This Land Is Your Land: Let's Play Darkest Hour: Kaiserreich

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > This Land Is Your Land: Let's Play Darkest Hour: Kaiserreich

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

This is a great choice for an LP. Gonna be following this!

# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 23:56

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:13

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Excellent framing device.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 18:21

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands are all owned by Denmark still, no change there.

And updates will probably be about three a week or so though I'll do the prologue ones faster because I'm anxious to start the war bits.

Thought about it because you can tell the mod team had a lot of fun writing that country. I wouldn't do both Mongolia and Qing though so we'll see.

Shangqing Tianguo is a lot more fun than Qing in my opinion. You basically become Qing after the first war (militia divisions everywhere!) and then you've got much more interesting flavour as you continue to reunite China. Once it's unified you do need to be more manually-proactive in finding wars to involve yourself in, though.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2014 11:26

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Drone posted:

I think in the Kaiserreich timeline it's slightly less of a statement about actual syndicalist politics and more "wouldn't it be cool if we used different terminology for communism/fascism in this mod?" Hence why we get things like Syndicalist and National Populist.

It does have elements of that but also does make an effort to be about actual syndicalism in the event text and so on. The disconnect comes in the game mechanics, because HOI2/Darkest Hour's political sliders can't really represent syndicalism as an opposite to liberal/parliamentary democracy without making it authoritarian - and that's the least appropriate term for syndicalism that could possibly be chosen.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 11:32

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Tamerlame posted:

Now I don't know much about Franco after the civil war, but didn't he use some semi-syndicalist economic policies? I might be horribly misinformed, but it's what I've heard.

Basically the opposite; Franco liberalised Spain's economy (which was part of the deal for getting lots of US aid for his government).

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 13:03

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Half the time, when I play Kaiserreich, I'm doing it as a kind of leftist wish-fulfilment of a better world. This LP is feeding precisely those feelings.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 17:07

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

TomViolence posted:

And the other half the time, it's playing as ~~the King Beyond-the-Wall~~ Mongolia, am I right?

...Or is that just me.

Well, my preferred reactionary national populists in the game are Shangqing Tianguo, but yes, similar!

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 19:10

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

I think so? I'm really not sure.

The CSA/AUS/PSA all inherit the techs of the USA from my experience, unless I got super-lucky in that my esoteric research paths were mirrored precisely by the offshoot nations.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2014 00:24

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The system isn't designed to represent differences between parliamentary democracy and union democracy. Neither is necessarily more or less democratic than the other (and indeed some would argue that union democracy is more 'democratic'), but the mod bodges it as best it can be representing union democracy as more authoritarian, because it has to have the different ideologies at some point along the sliders. It doesn't necessarily mean anything in relation to the flavour/setting.

Also there are certainly fascists or fascist equivalents in Kaiserreich but they're not a major political force in most places - National Populist can mean military dictatorships or fascist regimes equally, depending on what's going on.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2014 12:56

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

GrossMurpel posted:

How the hell do you win as Commune of France? I can inflict 5 times the casualties I take and Germany'll still end up having 500 MP left when I run out because they start with a shitload of units so they can save up their MP plus they can make their puppets take the worst hits.

I've managed to win as the Syndicalists pretty easily against Germany, but only when I've been the Union of Britain and using those extra troops effectively. AI UoB doesn't tend to do anywhere near as well, whereas it's perfectly competent as the Commune of France.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2014 00:10

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Easier if you think of Real Existing Socialist States as still being in the transitional stage towards communism (a stateless society), as they all proclaimed themselves to be, and not actually communist - rather in the state capitalist/dictatorship-of-the-proletariat stage before going to True Communism. Syndicalism is just a different type of transitional stage (although obviously some people in these societies would advocate that this transitional stage is just fine as it is).

# ¿ Nov 16, 2014 02:04

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Pimpmust posted:

These unions, where do they employ their labour? Worker-Cooperative ventures? Doesn't seem like the economy would be centrally dictated, so something like that?

Yes, part of the ideal of syndicalism would be to get rid of the hierarchical structure in the workplace and instead have widespread workplace democracy in place.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2014 13:35

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

paragon1 posted:

The federals in those enclaves in the CSA must be making GBS threads themselves. Soon the Carolinas, and all of America, shall truly be free for the first time!

How would syndicalism handle a military I wonder? Are the generals and volunteers part of some informal soldier's trade Union?

Democratically elected officers for a start, probably.

As for the war, in my experience the USA has a better-than-evens chance of winning if they manage to at least negotiate a truce with the PSA, and if Mexico doesn't get involved either they're basically guaranteed to win. In this situation... the federals are screwed.

John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Nov 21, 2014

# ¿ Nov 21, 2014 14:10

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

Well one thing to keep in mind is that the speech is from an opposition MP from a nationalist party so he's bound to do whatever he can to paint the social democrat government as weak-willed, even though Germany has contributed volunteers to each of the civil wars so far. Germany and Japan are not really shaping up to be the villains I wanted, given Germany's center-left orientation and Japan's isolationism. Maybe I'll invade Brazil just because they're fascist jerks.

I'll kindly ask you to use spoiler tags if you're going to discuss the events of Mongolia II: The Sky Baron.

German Social Democrats are perfectly suitable villains for the revolutionary left, as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht would tell you!

# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 14:56

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

You mean the closed society/open society stuff?

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 17:15

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

I honestly like Syndicate Guards but it doesn't really fit a professional army. Maybe once all the militia are gone, I'll think of something new.

The matrix of Dem/Auth and Left/Right that defines your government type doesn't really fit the KR universe in my opinion. If I went to max democracy and max left, I would become a Social Democrat government, which to me is a capitalist state with lots of welfare programs, pro labor and socially liberal policies. The type of radically different economic democracy that we find in the Internationale is represented in the Radical Socialist and Syndicalist bracket which lies between 4 and 7 (or 3 and 6, I can't ever remember how the numbers work) on the Dem/Auth slider if you're max left. Below that we turn into social democrats and above that we become Totalists. Since we're tacking to more of a French-style syndicalist program, I want our government type to remain Syndicalist, which means I'll basically be always be on the Authoritarian half of the slider. In narrative terms, I figure that our freedom in declaring war comes from Reed's immense popularity which gives him a lot of leeway in how he acts, as well as the imminent threat posed by the Canadians providing impetus to act. I'm sure ten years after the big wars are over, the workers would require a lot more convincing for a foreign war.

I know that Social Liberal in the vanilla game would mark you as the good guy, given that the other choices are such highly regarded personalities as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. It's the right attitude to regard the western Allies as the 'good guys' in World War 2, but the very non-democratic empires of the democracies and things like internment and the Bengal famine just go to show how depressingly relative the concept of good and evil on the world stage really is. Germany and Japan might not be fascist but Japan is probably still throwing Korean nationalists into jail and Germany still benefits heavily from what is effectively a slave state in Mittelafrika as well as the exploitation of China through the AOG. Even though I'm regarding the Internationale as the good guys here, Paris is still playing a realpolitik game in its ties with the left but still colonialist Netherlands and the totalitarian and repressive Soviet regime. So I'm not buying into Auth/Dem as a representation of how 'good' we are since the World War 2 paradigm of totalitarian versus democratic gives way to capitalist versus socialist in Kaiserreich. It's why I have to sort of laugh at those who say Kaiserreich is much more dark than our own history. We don't have genocidal maniacs ruling a continent here (well except for glorious Mongolia) and there's only a chance that socialism takes on a totalitarian bent. It only seems that way because we don't have the familiar liberal democracies to latch onto.

The main event to set our sliders was the Boiling Point one in the last chapter of Act One, which lets us side with Trade Unionist (British path), Syndicalist (French path) or Totalist (Soviet path) and I chose the syndicalist one. The one slider that I do find relevant is Open/Closed society, which I figure dictates how much repression and restriction on free speech there is. Like Drone said, I can imagine the CSA being willing to roll over some dissidents in the name of the greater program. I'm not going to write a story about how Saint Reed and the Combined Syndicates led America to glorious and perfect socialism, because I don't want to be the leftist version of 'well you see Hitler got couped and the whole world prospered under the benevolent guidance of the German race' and because that kind of political fan-fiction isn't interesting to me (though this is still very much political fan-fiction). I will say that we are looking back at this period from the twenty first century as if it were a historical event, and as you can tell from the sources used so far, there's a good deal of freedom of speech and movement in the current society. You're all free to imagine it any way you'd like, but the way I'm imagining the history of this fake state is that there were scars from the revolution and a great deal of upheaval surrounding race and gender issues that caused problems in the decades in between the revolution and the present day, even if the anti-racism and feminism of the Internationale does do a lot to improve the situation. I also don't want to write a story about the entire society because it is too much work.

This is an excellent post. I also don't particularly see much worrisome about the CSA being a closed society when it's still in the throes of revolution; especially considering it's just fought an ideological civil war. It's inconceivable that it would be any other way for as long as possibility of counter-revolution exists.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 20:29

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

I think the game does have some mention of Goering's Mittelafrika setting up concentration camps but there's no holocaust equivalent as far as I know.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 20:40

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Erwin the German posted:

I feel like a lot of that is sorta sanitized simply cause you're playing a game, at the end of the day. There's precious little reference to the holocaust in Hearts of Iron (and I am definitely not pushing for there to be,) and I imagine the same might kinda hold true for KR - atrocities simply happen behind the screen of game mechanics and events. It would take a storyteller, in a format like this, to really flesh that sort of thing out - and honestly, who would want to think up their own alternate history genocide, or a slew of monarchist purges in French occupied Germany, political death squads marching around second Civil War era United States wiping out whole towns who don't agree with them...

There actually are events in KR for atrocities and the like, from anti-semitic violence in French North Africa to various 'Terror' events for factions that have civil wars. There's an event chain for the Dominican Republic massacring Haitians, and the aforementioned concentration camps in Mittelafrika. But no holocaust.

HOI2 and vanilla Darkest Hour certainly gloss over the atrocities (except for the Rape of Nanking) in the interest of making the game as much about the nitty-gritty of fighting the war as possible, but KR doesn't take the same approach in general.

John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Feb 5, 2015

# ¿ Feb 5, 2015 21:09

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

James Garfield posted:

It looks like Portugal has to complain when they demand Angola, then Germany makes Göring resign and if they pick the leftist replacement he can go syndicalist. Lots of random events for three nations and some are unlikely.

edit: I think you can go non apartheid as South Africa too. I think I've seen AI South Africa in the Internationale.

Yeah, South Africa can go Syndicalist (there are events for an ANC rebellion, and possibly a peaceful path, I forget).

# ¿ Feb 6, 2015 03:02

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Moon Slayer posted:

Because of this LP I've been trying to play a CSA game of my own, and I just can't seem to win. Even reloading from the beginning of the civil war until I get infantry from France, Britain, Mexico and Italy the AUS seems to steamroll me to at least a stalemate until the PSA and Mexico peace out and the US finishes the job. Anyone have any advice for achieving a glorious socialist victory? I'm a beginner at this game but have an OK grasp of the mechanics, I think.

Isolating and destroying the US pocket around Washington is important. If you get the deal-with-the-devil event to make peace with the AUS until the federals are defeated, definitely consider taking it. Build lots of militia, you need the quick build times and just bulk of manpower to fill the front lines. Focus on capturing airbase provinces and you'll quite likely capture the entire enemy air forces.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2015 13:32

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Ubern00b posted:

Might be interesting to switch to a poorly-doing power? The Entente are still the good guys in this world, vs. commies and not-quite-yet-still-fascists. New England?

Yeah those racist imperialist monarchies sure are the good guys when set against the modernising leftists, good analysis.

Political snark aside, this LP isn't about challenge, it's about the narrative and the way CSM has been doing it he could probably create a compelling narrative out of the CSA encountering no resistance whatsoever in the rest of the LP.

John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 9, 2015

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 19:49

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

JT Jag posted:

I mean we have to keep in mind, considering some of the framing devices that have been used, that the Syndicalists are fated to win. It's going to happen. The future is Red.

The fun part is watching how it happens.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. The LP isn't really about making things a challenge for CSM by switching to other countries, etc.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 01:15

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

I'll use the intermission games for that. Speaking of, I'm thinking about adding an installation of 1.6 and playing either Italian Federation, an Indian state, a South American state or maybe Sweden or Serbia. Any game it is will likely be significantly shorter than the Mongolia one, because most nations aren't geared towards enormous conquest like they are. Instead, I'll set some goals and play through the nation's 'storyline' so to speak.

Brazil is good. An Egypt game might be interesting, or maybe Greece? I'd like to see the Megali Idea accomplished, never managed it myself.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 02:29

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Grizzwold posted:

Monopoly returns to its origins as a warning on the dangers of capitalism, still boring.

Star Wars is pretty much the same, except the Imperials have German accents. The prequels still suck.

Batman is a factory worker instead of a billionaire, but somehow still has a shitton of awesome toys.

Call of Duty has levels revolving around Spokane, history spergs complain about how much they got wrong.

A large number of war movies playing up the PSA and New Englanders as hapless pawns of the Canadian king.

e; Bitcoin is even more of a joke somehow.

China Mieville's 'rejected pitch' for a socialist superhero fits in here, I think. Although obviously the setup would be different...

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 21:31

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Ahhh, I love a bit of Bhartiya Commune. My favourite Kaiserreich stuff is taking these small nations and building them up, actually. Can't really do it in the same way in HOI2/Darkest Hour proper.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2015 02:48

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Since the mod can change these values (yeah?) have you considered just removing the penalty to upgrades for central planning? That would leave them vaguely balanced I think.

Also, have you maybe considered lowering the IC cost for tanks and motorised and mechanised stuff to make Blanket Infantry Spam less of a no-brainer? Seems like it might be worth a shot.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 11:51

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Kellsterik posted:

I'm really impressed with how interlocking and reactive these events are, it looks like the mod developers wrote a really intricate scenario. I like that we might have to deal with domestic anarcho-syndicalists who aren't down with Totalism.

It's my favourite thing about Kaiserreich - you've got all these kinds of intersecting events firing in different regions all over the world and they add up to a big constantly-active jigsaw puzzle of STUFF until like 1941 at which point the events kind of dry up (although they're getting thinner on the ground by 1940 iirc). Some of it's a hodge-podge, some of it doesn't work so well, some of it is kind of cringey and really foregrounds the alt-history fanfic nature of the setting, but the majority of it works really well and helps build up a compelling setting with lots of divergent paths for any vaguely significant nation.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 23:53

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Kaiserreich Brazil is a decent starter nation too. You'll have to do a lot of learning on the job no matter how you approach the game but it's not that bad to get into it I think. Certainly easier than Victoria 2.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2015 00:48

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Same, actually, and I was a veteran of most other Paradox games.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2015 20:17

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The rolling advance of supported infantry attacks is somehow more satisfying to me than massive encirclements. It's so methodical.

# ¿ May 18, 2015 00:44

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

i81icu812 posted:

So exactly how many people died?

Total casualties look to be about 4.1 million Chinese, 1.7 million Indians. But that would include wounded and prisoners too. Oh, and about 2 million dead horses too, for what that's worth.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 13:04

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

TheMcD posted:

Though that's over the entire campaign, meaning it also includes the Indian wars and whatever the Qing did to reunite all those other territories they don't start with. The only proper way to find out how many died in this war particularly would be to load a save from right before the war and do some comparisons.

I was low-balling the 'casualties sustained' figures, on the assumption that neither Qing nor Bhartiya Commune would have lost that many of their own men to the enemy in the small wars (whereas 'casualties inflicted' would count entirely-destroyed enemy divisions and quickly inflates).

# ¿ May 22, 2015 13:27

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Excited to see how this develops. Feels like a long time since we greeted our American comrades in this thread.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 01:36

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

The variety of update styles has yet to wear thin. Great job on all of this.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes - the Prague Pact is certainly formidable.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2015 21:58

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Chief Savage Man posted:

Yes, I'm thrilled to announce coming soon*: These Stars Are Your Stars: Let's Play Spore: Galactic Adventures!

*not soon

Stellaris dude. Stellaris

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 11:37

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

AJ_Impy posted:

Hmm, where haven't we invaded yet/is currently an enemy?

My money's on Holland. Either Arnhem, Market Garden stylee, or the north in general, repeating the 1799 Anglo-Russian invasion of the then-Batavian Republic.

The Netherlands occurred to me (as a possible 'soft underbelly' to charge forces through into Germany, and also due to Market Garden) but Market Garden never took place in Kaiserreich's universe so it doesn't really fit.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 17:31

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

AJ_Impy posted:

Market Garden was during WWII: Even if it had happened in this timeline, it wouldn't have happened yet. Granted, it may not happen, but it remains an option to happen, and the CSA are in a position to make it happen.

Yeah, but my point is: no in-universe historian will refer to it as a British blunder that the Americans did better because it will never take place as a British thing.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 21:49

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:13

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

AJ_Impy posted:

Fair point. Still leaves the invasion of the Batavian republic, but stocks in Gallipoli just went up considerably.

Aye, I think it's the most obvious and likely candidate (especially since the Ottoman Empire is actually in the war). Maybe the CSA will surprise us though.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 00:13

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