Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg

@Worffan101
What many people mean when they say that Syndicalists are airbrushed is that the transition to a union-run state and economy is seemingly seamless (no pun intended) and bloodless, and that the unions don't suffer from similar issues of corruption, complacency, etc. that ended up plaguing unions IOTL once they became more powerful.

Issues of corruption in unions tend to crop up when they get squeezed and less powerful, making them focus on tightening their hold over whatever they currently have by any mean necessary, rather than when they're very successful. For example the US is one of the most anti union countries among democracies, and it also has some of the worst examples of union corruption.

I agree about transition though, especially in France which is more radically minded. The Brits probably kept a lot of the older structures running since their union leadership was much more moderate. By the time of the game, France should probably be out of that transition period, but you could so something with events to describe how Britain still has a lot of that to do and a few background stories about how the French revolution required significant economic reorganizing.
 
Issues of corruption in unions tend to crop up when they get squeezed and less powerful, making them focus on tightening their hold over whatever they currently have by any mean necessary, rather than when they're very successful. For example the US is one of the most anti union countries among democracies, and it also has some of the worst examples of union corruption.
By contrast UK unions in 1970s were had a lot of power, but were also undemocractic (hense that Thacter had to introduce funds for proper screate ballots) and power hungry.

You could also ague that the causation arror points the other way.
 
By contrast UK unions in 1970s were had a lot of power, but were also undemocractic (hense that Thacter had to introduce funds for proper screate ballots) and power hungry.

You could also ague that the causation arror points the other way.

Looks like the problem is democracy in that case, yeah.

Anyway, union sclerosis under capitalist conditions isn't really relevant to analyzing how they would go here. The start of the century unions would still be militant and dynamic groups, especially the revolutionary ones.
 
Anyway, union sclerosis under capitalist conditions isn't really relevant to analyzing how they would go here. The start of the century unions would still be militant and dynamic groups, especially the revolutionary ones.
If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting that the unions are still "fresh" as it were - which is a very good point - yes.
Looks like the problem is democracy in that case, yeah.
I do not understand what you have said here
 
If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting that the unions are still "fresh" as it were - which is a very good point - yes.

Exactly. Well, if you look at France, the CGT is still pretty healthy internally today, even if it's a lot more reformist in outlook and with dwindling numbers in the private sector, but France is a bit of an outlier as far as union laws go.

I do not understand what you have said here

Uh yeah I get what's unclear. I meant lack of democracy.

UK unions are a bit weird because they're very old and quite a few have more conservative origins. They're often descendants of trade unions rather than industrial unions.

Maybe the game could try to highlight the difference in union culture in different syndicalist countries.


If we want OTL equivalents to look at, Catalonia during the Spanish civil war is probably our best bet. Beginning of the century CGT wasn't far from CNT-FAI, it just happened to find less shitty friends in parliamentary parties and didn't face a civil war it could use to rise up.
 
Exactly. Well, if you look at France, the CGT is still pretty healthy internally today, even if it's a lot more reformist in outlook and with dwindling numbers in the private sector, but France is a bit of an outlier as far as union laws go.
Yes - most of the problems are likely to be super-short - "Revolution!" or long term - over priotising labour rather than capital investment, cronism.
Everything in the UK is bit weird because they're very old and quite a few have more conservative origins.
Fixed it for you :)
 
tbh since Trotsky won the power struggle TTL and not Stalin, pretty much anyone following Lenin's "democratic centralism" crap would probably call themselves Trotskyist.

Speaking as a Marxist-Leninist, I say that Stalinism isn't true Communism. At least not as it was conceived by Karl Marx, and I may be biased.

Kaiserreich has some less explored focus trees that can be taken, this time I'm going to use my greek campaign as one example, I hope you like the 4th Greek civilization!
To start, almost everyone thinks that for Greece to follow a autocratic path you need to lose against Bulgaria, but instead you can do it by promoting the monarchists during the referendum, but at the last event you decides to rig the election in support of the republic, thus causing a massive public uproar
VjrYQ9S.jpg


This gonna provoke a popular coup under Ioannis Metaxas, the Greek autocrat at the time in OTL who became famous to resist to Mussolini
7SJfzQB.jpg


6Qz9TFs.jpg

The expansion of Greek lands is considerably easier since you became Pat Aut you are able to create casus bellis in less time.


Politically speaking, basically you are a constitutional monarchy with the power concentrated in the King, on the aristocracy and on the military, think of post 1906 Russia. You get the option to go for a benevolent dictatorship, something like Dmitri Romanovich Russia, Vargas Brazil or Ferdinand Bulgaria, or to a iron fisted autocracy, of which the best parallel I can make is OTL Salazarist Portugal
FVXdHL5.jpg

aPHZdSI.jpg

Going through the Iron Fist route you are able to mobilize even more manpower, making things easier for Greece since it is their main debilitation. This route also has more PP than the normal monarchist one and the only lowpoint is stability, that can be increased with PP, so you have the damage control.




kgb8gvg.jpg

At the end you can return your capital to Constantinopolis and on this gameplay I broke Turkey into Turkey and Kurdistan, total revenge for 1453.


To go inside the regime, I imagine it would be like the Portuguese New State dictatorship since it is a very, very authoritarian regime, a religious one with no elections or just one party elections (if you take the Velvet glove you can have all parties try to collaborate with your ideals), a extensive conscription that probably is very unpopular, but at the same time due the massive conquests, the economical prosperity and the growing influence over their neighbours the regime stays more popular and healthier overrall than OTL Portugal.

The one complaint I have is on this spoiler below:

9DPWFCN.jpg

The turks keeps this province, something that doesn't makes a lot of sense for two main reasons: The first is that it would allow Greece to have a better connection to rhodes, so leaving it under turkish control would put the island at risk when/if turkey breaks free. The second part is that it was considered greek land by the megali idea.


I take it you Swear you're not a Byzophile, then? ;-) In Order to understand that Joke you may have to look at the Achievements.

True dystopia :p
Finally. I'm sure it applies to both but I'll probably be playing some country other than an ACW participant in 0.8.5 tonight. I ought to try another SRI game, maybe I'll go Netherlands or Bharatiya Commune under Gandhi.


Me, too ~ these would be my Nations of choice when my UK Game on Man The Guns is finished.
 
Most of Trotsky's OTL differences in thinking were ways to distance himself from Stalinist orthodoxy. And even then, he did a lot of call back to the spirit of Lenin's actions. I didn't know he was the founder of follow up movements though, I thought he disappeared earlier than that. In any way, "Trotskyist" refers to something specific built around an idealized Trotsky as a not-Stalin, more than the man's real thought anyway so describing them as such is probably misleading.

That probably makes the Jacobins worse than the idealized version of Lenin and Trotsky of OTL Trotskyists. Expect a lot of purges, sham union democracy and an economy run like a military.
I don't disagree. I say Trotskyist mostly to convey that the parties were founded by Trotsky. Of course, without a central communist model it's inevitable the parties would change and develop regional differences.

You know something, that's exactly what they do.
Speaking as a Marxist-Leninist, I say that Stalinism isn't true Communism. At least not as it was conceived by Karl Marx, and I may be biased.
I believe I speak for everyone, let's not have this "discussion" that inevitably ends in Calbear.
 

AeroTheZealousOne

Monthly Donor
Me, too ~ these would be my Nations of choice when my UK Game on Man The Guns is finished.

Some of my personal favorites are the CSA (this is obvious), Makhnovist CoF, neutral Ireland under Cathal Brugha, SocDem USA that avoids the Civil War and is led by Henry Wallace through most of the 1940s, and of course Anarchist Indochinese Union is fun. Next goal after the aforementioned nation's and the ones before these? Mosleyite Great Britain where I get Eric Blair to coup him and go RadSoc.
 
Does anyone have recommendations for countries that have mostly "finished" their storyline by sometime in 1938 or 1939? For example, I was just playing Nicaragua and I was able to "finish" in the sense that I beat all the Central American dictators and formed Centroamerica by about that point, although I worked through very little of the Centroamerica storyline proper (just the starting Congress events and a few focuses) because it was running so slowly. Anything like that where you can see 80% or so of the content and most of the fun stuff by sometime in 1938 or 1939, before the Second Weltkrieg kicks off, would be interesting for me.

(My computer is a bit of a potato, see, and Kaiserreich runs pretty slowly on it, so it's kind of painful to play past about that time)
 
Does anyone have recommendations for countries that have mostly "finished" their storyline by sometime in 1938 or 1939? For example, I was just playing Nicaragua and I was able to "finish" in the sense that I beat all the Central American dictators and formed Centroamerica by about that point, although I worked through very little of the Centroamerica storyline proper (just the starting Congress events and a few focuses) because it was running so slowly. Anything like that where you can see 80% or so of the content and most of the fun stuff by sometime in 1938 or 1939, before the Second Weltkrieg kicks off, would be interesting for me.

(My computer is a bit of a potato, see, and Kaiserreich runs pretty slowly on it, so it's kind of painful to play past about that time)
The Cairo Pact has little storywise to do after the Ottomans are beaten. Plus its a pretty damn fun war to play.
 

AeroTheZealousOne

Monthly Donor
Indochina might be in that bucket too, as long as you focus on quickly tackling Siam...

Indochina does fall within that bucket. If you know what you're doing you can win the revolution by the spring of '37, and Siam is naturally your next best choice for expansion, so long as they haven't gone socialist themselves beforehand or joined the Co-Prosperity Sphere.

I haven't tried any of the Axis Cairo Pact states as of yet, aside from a losing game as Jabal Shammar.

Switzerland's major event is the Romandie/Haute-Savoie Crisis in 1937, not sure if anything major happens beyond that for them.
 
Indochina does fall within that bucket. If you know what you're doing you can win the revolution by the spring of '37, and Siam is naturally your next best choice for expansion, so long as they haven't gone socialist themselves beforehand or joined the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Oh, I know, I've played them before. The problem is balancing the urge to work on the "internal" trees with the "external" trees that will result in fighting people.
 
And now a player-run USA is no longer automatically weakened in the Civil War.
as is my glorious Syndicalist 'Murica.

My only problem now is that something, probably base HOI IV, has broken nukes. So I can't even find the icon to build nuclear reactors.

Oh, well. It's 1944, WK2 is in full swing and Glorious Syndicalist 'Murica (which took Canada during the 2ACW and has helped Bharat and France through volunteers despite not technically joining the Internationale or even starting its foreign policy tree) is churning out an obscene number of Midway-equivalent capitals at preposterous speed while supporting the Internationale's war effort through lend-lease. Germany just folded to the Vozhd and the Internationale (Iberia, France, north Italy, Britain, Mexico, Centroamerica), while Comrade Flynn, President of the Commonwealth of America, is planning the Glorious Syndicalist Liberation of natpop-ruled South America. Victory to the Revolution! Glory to the great socialist future!
 
as is my glorious Syndicalist 'Murica.

My only problem now is that something, probably base HOI IV, has broken nukes. So I can't even find the icon to build nuclear reactors.
This is a known problem and has to do with there being too many building icons or something. Anyway, the Kaiserreich team just released an update that's supposed to fix it.
 

Md139115

Banned
Finally downloaded mod Saturday just because I was sick and tired of everyone referencing it and having no idea what they were talking about. First playthrough as US- stalemate on the war turning against me.

Quit that and start again on Easter Sunday once I get home from church.

Kept coalition intact and got President Olsen (and no, I did not look up how to do this, I still have no idea what is going to happen next for anything in this mod).

Negotiations failed and war started in early February 1937.

Held onto Washington, captured Philadelphia and New York from the CSA by late March, cutting off their supplies from the Internationale. Steamrolled west while holding against Long in Virginia and the West.

By May, got to a line in the east splitting Ohio in half, running around the bottom of West Virginia and going down to Raleigh, and in the west pretty much splitting the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas in half and the Oklahoma Panhandle and West Texas when the two trait... I mean CSA and AUS make peace with one another. They launch a combined attack on me.

First week of June, the front is stalemated, but I'm probably doing best as they just throw away units against my defenses. CSA backstabs Long suddenly though (or was it the other way round?) and the two of them start shooting one another again. I sweep in, take Ohio, Indiana... and then Chicago. CSA surrenders inside three weeks.

Whole Federal armies now fall on Long. I had a hundred fully equipped divisions in the field and all of them just steamrolled him. Over the course of August, all his defensive lines collapse and he loses everything not in Louisiana.

First week of September, whole AUS army is encircled southeast of Shreveport and destroyed, Long is left with seven battered divisions guarding New Orleans, which meet 60 of mine in classic Paradox death stack fashion. The city didn't even get a chance to fall - the Air Force pounded it so thoroughly that the AUS surrendered on Sep. 9.

Now it's September 12, 1937, and I'm about to ask for New England and Alaska back. I think the Canadians will be willing - they had asked politely before occupying the former, but on the off-chance they don't, there is a very nice big army that covers every square inch of the border and is waiting for the signal...

I think this is going to be a very good game. :evilsmile:


Edit: Err... logged into the game and the date was September 12, 1938. Somehow lost track of a year. o_O
 
Last edited:
If you want to avoid the civil war, you need to meet with Reed, concede to some but not all of his demands, then have Long assassinated and hope it works.
 
Top