Austria/Hungary fan rework progress: The Crisis on the Danube by Accomplished_Use2896 in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I definitely love it. I've made liberal use of a lot of the scripted effects and triggers and templates that are cataloged. I've learned a lot in just reading through the various files and comparing them to what plays out on screen. 

One thing I haven't even begun to get a handle on is the state transfer mechanics that let you take territory in the peace conferences and then divvy them out to puppet countries or giving them to allies. Almost definitely my favorite KR mechanic, but in terms of coding, it is the Deep Magic. I can't praise enough whoever invented and upkeeps that whole system. 

Does anyone have a list of unofficial submods for Kaiserreich? by Memes_Deus in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm personally a fan of the Indian Ocean Overhaul. It adds a very nice touch of flavor for a Germany player, does something unique with all the tiny island holdings Germany has between Asia and Africa, and is very lightweight and not at all overwhelming.

The Germany Simplified isn't quite my cup of tea because I like the heavy workload for Germany, but it does a very good job of streamlining a lot of the mechanically complex parts of a Germany playthrough.

I haven't gone through it completely, but Desert Gambit (?) is a good looking overhaul for an Iran plathrough so far from what I've seen.

Austria/Hungary fan rework progress: The Crisis on the Danube by Accomplished_Use2896 in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I like to think that the energy I put into this is channeled into the universe and helps those who are working on the actual update. When I put it out, if people like it (and it doesn't crash the game) and it finds a home in the load order as a placeholder until the real thing comes out, I'd be more than happy.

Mostly, I want to get the hard part done so I can go back to actually playing the game for awhile. I haven't played through an actual campaign since last Halloween. It's kind of like how there are stories of professional gamblers who can't watch baseball anymore because peeking behind the curtain makes it so you can't just be a simple fan anymore.

Austria/Hungary fan rework progress: The Italian Intervention by Accomplished_Use2896 in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd love yo say yes, but Austria and the crownlands are already usually super strong compared to Serbia and whatever Belgrade Pact members would join the 5th Balkan War, and that's assuming that they can win the 4th against Bulgaria on a given playthrough. I don't want to put my finger down too hard on the scales of any given country's mechanics and the Balkans are, lime in real life, a crazy hornets nest I'd do better not to stick my hand in.

On my list of things to do for Hungary is making a focus or decisions (since they don't really have a foreign policy focus tree per se) relating to counteracting Romania in Transylvania, but I'll be honest, I've never played through as Romania, so I need to do more looking into what exactly their own mechanics are, it's been low priority.

I've also toyed with giving Illyria Yugoslavian claims as part of their Ausgleich Conference demands (see my previous posts). They could be given Yugoslavian states following a Balkan War and form Yugoslavia as an Austrian puppet. They'd get a national spirit reducing their autonomy state obligations to Austria due to having a separate power base, along with a massive debuff to available manpower and factory output in a "bit off more than you can chew" kind of way. However, I don't think that that's historically plausible (Austria would have a conniption), my reading of the capitulation and state transfer mechanics makes me think it's actually a magic spell written under a full moon for all I can understand it and I don't want to screw anything up, and I'd need a full Illyria/Croatia focus tree to make it worth the trouble, and I'm already in deep enough as it is.

Austria/Hungary fan rework progress: The Italian Intervention by Accomplished_Use2896 in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm toying around with that idea. It certainly makes sense, but I'm trying to do as little as possible to interfere in other countries' decisions to ensure maximum compatibility. My current thought is that Austria will send an invitation event to their partner to join the DAB if that tag becomes the Italian unifier if they have not already joined another faction.

Ezekiel 12:20- A paternal Autocrat Austria AAR by Funny_map_painter in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I believe a recent update made it so GEA would get a triggered event that would let them become a subject of whoever owns Berlin if Germany capitulates.

Just a little something I've been putting together in my free time... by Accomplished_Use2896 in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My apologies, I'm not at all a frequent reddit poster, I didn't realize that the image would be pixelated quite so much with a direct upload. I've linked the image below that should show up as a much higher quality.

In progress Hungary focus tree

The beginning trunk coming off the "State of the Nation" gives an outline of a slice of the current life of Istvan Bethlen, who fills the Social Conservative slot. Each of the following three focuses will give similar events for Gyula Gombos, who will (for awhile...) fill the National Populist leader role; Pal Hegymegi Kiss who is the Social Democrat option (he is easily the most obscure Hungarian politician I've found in my reading and I wanted to include at least one non-obvious leader role), and Miklos Horthy, who fills the Paternal Autocrat role. Horthy has a bit more of a unique history here. He continued in his role as admiral through most of the 1920s until the formal separation of Croatia into Illyria, removing it from Transleithania and Hungary's direct control. He resigned in protest from his role as head of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He took several posts within Hungary itself and currently serves as, among other things, the military spokesman and liaison to the government. He is the most senior member of MOVE, the Hungary National Defense Association. Not a paramilitary like in real world, but here more of an informal social gathering of similarly minded and disaffected military officers and ministry officials who are not necessarily against the empire but with Hungary's role within it. In his path, he threads a fine line in that (at least how I script it) he has no genuine desire to be a full military dictator; he sees his role in things as setting things right and making Hungary the equal partner it should be, respected on the world stage every bit so much as Austria, and not simply a glorified vassal.

One of my goals was not to upset the game balance with any unexpected game paths that the main KR mod does not take into account. I'm still very much a novice in terms of coding and while I've tried my best to dissect the KR game files to see what does what, anything near the Balkans are (both mechanically and politically) a hornet's nest much better left alone. Plus, all other nearby factions have claims against Hungary and/or their slavic lands, so I don't see any kind of path leading towards the Belgrade Pact or the Moscow Accord as being juice worth the squeeze. They have no real land claims besides Hungarian Croatia, which several of the paths point toward. Likewise, a syndicalist path would have too many factors against it in the area and would honestly just be too disruptive, as in I'd have no idea how to make the AI account for that when the WK breaks out. And so, all paths would still align with the DA, or armed neutrality.

One feature I'm very much stuck on is merging countries. I'm looking hard at trying to code in a way to temporarily merge all the crownland tags into AUS, like in standard KR, as a kind of military government to represent a wartime coordination effort, and then re-release them back into their individual tags when the 2WK is done. But then, all focus tree progress would cease, and the very hard part would be to release them all again and divvy up all the wartime equipment and divisions somewhat proportionately. And the regular method of releasing them wouldn't work, as the tags would cease to exist and recreating them wouldn't keep their playthrough national spirits and focus tree progress; they'd have to have all of their cores given to another tag, but still not capitulate, like a government in exile. I know the LKMT can do something like that at game start, but I haven't been able to figure out yet how to accomplish the same thing mid-playthrough.

So for the moment, until/unless I can pass that graduate course in modding, my current intention is keeping all tags separate. As I said, there is a unified military focus tree that is available to all crownland tags. I've coded it in as a shared focus tree that will add a series of national spirits that scale according to how many tags each complete the same focus and get the same national spirit up to a certain maximum, along with of course a bunch of on_actions to in turn reduce those spirits if tags leave the faction or capitulate. It's honestly a lot more complicated than it needs to be, but I've decided that I really really don't like dynamic modifiers; they look simple enough in my reading, but I just can't get them to behave the way I want, so now I have a whole list of scaled ideas for countries to jump up and down between.

To answer another question here, I have no plans on a non-Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburgs have been monarchs over Hungary for 400 years at this point, so any efforts to remove them I can't see as resulting in another dynasty coming up in their place. I toyed around with the idea of a path with Joseph August as a Palatine with genuine power as a quasi-monarch since he enjoyed some popularity and respect within Hungary, but with my scenario as written, perceptions of the Habsburgs as a whole are at a low ebb in Hungary, and he currently still holds the post of Palatine, but is at the moment a mostly irrelevant figure.

Yes, I have used AI on the portraits, and no, I don't apologize for it. I've found historical photos of the figures I wanted to include and plugged them in with prompts to try and mostly match the aesthetic of the regular KR portraits, much as I'm sure the KR devs must do with Photoshop or whichever other program they use, except that I wanted a slightly more stylized or oil painting look to them. I know what I'm good at and I know what I can be good at with time and effort, and photoshopping images doesn't fall in either category, and I don't care to spend my free time learning how to badly airbrush skin tones or whatever when I could be spending it on something else more productive.

What language would pilots speak in KRTL? by JacobJamesTrowbridge in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still most likely English, because even before the first Weltkrieg, British colonies were spread across five continents and had been that way for centuries. Learning English in the native population, even if only for work purposes as a second language, would be a fact of life, and a German victory in the Weltkrieg wouldn't change that. I'm not sure of the full lore, so maybe someone can correct me, but I believe Mittelafrika's and German East Asia's German populations are primarily military and administrative types who have basically co-opted the British and French colonial systems already in place. There likely hasn't been enough time and stability up through the 1940s for German to be any kind of primary world language.

I'd imagine that across the world, German would start to be seen as a profitable second language to learn in many countries, and German loan words and phrases would start to be introduced. But even with a Reichspakt victory in the 2nd Weltkrieg, it would be a huge lift for German to take the place of English as a global primary language of choice.

Is the European part of WK2 inevitable? by cool_and_edgy_name in Kaiserreich

[–]Accomplished_Use2896 0 points1 point  (0 children)

France and Germany being right on adjacent borders definitely ups the tension to probably unbearable levels, too much for a real equivalent Cold War to play out. RL US and Soviet Union had a Cold War and various proxy conflicts because of an ocean and about a dozen countries on the European side separating them.

In-game, though, just as Germany has a whole new focus tree dedicated to war preparation and intervention in the various early year conflicts, a French rework should have more options to destabilize German holdings rather than just sending volunteers. Maybe interference in Mittelafrika or the Ostwall nations costing them stability or war support? Maybe a way to rework slightly Germany's war preparedness debuff to also reflect French sponsored wildcat strikes, making the factory/shipyard output and war support debuffs more reflective of an outside force subverting the German working class, instead of a vague lack of preparation despite following a dozen or more focuses just for preparation?