On Sunday, April 19, 2019, Kaiser Wilhelm II returned from his long exile to reclaim his throne. By which I mean to say that Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, the extremely popular mod for Paradox Interactive’s World War II grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV, has been updated for the game’s latest patch and is once again playable.

1. Hearts Of Iron 4 Civil War Mods
2. Hearts Of Iron 4 Civil War Command

Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategy wargame that primarily revolves around World War II. The player may play as any nation in the world in the 1936 or 1939 start dates in singleplayer or multiplayer, although the game is not designed to go beyond 1948.

For the unacquainted, Kaiserreich is an alternate history total conversion mod that takes place in a world in which Germany is victorious in the First World War. Originating in Hearts of Iron II, the mod has existed in various incarnations throughout the series in the past decade. With an over 30,000 strong subreddit, and an active discord community, it has an incredibly dedicated fanbase — many of whom eschew the base game and play only Kaiserreich — creating fanart, fiction, AARs, and a flood of in-joke memes.

Recently, the developers have even launched a community store where you can buy merch, and have plans to use that as a launching pad to produce animated original shorts set in the mod’s universe. At this point it has become a veritable institution in the larger, heavily mod-focused Paradox Interactive community, but, whereas many successful total conversion mods are based on some existing IP — Old World Blues, a Hearts of Iron IV mod based on the Fallout universe is a good example of this — Kaiserreich is an original work, and one that has even spawned its own collection of spin-off mods based on the universe the developers have created.

One sure sign of the mod’s success is that its popularity prompted Paradox to include their own “version” in the base game by giving Germany an optional path that allows you to expel the Nazis by force and establish a military junta which, in turn, recalls the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II from exile. The attempt, while admirably done and fun in its own right, fails to capture the magic of the mod’s universe.

Which begs the question: what is the essence of Kaiserreich’s success? Why has the mod survived multiple incarnations over more than a decade? As someone who has played hundreds of hours of both the base game and the mod, I believe this success, particularly in the Hearts of Iron IV incarnation, can be found in some structural issues with the base game that this mod has been effective at resolving. Particularly, the design choices that guide Hearts of Iron limit the narrative choices available to the player, while Kaiserreich uses its alternate history setting to recraft the inter-war world and add a level of dynamism that simply does not exist in the base game.

Historical Fidelity vs. Player Choice

I try to stay away from World War II games. The period is, by far, the most well-trod ground in wargaming, and in history in general for that matter. More ink, screen time, and simulated blood has been spilled on the topic than most other historical conflicts combined. Despite becoming eyerollingly hackneyed, Hearts of Iron IV does a serviceable job of making the period feel fresh through the use of its National Focus system, which allows you to direct your nation down a series of branching paths through military, economic, and political choices. This system is the Hearts of Iron IV answer to the central design dilemma in most grand strategy games: the delicate balance between a desire for historical realism and a desire for player choice.

In all of Paradox Interactive’s mainline grand strategy titles, this balancing act is present. At longer timescales, this problem is solved by a combination of genericizing certain historic events (for example the Protestant reformation in Europa Universalis IV is an event that can happen after a certain time but will happen semi-randomly within a geographic area; this isn’t the Protestant Reformation, it is a Protestant Reformation). Other times, the technology required to take certain actions will be time-locked, unable to appear until a set year or require enough research points that it will only happen roughly around when it did historically. The least intuitive method is to have set historical events that fire off at a particular date.

Hearts Of Iron 4 Civil War Mods

The problem with this approach is that it becomes more difficult at smaller timescales. In Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings II there are hundreds of years of game time, so as long as they convey a general sense of the period, most players still feel like they are experiencing a satisfying level of verisimilitude while also believing their choices matter and effect the world around them. In Hearts of Iron IV, the real meat of the game happens over the course of only about a decade, and of that time, only the choices in about the first five years will have any very meaningful impact on the composition of the war as a whole. This severely condenses the possibilities of player choice, as all three of the methods mentioned above that Paradox uses to create opportunities for player choice at a macro-level are largely rolled into the games National Focus system. This system is designed to give the player agency, but to do so in a controlled way that allows the game to maintain its tempo and keep the world on a mostly historical track.

Through the use of this system, the game is choreographed and most effectively balanced to play out historically, with the major powers hitting all the major period landmarks on the road to war. There is an option to leave historic National Focuses on, forcing the AI to go down the path each nation did historically, or the player can turn this off and allow each nation the possibility of going down a weirder path and slightly throwing a wrench into the mix. However, nations taking ahistorical routes can result in some strange hiccups, as players must sacrifice a degree of the tempo. Factions going down different routes interrupt the game’s careful timing, occasionally resulting in handicapping the side that diverged historically. In the aforementioned branch of the Germany tree that allows you to reinstall the Kaiser, for example, the player will find themselves at a disadvantage as they have wasted valuable time and resources fighting a civil war instead of mobilizing the economy for the coming struggle.

Frustratingly, in the end, even if the player diverges a bit historically, the overall makeup of the conflict will most likely be recognizable enough to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Second World War. Unless something really strange happens there will still be Allies. There will be an Axis. France will probably fall. The Soviet Union will probably be invaded. Successive playthroughs will vary, but overall the story will remain the same and on a grand strategic level, the decision environment will only change slightly, something which has always grated on me in a conflict that those in America, Europe, and elsewhere are brought up to know so very much about. This is both a design issue and a narrative one, and one which has no clear answer to resolve. The design of the game pulls the “story,” such as it is, in a particular direction. In a purely operational or tactical game, this would be less of a problem, as those types of games live and die in the micro-level decisions, but in a grand strategy game, a feeling of repetitiveness at the very highest macro-levels can leave a player feeling like they are going through the motions of a conflict they already know inside and out.

Kaiserreich’s Solutions

Kaiserreich attacks this problem at the root by unshackling the world from the historical record in 1917. From that point of divergence, the developers created a rich, well-researched, and lovingly crafted world that retains an air of historical fidelity without requiring the game to be chained to the historical reality of our inter-war world. Clearly, a large part of the success of the mod comes from this fact: it is an interesting scenario interestingly realized. I find it is best to look at the world of Kaiserreich and its lore as a well-researched, historically possible (though hardly plausible) scenario designed for maximum entertainment value. Whereas Hearts of Iron walks a delicate tightrope between fidelity and choice, the Kaiser has his cake and eats it too.

In the Kaiserreich universe, the Wilsonian Europe of our timeline is replaced with a Wilhelmine one in which the German Empire reigns supreme as the undisputed hegemon of a great central European empire strung together with a collection of eastern client states. The Empire also rules over an enormous and contiguous African colony, Mittelafrika, and is the reigning colonial master of a patchwork domain of southeast and east Asian protectorates, including a vast southern Chinese trading conglomerate. All these states are tied into Germany’s mutual defense alliance: the Reichspakt. Germany is extraordinarily powerful but also spread incredibly thin. It must hold together the status quo, whatever the cost, even if that means overcommitting in far-flung colonies. Austria-Hungary, the other major victorious Central Power, has survived intact and remains outside Germany's military orbit. Rather than looking outward, the Habsburg domains are, at the games outset, about to undergo a major consolidation process led from either the center-left or center-right.

In the west, Britain and France have fallen to worker’s revolutions and communist governments now sit in London and Paris — their political and military alliance is known as the Third International. Unlike in our own timeline, however, French syndicalism, not Russian bolshevism, is the preeminent ideology of the world’s left-wing revolutionaries. The faction is also allied with the Socialist Republic of Italy, which took control of the north of that country after Victor Emmanuel’s Kingdom fragmented after the war. The former British, French, and Italian governments have fled to Canada, Algeria, and Sardinia, respectively. From there, the Entente, the third major faction in the mod, stews and broods, opportunistically waiting for a moment of chaos to reclaim their homelands and restore what they believe to be legitimate rule.

For many, this is the main appeal of Kaiserreich. You inhabit a world which is superficially similar to the one we all know so well — there are three major factions, one is communist, Germany leads another, Britain and France still carry the banner of the Entente from the last war — but at the same time, it reflects a world of radically different possibilities, a strange funhouse mirror of our own historical reality, distorted but still ultimately recognizable. It is also a world that is set up to represent a three-way conflict in which all three of the major factions are competing against each other for control of the same territory. The narrative conflict at the heart of the mod is best summed up by the three taglines of these major factions: Guard the Balance, Break the Chains, Reclaim the Birthright.

The unshackling of the game from the historical record also opens up the possibilities that the writers of the lore need not remain beholden to the limitations of the history when crafting the geopolitical landscape. So long as the world remains possible, and rooted in an overarching historical justification, the factions and the world can be crafted into an environment that makes for the most interesting experience possible. Areas of the world that, in our timeline, remain quiet and peaceful, can be made dynamic and interesting.

Additionally, by making the mod diverge from actual history the developers have been able to mine the historical record for bizarrely interesting characters and place them into positions of power, people like the White Russian officer Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, the Hapsburg “Red Prince” Wilhelm, American demagogue Huey Long, failed fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin. Where all these characters failed historically, Kaiserreich dredges them up into the games gonzo-historical wonderland of wild possibilities and sets them loose against each other.

The Set-pieces

By jettisoning the actual world of 1936, the mod can also have considerably more set-piece secondary struggles that precede the coming World War, similar to the Spanish Civil War in our own timeline. In the Kaiserreich universe, however, virtually every region has some similar kind of struggle — there is a three-way Spanish civil war, a too-many-sides-to-count American civil war that can drag in other factions, an Arabo-Persian coalition to take down the lumbering Ottomans, a Fourth Balkan War, an Argentine Civil War, a contest for control of the Indian sub-continent, the possibility of revolutions in both French and German Africa, as well as in German Indochina. The allure of Kaiserreich is that it takes a game based on a largely bipolar war and makes it maddeningly multi-polar. Some of the above-mentioned events won't happen every game, others will fizzle out or end quickly in a decisive victory, and in that uncertainty, that dynamic and chaotic world, is where the success of Kaiserreich lies.

These set-pieces fire off at a steady clip, so that even if one part of the world is quiet, you can gawk at the unfolding chaos somewhere else or participate by sending volunteers to aid the side that has a possibility of benefiting your faction. Turning the tide in one of these struggles might just allow you to open up a new flank or prevent one from opening behind you. The sheer number of these set-pieces, combined with the wide range of ideological paths and sub-paths given to most large nations, means that the map hardly ever looks the same way twice.

The Wildcard Powers

Like in the base game, though, the looming and inevitable World War provides the meat of the games overarching narrative. A revanchist France will inevitably confront an overstretched Germany. What makes the mods version of the Second World War more engaging is that while both are titanic struggles, the Second Weltkrieg is aided by both the above mentioned set-pieces, which leave the world dynamic and uncertain, riddled with geopolitical landmines, and the fact that the late game is improved considerably by a number of large wildcard powers that spend most of the early and middle game consolidating before ultimately entering to help sway the balance in the Second Weltkrieg, namely Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the United States. After each of their respective consolidations, each has options to enter the war and attempt to tip the balance or take advantage of the ensuing chaos. Whereas in the base game once the tide turns and one side gets a clear advantage the rest of the game becomes a long slog of mopping up and intractable foe, in Kaiserreich, a clear-cut war can rubberband back to balance once one of the wildcards tosses their weight into the fray.

Conclusion

All of these factors — the expertly realized alternate timeline, the interesting characters, the introduction of more set-piece struggles and wildcard factions — combine to create a game that is fundamentally more dynamic than the base game on which it was built. This dynamism makes each playthrough much more varied and therefore, most importantly, more replayable than the base game. This is not chaos for chaos’ sake, however. The world of Kaiserreich incorporates this dynamism into the greater narrative of the game, demonstrating how rising instability can undermine a global order, no matter how firmly entrenched it appears from the outside. It is a story of the end of a unipolar moment and the rise of revanchist and opportunist powers. It is a story that resonates far more with our own time than does the actual Second World War.

If any of this has piqued your interest, I suggest you take a dive into the newly updated version compatible with the games latest Ironclad update. The introduction of fuel mechanics can throw a wrench into several of the faction’s carefully laid plans. As in actual history, the oil fields of Romania and Azerbaijan become almost essential to hold to keep the war machines of the European powers running, further stretching Germany’s political commitments, while more accurately representing the fuel difficulties Britain and France would have if they were severed from their overseas holdings. It adds another layer of realism into a game in which logistics are largely abstracted. Check it out. This is a mod that is well worth your time.

For a break-down of all of Hearts of Iron 4's mods, as well as a quick-start guide to getting started, make sure you check out our Essential Mods Guide.

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Foreign policy in Hearts of Iron IV is one of the factors that determines your success, during a global conflict. Unfortunately, it is not too extensive and therefore, you can notice various shortcomings of the system. Thanks to diplomatic relations, you strengthen your position from the perspective of the globe, by undertaking specific actions and forming alliances. Taking appropriate diplomatic actions allows you to avoid premature conflicts with the stronger nations and ensures you with general success on your path to world domination.

As you can notice, in the above screenshot, after you access the diplomacy panel, a list of nation is displayed and you can view your nation's attitude towards the rest of the nations, and vice versa. However, there is a minor shortcoming, when it comes to this panel. The coefficient reflects only the effectiveness of trade agreements. At the same time, value of this coefficient, for the actions discussed later in this guide is negligible.

Even if opinions of the countries are high, this does not guarantee success of individual actions, because the majority of them are based on completely different modifiers, which will also be discussed for each one of them. What is important is that the effect of certain factors may disappear with growing of attractiveness of certain offers for a country. Even if a nation does not like you too much, they will not reject your help, or access to your territory, in wartime.

Hearts Of Iron 4 Civil War Command

One of the restrictions mentioned above is the fact that you cannot directly affect development of this type of situations. All of the actions are decided by either the computer's or the other players' actions and there is no way for you to bring about the collapse of a faction or escalation of conflict between individual countries. As a result, throughout the entire game, you can only observe political moves of others and wait for the right moment to strike.

One of the factors that saves this aspect of the game is the option to propagate your own political system in other countries. Thanks to this, you can bring closer, in ideological terms, those of the countries that have not been interested earlier in your model of a nation. In a longer run, you can enter a coalition with such countries, but you will have to wait long, before such offer becomes advantageous for one of the AI- controlled nations. In reality, this means that you can join the nations of the Axis, the Alliance or Komintern,. In each of the situations, you have to take into account which countries you are neighboring and relations of power between individual nations.

Below, you can view information connected with each of the available diplomatic actions.

Justification of war goal

This is the first step to take in the case of any conflict. Before you take military action, you have to relate to the territory that you want to attack.

The above screenshot presents the window of war goal justification. You can declare a war by relating to your claims to, up to, five regions [3]. Also, you can present your claims for fewer regions and then, the political power cost [1] will be lower. After you start the justification process, you can wait for a certain number of days that will allow for an effective media campaign against the nation that you want to conquer. Of course, justification of your war goal generates global unrest, whose value [2] on how powerful is the nation that you want to invade.

Remember that you require a specific number of political power to start the process. After the allotted time has elapsed, your war goal will become justified and you can move on to the next chapter.

War

As soon as your war goal becomes justified, you can declare a war. Open conflict with another nation results in increased global unrest [1] and it affects other countries' disposition towards you. You should remember about that, because some of the countries, especially the democratic ones, frown at the nations that incite global unrest and in the course of the game, you can find out that a single war at the beginning of the game disables majority of diplomatic actions with individual countries, for the rest of the scenario.

The above screenshot presents war declaring window. The window lists potential opponents [2] whose aggression you have to take into account, while declaring the war. Usually, these are countries from the same faction, or ones that guaranteed independence to the country you are about to attack.

While declaring a war, you can ask your allies' participation [3]. IF you do not check this option in the above window, you can do this later on in the diplomacy window for individual countries.

Before you declare a war, check out how strong is the faction that the country belongs to, and whether it has guarantee of independence granted by another nation. Assess your chances and try to find allies.

Guarantee of independence

Granting the independence of another nation means that in the case of war, you can intervene in defense of territory of that country. The guarantee considerably increases opinion of that country on your nation and it can be a useful tool in entering alliances. Cost of a single guarantee starts at 25 political power points and it grows by 25 per each guarantee that you make. Of course, you can retract your guarantee at any moment, but you have to keep in mind that the cost is 25 political power points, which is why you should consider whether this is a good move.

If you have secured guarantee of independence for a country, you should intervene whenever the country faces war. A typical example of intervention policy is the USA, which guarantees independence of all countries of Latin and South Americas.

Note: In this case, you can slightly bend the rules to you needs. If a country that you are at war with has a guarantee of another country, two things can happen:

1. The invaded country calls for its protector and automatically, you will end up waging war against both countries.

2. IF the country does not call for its protector immediately, after a while, you will receive a threat that war will be waged against you, if only you do not withdraw your forces. In such a situation, you can ignore the note and do nothing about it. If you are convinced that you win, wait for your countries to conquer the country. When this happens, peace talks window pops up. Pick the option to claim the enemy country and end the talks. Just remember not to click any option on the note. After the talks end, with the country included into your territory, you can click on the note to 'withdraw your forces'. This way, you will avoid war with the protector and, at the same time, you will seize the territory of another nation.

Military access

You receive access

The chances for this to succeed are very low. The majority of nations will provide you with excuses for which they can refuse to let your armies cross their territory and they do not grant you access to their military bases. This type of actions can only be effective with allied nations, but not always, though.

You grant access

Basically, there are no reasons, for which you should agree on that. Nations that are at war will gladly take advantage of such offer and transfer some of their armies to your territory. You can take advantage of that to improve your relations, but this will not mean much.

Improve relations

Improving relations will boost the coefficient of other nation's opinion about you, by up to 100 points, in a relatively short time. Remember that you have to watch this change closely, because after the maximum value is reached, the procedure will end and the value will start to drop by 3 points a day. Improvement of relations, in connection with other modifiers, can encourage a neutral nation to enter a profitable relation with you.

The cost to stat the procedure is 10 political power points. For the duration of the process, you will be receiving lower income of political power. Daily cost of the process is 0.2 points for countries with the same ideology and 0.4 for nation with a different ideology. Also, it should be noted that even improving relations with a country of a different ideology, to the maximum level, is not going to help you too much, because that country will be using another negative modifier, even to the level of -150 points.

Non-aggression pact

This is a tool that you can use to ensure yourself with relative , when it comes to contacts with your neighbors. Of course, for this act to be in power, it is necessary to maintain positive relations. You can notice that the majority of powers will send you such an offer in a situation, in which you declare a war on a faction hostile to them. Of course, you will receive such an offer on condition that you do not belong to the same factions as the powers themselves.

Pact can be revoked for the duration of one year of signing. After one year elapses, it is possible to revoke the pact under certain conditions:

Solutions provided by the game here are quite poor, because the majority of countries will not sign the pact, basing on the modifier of your mutual dislike, which you will, most likely, be unable to exceed. You can only accept offers from other countries.

Faction

Faction is the only way to enter a lasting alliance. You have to keep in mind that wars waged by members of factions take effect on the remaining nations. IF you decide to join a faction, you have to take aggression of its enemies into account. Remember, if you want to conquer enemy territories, nations that belong to no faction are a much better target. Of course, It is possible that the country that you have declared war on will ask for help of other countries and will agree to enter their faction. At this point, there is no other way and you will be at war with the entire faction.

Using the faction, you can dispatch voluntary forces and Expeditionary forces. Apart from that, you can ask for help with wars that you are currently waging and you can gain access to borders and naval bases of your allies.

Establishing a faction is not an easy task. I requires you to meet certain requirements. The most important one is ideological unity. Thanks to this, you can avoid the key negative modifier. Apart from that, each of the countries will earlier agree to enter an alliance if you, or that country, are at war. It should be pointed out that each country managed by the AI will be more lenient towards you, due to the fact that you are the player. Thanks to this, you often receive a positive modifier, which often tips the scales to your advantage.

Military reinforcement

Expeditionary forces

Depending on the political system in your country, and your political goals that you, you can dispatch Expeditionary forces. You can do this after you meet three requirements:

• the country that accepts the forces has to be in the same faction as you
• the country that accepts the forces has to be at war
• you have to declare war on countries that your ally is at war with

Expeditionary forces will fight hand in hand with your ally, the conquered territory will be divided and included into your territory. Note the fact that after you send the forces, you lose control over them and regain it only after you withdraw them from the allied army.

Lend Lease

It is also possible to lend military gear to another nation that is at war. You can lend any type of gear that you own and which you do not need to form another division from the logistic viewpoint. In the panel, you can define what type of gear you want to borrow and in what quantities.

Thanks to the lease, you can support one of the sides of the conflict, and by direct participation, you can receive army experience points that you can use to reorganize your division templates.

Volunteers

Thanks to your diplomatic actions, you can receive and dispatch volunteers to other countries. Note that your diplomatic relations with that country, or within the alliance, do not have to be that good to be able to exchange volunteers. The key condition is that the country that dispatches volunteers cannot be at war and the country to receive them is at war. Thanks to volunteers, you can back another country without getting involved in a conflict.

Divisions that you receive are stationed on your territory, but they are not subject to your jurisdiction. In general, they form the core of several regions and they are especially useful for defensive actions. You cannot give them orders and you cannot relieve them from duty. Your decisions in this respect are limited to decision about whether you accept or refuse them. This option still needs polishing up, but you can always accept them to reinforce positions that you want to defend.

Ideological popularity

This is one of the most interesting diplomatic options in the game. Thanks to it, you can call on people directly to change their political ideology. As a nation of a defined ideology, you can propagate your model. As a country without ties, you can exhort others to accept your political system, depending on support that is of key importance.

This way, you can create potential allies. This process is time-consuming because many factors depend on its success. Still, it suffices to devote enough time to it and you will reach your goals.

Before you start such an action, check out some important information. First, define, on the pie chart, what is the support for the system that you want to introduce. Check out daily fluctuations in support for that country, and when the next election is supposed to take place.

If, before election is announced, support for the ideology reaches 51%, after the election takes place, the country will accept that system. You have to keep in mind that growing popularity of an ideology may lead to social rifts and civil war. In such a situation, the country will break up into two separate nations that will fight between each other over which political system to introduce. Which system will be introduced depends on which nation wins the war, and election will not be held in that country until the end of the game.

Coup

This option is especially useful when you want to destabilize situation in a country. It is best to start staging a coup by propagating own ideology. Thanks to this, opposition forces will be able to deploy more soldiers, which may have a direct effect on the success of the separatist nation.

It should be noted that organizing a coup involves certain costs. You have to devote a portion of your daily income of political power to organizing the coup and additionally, some of your military gear will have to be set aside for the purposes of the imminent civil war.

During your preparations, you can pick the ideology in the name of which the coup will be staged, as well as regions that are supposed to initiate the war. The amount of gear that you will have to amass will differ, depending on the provinces you pick.

Coup always results in escalating ideological policy in the country. Regardless of which side wins, popular elections will be delegalized in the country and daily income of support for the opposing ideology will drop. Always consider whether it is better to stage a coup, or to wait for the next election, where you will be sure that the country's ideology will actually change.

During civil war, you can always join separatists and establish a faction with them. Also, you can declare war on the country, thanks to which you will have it fight on both fronts. If you fight within a faction, all spoils of war will be received by the separatists, whereas, if you decide to declare war, you will receive all the seized territories.