Millennium Dawn mod for HoI4. I was hoping it would be less about blobbing and boring gimmicky memes. I was playing Ukraine from 2000. The first 12 years were nice and realistic, Russia bullied me into giving up Crimea. However, later on, the EU got unified into a state. This instant superpower had Polish leadership, and Poland previously became a member of the Intermarium, which my nationalist government started to prevent Putin-led Russia from getting too aggressive. Thus, the whole of this new super-EU joined my alliance from the beginning. I then decided to demand that Russia gives Crimea back, and the fools declared war on me for asking - meanwhile, the United States of Europe were already guarding my border.
Needless to say, the EU steamrolled over Russia within a year without me doing much, and for some reason Russia didn't use nukes. The EU then liberated Crimea by giving it to a separate Novorossia. However, I got the historically Ukrainian-populated Kuban. The ultimate deal for Russia wasn't bad, actually, since it got rid of Chechnya and Buryatia (but not Dagestan, which oddly is not detachable). Meanwhile at the other end of the world, the PRC declared war on Taiwan, but the US supported Taiwan and joined the war, also calling in Japan and the whole of South America.
The Russian side was pretty comical. Yugoslavia, non-Lukashenko Belarus, Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah, etc.
It's like that thing the Russian media were talking about.
So on the whole, I couldn't have a normal realistic game. I was behaving in a totally tame and moderate (if nationalist) fashion, and it all still became a meme. I wish you could combine the early diplomacy from here with the economic bits from New World Order for Vicky 2. It's sad that there is no mostly peaceful modern day Paradox game.