How to be a Professional, Competitive Hearts of Iron 4 Player

Overview

The only guide that will effectively prepare you for your journey as a seasoned Hearts of Iron 4 multiplayer-mode player.

Introduction

When most players plunge themselves into Hearts of Iron 4’s multiplayer environment, they almost always inject themselves in unequipped with the proper knowledge required to play! This absolutely sickens me and every other certified and experienced professional within the multiplayer community. In fact, while collecting these thoughts, I’ve vomited. These newly minted, amateur players must be stricken with knowledge, and I wish to accomplish this process through this guide, so I no longer have to worry about cleansing my keyboard of vomit after playing as Germany online. (In which I’ve been doing every night since release.)

Advice #1: Read all about it!

Whenever you enter an online match, you will most likely be acquainted with a link for a discord or a teamspeak or elsewhere. It is on these platforms in which people playing in-game enter to communicate through a voice channel or store rulelists for matches. The first thing you must do is check for a present rulelist. If there exists none, inform the game hosts of their casual and babyish playstyle and abandon the game. There’s not enough room within this game for friendly, casual-styled games, so act like I tell you to if you don’t want to be dumb. (Your IQ will be sky-high by the end of this).
If there is a rulelist, then read the first ten pages, take a small break, then read the next fifteen. If you can’t do this all in the matter of five minutes, then you’ll be sneered at by commoners on the platform you’re within that have been there for months. (And righteously so, you absolute dimwitted rain-delay, leave and never come back).
Assuming that you’re not some slow reading knuckle-dragger, proceed to select a country that is tolerated in the rulelist, and ready up. (If the rulelist refuses to ban countries that aren’t majors, the players that you’re with are just as bad, if not worse, than rulelist-lacking babyheads. Join their game, begin launching a coup on every other player, and then leave immediately afterwards).

Advice #2: Be smart while playing

Upon the beginning of the game, you might be eager to play the way you, yourself see fit. You might want to declare war on Poland early as Germany, or go Fascist as Britain or the USA or something. Do not do any of these things, you’re ruining the game, and if these things are allowed in the rulelist you’ve made a mistake. (If so, attempt a coup on every player country and leave – we must rout out bad rulelists).
What you’ll really need to do is follow a step-by-step method for playing your country. Envision this not as a game, but as a theatrical play that requires precision and no individual contribution on your behalf. Multiplayer is fun, refreshing, and vibrant, because it is not a game but a stencil that you have to follow. Ask your more experienced (and better than you) allies what you should do as your country and follow their words exactly. Anything less than this is weakness, and you should be ashamed of yourself, you overhyped twinkle-toed screwball.

Action #3: Embracing the mindset

Now that you know what you are to do, you must crackdown on any dissenting “hopes” that you have had for meta multiplayer games. Discard and demolish all inclinations you have that may lead you to not adhering to the meta. As I said, you are the actor, not the role, follow the command and leave room for no other action. You aren’t an individual anymore – you and your allies are the hive, so to speak. There should only exist the hive and nothing else. If any player in the game rebels against the hive, then coup every other player and leave, the play is already ruined. There’d be nothing more to see.
It is this condition of absolute obedience that grants competitive multiplayer its entertaining qualities, never forget that. Freedom is for vomit-inducing singleplayer casual scum who wouldn’t know amusement if they were whacked in the face with it.

Advise #4: The final step

Now that you have had your first encounter with the most superior Hoi4 experience, you have an assured lifetime of happiness just waiting for you. In order to become a certified Hearts of Iron 4 Multiplayer Expert, you must follow the preceding steps every night for at least the next six months. It will be the peak amount of pleasure that you can ever attain as a mortal. Go get them, tiger!