Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg

Did naval bombing get nerfed? In my current (third) SRI run, hundreds of naval bombers with air superiority (fighters, scout planes) with radar coverage as well seem to only strike convoys even when the enemy fleet is deployed. Could it have something to do with spotting? If so, wouldn't the scout planes and radar help with that?
 

chankljp

Donor
I haven’t been paying much attention to KR lately, but recently gave the subreddit a look.

Please don’t tell me that the current devs changed the flag of the Union of Britain...
Well, while I am an 'old KR' fan, the biggest problem that I have always had with the old UoB flag ever since the DH days was that it included the Union Jack, a royalist symbol, as part of its design. Like... Why would a syndicalist state keep that around?

That being said, I wish that the design of the new flag would have more red in its design. You know, to keep with the entire 'The people's flag is deepest red' thing that was in the UoB's national anthem.
 
Well, while I am an 'old KR' fan, the biggest problem that I have always had with the old UoB flag ever since the DH days was that it included the Union Jack, a royalist symbol, as part of its design. Like... Why would a syndicalist state keep that around?

That being said, I wish that the design of the new flag would have more red in its design. You know, to keep with the entire 'The people's flag is deepest red' thing that was in the UoB's national anthem.

I’ve always found the notion that alternate leftist regimes would naturally scrap all references to the past very overemphasised. I mean, the Union Jack had by then been a symbol of British unity for hundreds of years: Even the Protectorate kept it in a varied form. The old flag managed to combine the red of the workers movement with the symbol of the British Union. After all, John Maclean wanted a Scottish workers' republic united with the other British workers' republics in order to combat international capitalism. The current version appears to me, I’m sorry to say, as an unconvincing alliteration over the flags of OTL's Soviet Socialist Republics with token Chartist colours mixed in.
 
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chankljp

Donor
Can I admit that "Old Kaiserreich" purists that feel the good old days where Kaiserreich was unrealistic and "fun" was objectively superior and whine about Kaiserreich's embrace of hard alternate history over soft alternate history are annoying as hell? I feel they don't understand that alternate history standards have changed so much and what's acceptable then are seen with more scrutiny and cries of ASB now due to more research done into those eras that changed preconceived notions.
Well, think of say... The Disney live-action remakes of animated films (Ok, lets not be THAT uncharitable) The Star Trek series.

Obviously, people's standards for science fiction has changed greatly in the years since the Original Series was aired back in the 1960s, and many of the tropes, plot points, and production techniques that were once accepted in a sci-fi TV show such as female characters wearing miniskirts and stockings, guys wearing clumsy rubber suits pretending to be aliens in slow-mo 'fight' scenes, and in-your-face commentary on race relations with a bothsidesism message, would either not be accepted or be seen as being very cheesy by today's standards. Nonetheless, you still have diehard Star Trek fans with varying degrees of TOS loyalty, ranging from preferring the Original Series, stubbornly staying loyal to Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future of humanity, to outright refuse to acknowledge anything else beyond TOS.

And at least with Star Trek, unless you are talking about the JJ Abrams movies with the Kelvin TL, new entries to the series will not retroactively remove or invalidate TOS. With Kaiserreich's reworks, however, it does in fact do just that. With people such as myself that had grown attached to things from Old KR such as President Curtis averting the Second US Civil War, to the Second Republic of China arising out the AoG, the old lore for the British Revolution and the map of India, etc, effectively being told that the setting that we have grown attached to, and have formed our headcanons around no longer exist, and is invalid.

Not only that, but there doesn't even feel like there is a single artistic vision for the Kaiserreich setting, with the mod's setting having more reworks than Thailand have military coups. Seeming like every new dev wanting to add their own mark on the setting while undoing and invalidating the work of those that came before them, instead of at some point deciding that 'Ok. This is good enough', and push the setting forward.

Add in this tendency for a never ending ideological tug of war, with writer sneaking in or taking out things with the goal of make their own side look better while making the other side looks worst, and it overall just makes it really hard for me to keep staying passionate or invested in whatever newest version of KR world we are currently up to. Since it will just get reworked and changed by the new batch of devs and writers anyway.

At least that is my personal take on this. I don't complaint about the good old days being objectively better, and I am glad if people like the new versions. I just stuck with elements of the old KR as my headcanon, and not really follow the development anymore.
 
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chankljp

Donor
Continuing on with my Star Trek metaphor from above:

I once met one of the aforementioned die-hard Original Series fans back when I was in university in the UK, with said person having special hatred for Deep Space Nine, my personal favorite TV series.

I argued that DS9 actually pays attention to thinks like the political implications of the Federation's political system, have a comparatively realistic look at the impacts of war on Starfleet officers, as well as having the crew stay around the same star system, meaning that in most cases, unlike the crew of the Enterprise, their is actual continuality, with the DS9 crew having to deal with the same people and government on Bajor in the long-term, instead of just flying away after dealing with the once in a single episode, with us never hearing back about say... The political development of the Nazi or Roman planets again, and if they managed to democratize or fall right back to authoritarianism after Kirk and his crew left.

That person's counter argument was that being able to fly off and never look back on the 'boring stuff' after a planet's interaction with the crew was the entire point of Star Trek, which in his opinion, DS9 completely missed, a perspective that I, as a member of AH.com, vehemently disagree with, since there is no such thing as 'too much world building' for someone like me.

Now, apply this same line of reasoning to the KR world, and replace 'being able to fly off and never look back' with 'soft alternate history/have things that are cool instead of realistic' and I think you get the disagreement between those that like old KR with things like the new Mongol Emprie under Genghis Khan II, or those that like the new, more realistic KR that aims for realism and turning the mod into a work of 'hard alternate history'.

Of course, with Start Trek DS9's introduction of say, Section 31 does not retroactively erase TOS... Something that the many reworks on the KR setting actually does with the older version of the lore. Hence the bitterness and resistance to the changes.
 
The other thing worth mentioning is that Hearts of Iron 4 is a bad simulator of the period. To be clear, it is also a very fun game. While I do recognise that Kaiserriech has installed features to make it better/more plausible, fundimental there is a juxta-postion between say Brazil and Portugal have a soild lore and political macanics and it being possible for one to naval invade the other across with 7 Days of prepation (I am sure there are plenty of over examples).
 
Something that the many reworks on the KR setting actually does with the older version of the lore. Hence the bitterness and resistance to the changes.
So, yeah, your thoughts on Kaiserredux on that note, considering much of their content consists of adding back old content?
 
This is a really silly nitpick, but I wish more KaiserReich maps would go with drawing a dejure map from a certain perspective. For example countries in Civil War (like Italy) are irl rarely depicted as so on consumer world maps, usually they just draw the country as it should exist on paper. Like a German produced map would probably look somewhat different than an Syndie map because they likely recognize slightly different regimes and borders. These obviously wouldnt mean huge differences between maps, but it feels like an interesting missed opportunity for inuniverse mapmaking.

Also on a different note, while Im personally not a huge fan of its lore, Im glad Kaiereddux exists so everyone in the community can basically have an experience catered to their tastes, without any minor change resulting in massive controversy. (The amount of complaining I saw on the Discord over Germany no longer having Nancy was hilarious)
 
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Not only that, but there doesn't even feel like there is a single artistic vision for the Kaiserreich setting, with the mod's setting having more reworks than Thailand have military coups. Seeming like every new dev wanting to add their own mark on the setting while undoing and invalidating the work of those that came before them, instead of at some point deciding that 'Ok. This is good enough', and push the setting forward.

Add in this tendency for a never ending ideological tug of war, with writer sneaking in or taking out things with the goal of make their own side look better while making the other side looks worst, and it overall just makes it really hard for me to keep staying passionate or invested in whatever newest version of KR world we are currently up to. Since it will just get reworked and changed by the new batch of devs and writers anyway.

I have no problem with your overall take here, it's completely legitimate to miss an older version of something (I feel similarly about Star War's Expanded Universe), but as usual I do want to clear up a few misconceptions:

I don't think there was ever a single artistic vision for the Kaiserreich setting, except maybe in the earliest days when the development team consisted of only a couple people. The way things operated when I first attempted to join the team in 2016 was basically a free-for-all, where anyone could code something and it'd be thrown in. We have had a trend toward a more plausible setting, but that trend began way back in Darkest Hour - it's just more evident now because we put out content at a way faster pace than the DH team did.

Now, I partially agree when it comes to the subject of "too many reworks", or at least the inability to settle on a single interpretation of the lore, but most of the time reworks are happening because the prior content is some variety of broken, simplistic, unfinished, ridiculous, or just extremely outdated. Most areas have only been reworked once, but unfortunately the phrase gets used to refer to pretty much any set of changes larger than an added event chain. Combine that with the number of tags we have in the mod, and you have a lot of "reworks" by default.

The ideological tug of war stuff is pretty difficult for me to get to grips with, though, because it seems to be this perception that emerged outside the team and just doesn't have much basis within it - a bit like the notion that we're all far-leftists or even syndicalists. There are sometimes minor disagreements over interpretations of historical figures, but in general we tend to avoid serious political debate - our team skews older than most HoI4 teams, so we're mostly free of that sort of internal drama. A developer's political disposition, and their associated preconceptions, might leak into their creations, but I can only think of three instances over the past four years where that's led to internal debate.
 
Can I admit that "Old Kaiserreich" purists that feel the good old days where Kaiserreich was unrealistic and "fun" was objectively superior and whine about Kaiserreich's embrace of hard alternate history over soft alternate history are annoying as hell? I feel they don't understand that alternate history standards have changed so much and what's acceptable then are seen with more scrutiny and cries of ASB now due to more research done into those eras that changed preconceived notions.

People bring up TNO as an example of a "fun, absurd" premise done well but to be honest, the premise had to be there to justify a scenario that most of the alternate history community had given up on as plasuible despite it being the bee's knees 20 years ago with more revelation of just how fucked up Nazism was. And premise aside, TNO's presentation in the 1962-1972 years do lean closer to hard alternate history than soft alternate history on it's own. All the le woke funni gamer paths are, on top of being horrifying, either economically and socially stagnant due to the far right and racial oppression or ticking time bombs on the verge of destruction(including one in Russia that actually goes off at the end date) while the more mundane, blessed, happy or the non gamer paths tend to be sustainable.

Hell Kaiserreich, as it's a different sort of mod(less narrative based), are more charitable towards the woke horrifying funni gamer paths. The Charter totalists, Pelley and Maurras and the saner paths are seen as both having benefits for the nation they happen in.

Also even TNO is genuinely aiming for realism outside the premise, just look at their plans for Burgundy and Kovner rewrite and the hint that DSR is going to be redone or cut. Also I think the CSS submod for TNO cut out one of the le funni woke horrifying gamer paths and I suspect that has to do with CSS maybe going ascended fanon in the future and the devs taking account into some of the rules of the TNO setting to better fit it into there.

Now there are a few things I genuinely feel Kaiserreich is wrong to remove like Orwell, and their India setup had problems on it's own, but this idea that gen 1 kaiserreich was better because "fun" is rather really absurd. Their China update was genuinely agreed to be good FOR it's realism rather than in spite of it despite the people that whine about Mongolia for one. And I think their South Africa content update wasn't derided as awful and a lot of people are genuinely looking forward to their CoF update.
I mean I would argue thats its not actually all that more realistic, gust different. Darkest hour was plenty realistic and there attempts to make it more so have caused at lest me to completely bounce from the game (not that it helps that hoi4 is still a pretty bad game compared the 3ed one).
 
Hello guys. Has anyone noticed about a change in lore for Kaiserreich? I refer to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which the UK signs, and the Tsingtao Accord of 1922 with Japan.
 
To my understanding, Azad Hind is more a fusion of the Bharatiya Commune and the Princely Federation in the Indian rework. Azad Hind doesn't start as with a Syndicalist regime and it has a wide variety of political routes it can go. The only common point everything has in Azad Hind was that they needed to get rid of British yoke.

The smaller semi-independent statelets you see in the Indian rework are more there to give a bit more depth and believability to the Raj. The Raj proper that you play is essentially what's left directly in control of the British administration in India after the Revolution, while the smaller statelets that are allied to it are basically princely states that remained loyal to the Raj but have a certain autonomy. It's been done to reflect how Britain administrated India: some parts were directly administrated by the Brits themselves while in others they relied on prince that were judged loyal to the crown (though probably still kept on a close watch).
In-terms of how the game evolves if you play the Raj, you essentially have to take into account the internal politics of the smaller princely states while you're trying to rebuld the Raj. If you crack down on them too much or if you let them too much autonomy, you can lose control of them and be forced in a war to stabilize the situation. Not to mention the dealing these princely states have with Azad Hind. Essentially, they've made the Raj into a more believable position: a colonial administration that still has a powerbase but has been significantly weakened and must play its cards right if it wants to survive.
Also, don't forget about a landlocked Pakistan.

R.I.P. Fifth Anglo-Afghan War.
 
I mean I would argue thats its not actually all that more realistic, gust different. Darkest hour was plenty realistic and there attempts to make it more so have caused at lest me to completely bounce from the game (not that it helps that hoi4 is still a pretty bad game compared the 3ed one).

Don't want to be rude, but did you see China in Darkest Hour?

Hello guys. Has anyone noticed about a change in lore for Kaiserreich? I refer to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which the UK signs, and the Tsingtao Accord of 1922 with Japan.

The Tsingtao Accord is nothing new, it's been in the mod for over a year, though it has more recently been pulled back to 1921 from 1922.
 
The other thing worth mentioning is that Hearts of Iron 4 is a bad simulator of the period. To be clear, it is also a very fun game. While I do recognise that Kaiserriech has installed features to make it better/more plausible, fundimental there is a juxta-postion between say Brazil and Portugal have a soild lore and political macanics and it being possible for one to naval invade the other across with 7 Days of prepation (I am sure there are plenty of over examples).
HoI4 simulates WW2 somewhat well. It however fails at simulating the late 30s/early 40s as a whole.
 
HoI4 simulates WW2 somewhat well. It however fails at simulating the late 30s/early 40s as a whole.
I disagree, Hoi4 lacks simulation of many things, such a Corps, Railways, Joint Allied Command, or any kind of reaction to event in terms of Politics and public oppinion. For Example, OTL when Japan entered the war Austriallia recalled its division from the middle east for home defense. There is no mechanic for that in game.
 
I disagree, Hoi4 lacks simulation of many things, such a Corps
Small army with only a few divisions in it. Granted, this doesn't represent corps as parts of armies, but I'm not sure what doing so actually adds in a gameplay sense. I don't think that the HoI3 OOB mechanic really benefited from including corps, for instance.
, Railways,
Infrastructure. You can actually quite clearly see this in Russia, where the route of the trans-Siberian has a noticeably higher infrastructure than surrounding areas.
Joint Allied Command,
Expeditionary forces.
or any kind of reaction to event in terms of Politics and public oppinion.
I'll give you that, but it's not like attempts at that in other versions of the game ever worked particularly well.
 
Infrastructure. You can actually quite clearly see this in Russia, where the route of the trans-Siberian has a noticeably higher infrastructure than surrounding areas.
But that ignores the way the importance of hubs and the like, for example Luxembourg is an important railhub for Western Europe, but the state by state approach to infastruture does not repsent this.
Expeditionary forces.
These perhapse allow you to repsent say the South Africans, Indians and Australlians in the 8th Army, but the limits on general transfers means that you will struggle to to simulate the structure of Allied Forces in the Normandy campagin for instance.
 
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