there's Iron Man mode — cheats are disabled, it's automatically saved, and there's no turning back. We might as well just do that, because you get the achievements and stuff. So we're gonna click start and — wait, what? No, we don't want that. We do not want that. Let's get rid of that last game we played. We're gonna save and play this one, my friends. Let's get it started in here.
We're starting in 1936 — you could start in 1939 if you wanted to, which I did last time, but clearly I wasn't ready to go right into war. I'm ready for war. You're ready for war. I got machetes and swords, I laid my hand on the floor — yes, I burst into rap randomly. We're gonna see right now if these tutorials were worth it, and I'm sure they are. I can't do any worse than last time without really needing to push my own imagination.
The tutorials I looked at strongly suggested the value of things like the mechanical engineering research here. I don't even know exactly what this will do, but it seems like a good idea, so we're gonna research that.
Do What You Love and Do It for Free
I hope if there's something inspiring about this today, it's this: be willing to do what you love and do it for free, make time for it, and be very happy with whatever you get. It's been an incredible journey for me. I was one of the most popular live streamers on Facebook Gaming. I was making ten-plus thousand a month on Facebook Gaming, and then it all of a sudden vanished. I'm looking forward to going to a movie with my wife later. I've spent the morning with my family and at my AA meeting, which is my AA family, and I'm so grateful for the time to do that. Grateful for the opportunity to show up and do whatever I can to inspire and lift someone else up today, all while having fun playing some video games.
Why Is There a Horse?
Alright, so now we want to recruit and deploy divisions. We want to train some more infantry, tanks, motorized divisions, and — what is that? I don't even know what that is. What — cavalry? Why is there a horse? And you can — we don't even need decontamination. We got — man, we got reinforcements, upgrades, supply trucks, garrisons. Wow, this is deep. It takes so long to learn this game.
The key is not to give up in frustration. I love a good challenge, I love World War II, and I love real time strategies. I've never played one quite like this, as deep as this, before. I literally deleted this game right after I first played it for a couple of hours. I was like, alright, this is way too much. This is too much of a challenge. I'm not up for this. But then I saw how many views my livestream of it got, and I'm like, alright, let me go back and re-examine now.
I don't know what to do on this, so I guess I can just keep waiting on it. Alright, now let's get the game rolling. We'll see what happens. What? Wait, what? The Paradox games are hard? Hearts of Iron is one of the easiest ones? Really?
Now it looks like my military units have deployed along the front lines. That's cool. Last time when I was playing this, I was not able to do that. I didn't get my units deployed along the front lines at all. Seems like there's so many units in that one lower corner.
So we put on Renew Mefo Bills. Okay — oh, so you can select Cancel or Renew on them. Alright, so we renewed the Mefo Bills, canceled it, and I renewed it again. It cost us a little bit. We need some more political power.
Every game's got its different ups and downs, and this game is not as visually interesting as, say, a first person shooter. That said, some people are really turned off by the violence. I've played all these shooters for so long that, for better or worse, I'm kind of numb to the violent aspects of them. Some viewers can't stand the violence that's involved with those shooters.
The Great Naval Bomber Hunt
A civil war erupted in Spain. Alright, so I turned off the setting in this game that bases things on historical accuracy, which is cool. Now, I am not able to — how do I select my air armies? Alright, we'll put our pilots on some air exercises here. Now we're training our pilots up. How do I get a commander for them? Can I control-click these?
What kind of — we need a navy? A naval bomber? Oh, that's gonna be in here. Where's a naval bomber? I don't see a naval bomber in here. Do you? See, I'm not even sure exactly what I'm doing. I'm definitely doing something. Good lord, this is deep. You can create variants? Lord. Alright, so I've learned a lot — not sure exactly what to do next, though. Alright, so we're working on naval rearmament; I just looked at it. The naval bombers are in the planes tab? Oh my god, you're right! There it is! There's that naval bomber! So, if we go on aircraft, we can shift-click to hide everything but the naval bomber, and let's bump that up in priority. Alright, the naval bomber is in production now. We are making naval bombers now. Good. So the decision is the only alert left to look at. Alright, cool. Finally figured that out. Oh my goodness, this is deep.
Deleting the Apps to Focus
I'm feeling very grateful. Very focused. I've deleted Facebook and Instagram — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Twitch — from my phone, which has been really nice to help me focus. Alright, so we got 50 percent fascist support. It's so annoying when you're trying to do all these different things — for example, I'm looking at Facebook, looking at Instagram, and I got distracted so much the other day just by uploading a reel on Instagram. It really helps to — we need some more panzers, don't we? — it really helps to just have less things on your mind.
I'm gonna just get Austria with the Anschluss here. Let me hit the diplomacy — I don't need to keep wasting my political power in Austria, because we're just gonna take them.
Rubber, Oil, and a Battleship I Might Have Trashed
It'd be a shame to — oh my god, look how long that thing's gonna take. It'd be a shame to cancel this now, but I mean, this battleship is not gonna be done till 1942, and it takes up 14 steel and two chromium. Maybe we could cancel that and get a factory. I guess we could just — did I just trash that thing? Did I just completely end that, or what happened with it? I don't know what I did. I'm not sure what I did there.
Wait, hold up — we have 25 civilian factories available? Oh my goodness, my friends. Wait, where — no, it says 36 out of 36 right here. These are all used up. Alright, we should make another — oh, I'm paused, aren't I? I'm like, why is stuff not working? Oh, it's paused.
What — rubber? Wasn't I already trading for rubber? Rats. Why are we using so much rubber? Can we trade out anything? I have so much steel. What is using all this rubber? Let me check my — let's crank tanks out hard, and that'll fix our resource shortage. Nice. Alright, so we fixed our resource shortage with that. Then the achievement pops: congratulations, you lasted longer than France did in World War II. Let's go! This game is so detailed, it's mind boggling.
Alright, nice — I'm running out of oil. I am 14 days out. Oh my. It's because I'm doing all these training exercises. Who's doing — oh, it's the navy doing all these training exercises, isn't it? That's probably using a lot of oil up. Well, let's stop our boats from doing all these training exercises. Oh, we need to slow it down too.
Wrapping Up for a Date With My Wife
Today was all about focus — just focusing in on the things that matter. It's so helpful to focus in on fewer things, smaller things that matter, instead of trying to be constantly doing all these other different things. So what I'm going to do is end this now and go hang out and have a date with the wife. If you enjoyed this misadventure, there's a lot more where it came from in my Games playlist.
How do I save right now? How do I just exit and save? Can I just exit and save right here? Oh, it saved automatically, didn't it? How do I save? When does it save? Why can't I save right now? Are you sure? I selected the Iron Man thing — I selected that one Iron Man mode. Alright, we're gonna wrap this up quick so we can go have a nice date with the wife. This game saves every month? Okay, thank you. So why don't we speed it up — alright, there we go. Okay, it just auto-saved. Good. Now we can do it. It just saved, so now we'll exit out. Alright, thanks a lot, my friends. I appreciate you being here today. Have a wonderful day.