NOTE: Areas with no color on the map are TBD lore-wise at this point in development
It has been 64 years since the "War of Reclaimation" was won by the join forces of the Ottawa Pact, and the world is unstable as ever. The Russian State is entering it's death throes as the peoples of Eastern Europe and Prussia yearns for freedom. The restored British Empire faces collapse, with revolution and republicanism seething within it's cracks. As the old order collapses, the resurgent Fourth Internationale seeks to once more spread Syndicalist revolution across the world, while the co-prosperity Sphere and the Pacific States of America take up the torch of liberty. The world is at a crossroads, with revolutionaries and demagogues from the left and the right both taking advantage of the death of the old order to bring fourth a new order, and another great war, one larger than the last war looks to be imminent....
Summary and Premise:
Ashes of the Kaiserreich is a Kaiserreich spinoff in development for Hearts of Iron IV. It explores two questions: What if the Second Weltkrieg ended with the defeat of both the Syndicalist Internationale and Mittleuropa at the hands of National Populist Russia and an increasingly authoritarian Entente? And what would that world end up as going into the 21st century?
It takes a different approach than many Kaiserreich mods, featuring a premise that is significantly more dystopian[1] than the current Kaiserreich spin offs in development' featuring a world divided between an authoritarian Entente that has fully embraced reactionary and extreme anti-leftist sentiments and a Fascistic Russia; with a libertarian socialist America, a democratic co-prosperity Sphere, and a left-wing Nationalist Indian bloc challenging this reactionary order.
In addition to the more dystopian premise, the mod takes a different approach to the concept of war between the Great Powers; focusing on the buildup to a war between great powers, the war itself, and the outcome of said war. In mods such as The New Order: Last Days of Europe, great power war is something to be totally avoided, and plays well into the hands of the genocidal goals of the main villains: the SS under Heinrich Himmler, who wants to see the world destroyed by a Nuclear fire that they hope would unleash the Final Solution to end all final solutions. This fits well with the themes of TNO, which is to make pragmatic choices-even if it means allowing someone who faked their remorse at Nuremburg OTL to act as the lesser of all evils-to achieve the best outcome, while not giving in to "easy" and "quick fix" solutions, even if in a rage directed against Nazism(ie: DSR and Nakam, as well as arguably the various Slavic Nazi and Ultranat groups such as Samara and Omsk that have no tangible difference politically at all apart from being from a group that was the target of the Nazis' genocidal aims). AoKR however, has the world war as occurring 9/10 times with the goal of the player of seeing it to it's end; this being a consequence of nukes having never been developed in this timeline, through nuclear capabilities have been theorized and I am planning for the majors and some secondary powers to have the power to build nukes ingame. That is not to say that peace is impossible, rather a peaceful 2010s is something requiring a lot of chips to fall to the floor that may not unless excessive savescumming and reloading is used.
We are currently, after reorganizing the discord channel, opening our discord channel to the public and looking for developers that will help bring this mod to fruition. You can apply for development here by filling out this form. In addition, with regards to following development, this is our thread on the alternatehistory.com website if you fancy following development here, and we have our subreddit on reddit as well, along with a discord here.
[1]: Through, admittedly, to some not on board with the whole Syndicalism thing or see Totalism as the inevitable endpoint of Syndicalism would interpret Krasnacht as a rather dystopian scenario
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