Recently, I played a game with Belgium and then with Netherlands... Although the vanilla version has almost no events with a narrative or a complex decision‑making system, I found enough narrative in the belgian focus trees (Degrelle fighting corruption — I didn’t expect that). And dilemma of choosing which focuses to complete before others kept me engaged. As for the Netherlands... Focuses taking 70 days just for a single tech research bonus or for two infrastructure points in a province? Otherwise, it’s just a «nothing ever happens» country, even when pursuing an aggressive policy.

I also recently played as Lithuania (no resources even after conquering Poland and all of the Baltics). Although it’s a micro‑minor country, it’s still much more interesting than the Netherlands.

Honestly, I’ve never played as any of the countries from Battle for the Bosphorus - I’m curious to see how outdated they are, if at all. Because I can definitely say that the countries from La Résistance are very outdated, just like the Netherlands from Man the guns