Kaiserreich in Darkest Hour
Dec. 9th, 2011 01:29 amKaiserreich is a mod for Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday: Armageddon and has in the past been partially ported to Arsenal of Democracy (it never worked for me) and also the newer HoI2-based game, Darkest Hour. The mod is predicated on the idea of "What if France collapsed during World War 1 and the conflict dragged out with Germany and Britain in a stalemate?" Other events follow, such as the German intervention helping the Whites defeat the Reds in the Russian Revolution, Syndicalist take-overs of both France and Britain, and so on. Lots of fun alternate history that's usually not too 'out there'. (Real history is already pretty out there, though...) It's lots of fun alternate history grand strategy, with many interesting events that can drive each game into wildly divergent histories: who will win the second American civil war, the second Russian revolution, which countries will collapse into Syndicalism, will Germany intervene here or there during a crisis.

I started a game up as the German Reich and decided to generally pursue a policy of keeping most of my empire together while preparing for the inevitable showdown with the Commune of France, Union of Britain, and Socialist Republic of Italy. Along the way I sold Crete to Greece, Ceylon to the Princely Federation, built some battlecruisers for the Dutch, and watched in horror as the Russian Republic became the Soviet Union, a big, nasty Syndicalist power with vast manpower reserves just on the other side of my terribly thin wall of puppet governments.
When the French demanded the return of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine), I of course said no, and so in 1939 the second Weltkreig began. It didn't last too long. The French collapsed under the steady advance of the Kaiser's disciplined infantry and cavalry forces (with six entire armor divisions deployed!). While I waited for the rest of my marines to finish deploying, I invaded southern Italy and routed the Syndicalists there, ceding the territory later to the Papal-led Italian Federation. Then I rolled right over the English after landing marines in two coastal provinces to split their response. After that, I started my crusade against the other Syndicalist states (Soviet Russia /w puppets and the Transcaucasus Socialist Republic). They weren't much of a problem because the Soviets had been trying to kill Baron Ungern's Mongolia off, so about half of their army was stacked up way in the middle of nowhere, giving me an easy opportunity to eat many core provinces before any real resistance showed up. While that was going on, I allied with the Ottomans and helped them put down their little Arab revolt problem, picking up Egypt and Sudan for myself and my colony of Mittelafrika.
The only Syndicalists left were in Bolivia of all places, so I'm just going to call this one a "win". I've got puppets from Britain to the Urals, and there's no way the Entente will challenge me in a war (I even tried to prevent such a conflict by giving France back to Petain's government, but they refused the offer). The green in that map is Mittleuropan (read: German) Europe and North Afrika.
I just wish my Russia->Russian Empire game had gone this well... needless to say the Kaiser curbstomped me at the end of that.

I started a game up as the German Reich and decided to generally pursue a policy of keeping most of my empire together while preparing for the inevitable showdown with the Commune of France, Union of Britain, and Socialist Republic of Italy. Along the way I sold Crete to Greece, Ceylon to the Princely Federation, built some battlecruisers for the Dutch, and watched in horror as the Russian Republic became the Soviet Union, a big, nasty Syndicalist power with vast manpower reserves just on the other side of my terribly thin wall of puppet governments.
When the French demanded the return of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine), I of course said no, and so in 1939 the second Weltkreig began. It didn't last too long. The French collapsed under the steady advance of the Kaiser's disciplined infantry and cavalry forces (with six entire armor divisions deployed!). While I waited for the rest of my marines to finish deploying, I invaded southern Italy and routed the Syndicalists there, ceding the territory later to the Papal-led Italian Federation. Then I rolled right over the English after landing marines in two coastal provinces to split their response. After that, I started my crusade against the other Syndicalist states (Soviet Russia /w puppets and the Transcaucasus Socialist Republic). They weren't much of a problem because the Soviets had been trying to kill Baron Ungern's Mongolia off, so about half of their army was stacked up way in the middle of nowhere, giving me an easy opportunity to eat many core provinces before any real resistance showed up. While that was going on, I allied with the Ottomans and helped them put down their little Arab revolt problem, picking up Egypt and Sudan for myself and my colony of Mittelafrika.
The only Syndicalists left were in Bolivia of all places, so I'm just going to call this one a "win". I've got puppets from Britain to the Urals, and there's no way the Entente will challenge me in a war (I even tried to prevent such a conflict by giving France back to Petain's government, but they refused the offer). The green in that map is Mittleuropan (read: German) Europe and North Afrika.
I just wish my Russia->Russian Empire game had gone this well... needless to say the Kaiser curbstomped me at the end of that.