I think combined with the agility mechanics especially early game fighting crowds is just not fun. They do lots of damage and stun you. Better to fight a few fewer enemies where tactics play more of a role as opposed to using cheesing as a strategy, imo, like in ds3 where you fight maybe two lothric knights at once who have varied and interesting moves

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/20/chinas-meat-consumption-climate-change

Actually China is surprisingly on the right path. Yes, they are not yet vegan. But obviously this is a step in the right direction

Horrible enemy placements, hollowing that reduces your health to half (ds1 doesn’t do this, ds3 has embers which just increase health by 30%), extremely low estus in the start meaning consumables are mandatory, enemies are just fast while the combat is slow so they can really surround you

Get the ones that apply to the countries you like. I bought “Waking the tiger” for a few bucks for this run, took me a couple tries and maybe 10 odd hours in total, worth the cost. There’s expansions for the Spanish civil war, yugoslavia, etc which are all fun communist play throughs.

Eventually it clicks. It def took me a while but it’s really a curve, once a few things fall into place all the systems fall into place too. It does take a little while for sure though, but then it’s fun cause you can do shit like this. I plan on destroying America in this run.

Also, my manpower is hella low (18k) because I have 2.5% conscription and total mobilization, which gives a -3% recruitable population. I’ll bump it to 5% conscription and have several million to spare, no problem.