A look at history and popular culture
This is the second half of the third part (I, II IIIa) of our long-delayed series looking at the theory of history advanced by Paradox Interactive's Hearts of Iron IV, one of the most popular strategy games today. This part (both halves together) is fundamentally about politics and policy and the implications that HoI4's choices … Continue reading Teaching Paradox: Hearts of Iron IV, Part IIIb: The Opposite of Love
Hey, folks, no post this week as my work schedule has been pretty heavily disrupted and other tasks had to come first. Patrons will already know this background, but over the summer, we had a water leak issue in our basement (where my home office is), which wasn't too bad but required pulling up a … Continue reading Gap Week: October 9, 2026
This is the first half of the third part (I, II) of our long-delayed series looking at Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox Interactive's World War II grand strategy game, easily one of the most popular historical games on the market today and thus tremendously influential in both the popular history and gaming spaces. Over the … Continue reading Teaching Paradox: Hearts of Iron IV, Part IIIa: Focusing on Politics
Hey, folks, Fireside this week! We're now well into the Teaching Paradox series on Hearts of Iron, but as you may have noticed, the structure of those posts means they tend to be quite chunky (the first two have both been right around 10,000 words) and longer posts take time. Thus, a fireside this week … Continue reading Fireside Friday, September 25, 2026
This is the second part (I) of our long-delayed series looking at Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox Interactive's World War II grand strategy game and also one of the most popular strategy games currently on the market. Last week, we looked at how HoI4 simulates combat, particularly its focus on operations (rather than tactics or, … Continue reading Teaching Paradox: Hearts of Iron IV, Part II: Divisions, Designers and Doctrines
This week, at long last, we begin our long-delayed but always expected something that we blog for: the Hearts of Iron IV Teaching Paradox series! This has been a long requested series that I put off for a long time because I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to tackle it. But my thoughts here … Continue reading Teaching Paradox: Hearts of Iron IV, Part I: Operational Art
Hey folks! Fireside this week! Last week's post was a monster (over 10,000 words compared to our more typically ~6,000) which left me with some non-blog catching up to do. Next week, we'll be starting our next Teaching Paradox series, this time looking at Hearts of Iron IV, which has been requested for quite some … Continue reading Fireside Friday, September 4, 2026
This week we're doing another one of our series of military theory primers, this time focusing on a fairly simple contention: that the United States Navy is a load-bearing component of the global economy. I considered attempting to work in A.T. Mahan and the concept of command of the seas in here but simply outlining … Continue reading Collections: Global Trade and United States Navy
This is the second half of the final part (I, IIa, IIb, III, IVa, IVb, Va, Vb) of our apparently five-part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are organized, with fictional worldbuilding and historical patterns in mind. Last time we started checking some fictional militaries against the general patterns we've laid … Continue reading Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part Vb: Pixel Armies for Pixel Societies
Hey folks, fireside this week as I get ready for the start of a new semester! For this week, I wanted to talk briefly about the wrinkles that financing navies poses with regards to our worldbuilding primer on pre-modern armies. "what about navies?" has been a frequent question in comments and from patrons. Now a … Continue reading Fireside Friday, August 14, 2026 (On Financing Pre-Modern Navies)