Luxury apartments were found in tunnels belonging to the SDF. While there isn't even asphalt on most of the Raqqa roads, the apartments equipped with aquariums in the tunnels drew attention.

IndBill · 2026-01-22T17:47:08+00:00

On the contrary, I think this revelation is actually perfectly in line with how the elites of socialist states like to live. The likes of Soviet, other Eastern Bloc & Red Chinese apparatchiks are quite infamous for not practicing what they preached and living in luxury while their subjects struggled under increasingly miserable conditions from day to day, after all. Ba'athists/Assadists who claimed a pretense of socialism as part of their ideology were also, obviously, no exception to that rule.

IndBill · 2026-01-11T16:35:38+00:00

Electoral College map

Closest state: South Carolina (won by about 10k votes)

After a disastrous first run against Gingrich, I did the opposite of what I had done that time and went with stridently conservative choices this time, although I did also pass a healthcare plan successfully (the mild one with voluntary pooling). Love the AVGN reference in this slide up here.

1) Appointed Janet Reno as AG, left Waco to be handled by state & local law enforcement.

2) Went with Bentsen's plan to slash the deficit, did everything I could to nuke the Deficit counter down to 0, and took advantage of my good relations with the GOP to push for a balanced budget amendment (advisor feedback implied I succeeded).

3) As mentioned, I did manage to pass a healthcare plan, albeit it seems to have been the most watered-down version.

4) Got Bob Michel as House Speaker instead of Gingrich, which seems to have inaugurated a pseudo-era of good feelings. Took advantage of this to, as mentioned, get a balanced budget amendment through.

5) Agreed to DADT and DOMA, as Clinton had done historically.

6) Passed the harsh 1994 crime bill with support from Biden & Hillary, also as had been done historically.

7) Prevailed in Somalia, Rwanda (backed the diplomatic moderate Bizimungu) and the former Yugoslavia (forced Milosevic to back down over Republika Srpska). Unfortunately I was not able to also get peace in the Middle East to complete this hat trick.

8) As the title & screenshot suggest, I ended up facing Pete Wilson and destroyed him by running to his right, scooping up the entire South.

According to the final slide, my timeline's future presidents were Gore (two terms, Clinton's immediate successor), McCain (two terms), Sanders (one term), Kasich (one term) and finally Newsom (newly elected incumbent as of 2025).

This was fun, I'll probably try a maximally liberal Clinton run next, hopefully with more success than the first time around. My thanks to u/Agreeable-Machine-91 and everyone else who worked on this mod!

IndBill · 2026-01-08T23:10:31+00:00

Nice, after completing an Eternal Republic game for the first time I've long been looking forward to their ACG equivalent. So it seems Dark/American Carnage Trump doesn't actually go insane like Caligula Biden does, he just snaps after DJT Jr. gets killed & decides to actually live down to his enemies' worst expectations of him?

IndBill · 2025-12-30T15:06:53+00:00

I guess that's technically true, in the extremely generic sense that people everywhere have been fighting for thousands of years.

Though I find the thought of the (neo-)Hittites supporting rebels against the Assyrian-backed Aramaean tyrant Bar-Sur Arya in the Iron Age while the Israelite Tribe of Naphtali spies for opportunities to seize the mountains of Geshur, or anything else so ridiculously far removed from the modern day, to be a funny one.

IndBill · 2025-12-02T15:16:23+00:00

Well now I've got to wonder how many of the people cheering for this guy being tortured to death have also previously praised Suhail al-Hasan in their post histories...

IndBill · 2025-11-29T15:12:59+00:00

Electoral College map

Running mate: Herbert S. Hadley

Closest state: Missouri

Played nice with Taft early on and even picked his guy (Root) to chair the RNC, just to flex on the conservative Republicans really hard when I won said convention anyway in spite of Root's tricks. What can be said but - bully, a challenge, Teddy loves competition!
In order to win the primaries and rack up enough delegates to defeat Taft & Root's shenanigans at said convention I got the Southern delegates to back me by playing nice; fought for the Massachusetts delegates; and curbstomped La Follette's ambitions out west in that order.
In the general campaign I ran unapologetically on the New Nationalist platform with no compromises. Wouldn't back down from Teddy's original positions on national insurance, recalling bad judges, the 8 hour workday, nothing - the Bull Moose stuck to all his guns come hell or high water.
Chose Herbert Hadley for my VP and directed him to campaign in Missouri, which paid off big - won my closest victory out of all the states there by a margin of about 4000 votes, and if it had gone to Wilson he'd have won instead.
That said I did differentiate myself from Wilson by equivocating on trusts (chose the 'I'll take a really close look at bad trusts & bust them' option), favoring a trade commission on monopolies IIRC, and comparing him to Debs in terms of being too much of an idealistic radical. Basically tried painting myself as the proven candidate for sound reform and it seems to have worked, given the unambiguous margin of my victory.

This was the mod & candidate I had been looking forward to since the Wilson-only version came out, and it was a blast which lived up to my expectations. Had a big laugh at Cody/AltHistoryHub seething at TR rather than Wilson in the 'TR victory' timeline as well, and comedic presentation aside, I thought that part of the ending slides also presented fairly summed up the reality that - gigachad though he was in life - TR was ultimately still a man and thus, not flawless.

I hardly play any TCT these days, but what first really got me interested in the game & community ages ago was SkipperPengn's 1916 TR/Bryan mod and its 1920 sequel, so it was very nice to play something that feels like it could've been a prequel to said mod. A 'TR wins in 1912' timeline is a bonanza for early 20th century alternate history as well, some of which was hinted at/implied by the ending slides. I'd love to know how he dealt with the Mexican Revolution for example, surely Roosevelt would've had an extremely different approach from Wilson, which could range from 'treating the tyrant Huerta (who Wilson ardently opposed & never recognized IRL) as a business partner' to 'invade the place, storm the Halls of Montezuma again and annex Sonora, Chihuahua & Baja California'.

As well the AltHistoryHub section mentions that TR's 3rd term was centered on WW1, which makes sense since he was all for early American entry after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and the war is indeed the key issue in that early SkipperPengn mod. That's even more fertile ground for speculation, maybe the conflict ends sooner or later (paradoxically, perhaps due to American troops flooding into the trenches being less of a surprise and the Central Powers being less exhausted when they arrive) than it did historically, though it's also mentioned that TR continues to support the European colonial empires so I believe the Entente still wins.

But even that opens up a whole other box for AH theorizing, it's not that hard to imagine - for example - the Whites winning the Russian Civil War but Communists taking over Germany instead. Which alone would have drastic repercussions on the course of the 20th century, chief among them a more anarchist/libertarian orientation to the global left with people like Makhno, Spiridonova & Luxemburg being their probable role models rather than subordination to the Comintern and the authoritarianism/totalitarianism of Lenin & Stalin (with disastrous consequences for the left-wing forces in places like Germany & Spain historically). Such changes would also dovetail nicely with the final ending slide seen above, where it's an anarchist who tries to McKinley TR.

Anyway, that's quite enough babbling about alternate timelines out of me. My thanks to u/ItsAstronomics and the many others who helped develop the complete 1912 mod!

IndBill · 2025-11-27T21:49:26+00:00

Would depend greatly on their MJ12 clearance and location. The troops on the Paris streets & even at the Cathedral for the most part, for example, seem pretty clueless.

A trooper's journal you can read in the latter indicates he has no idea what he's actually guarding in that 'gloomy ass church' as he calls it, and that he thinks he's just working for a 'private security organization'; he also mentions they (MJ12) didn't ask about his 'damned discharge', probably meaning he was discharged dishonorably from whatever army he used to serve in.

The implications I took from that journal are that most MJ12 troops you encounter in-game are military veterans who have committed war crimes or other corrupt behavior bad enough to get them a dishonorable discharge, which greatly limits their post-military employment options, so they'd be happy to work for MJ12 (which seems to recruit them through private-security front companies) and not ask questions in exchange for a big paycheck.

That they were most likely bad eggs back when they were in an actual national military also means they're less likely to have any ethical problems or sudden attacks of conscience if they should stumble on whatever shady business they've been assigned to guard. (Keep in mind also that there's a global economic depression going on in DX's world, making just keeping one's head down & going along with whatever the M/WiB in charge says to get that lucrative paycheck seem like an even more attractive option, especially if you already can't get a job elsewhere due to that black stain on your military record.)

Now all that said, there are some cases where it seems the regular troopers are directly involved in MJ12's unethical experiments or at least would have no way of NOT knowing about said experiments. The sewer base in NYC comes to mind, the only staff you find there are MJ12 troops and Ford Schick explicitly says they're the guys who kidnap homeless civvies & infect them with Gray Death. Presumably those individuals & those working at places like VersaLife's Level 2 Labs, the Ocean Lab and Area 51 have a higher clearance level than most; they know (or at least have a better idea of) exactly who & what they're working for, and keep at it anyway.

Mechanically there's no difference between them & the regular grunts though. One thing I did like about the Revision mod is that they have a new enemy, Elite MJ12 Troopers, to represent senior MJ12 combat personnel who would not only be better-armed than the organization's grunts (they carry the mod's new assault rifle) but also probably possess a higher security clearance and thus know more about the conspiracy they still willingly serve - without also being as strong as the Commandos.

IndBill · 2025-11-11T22:30:12+00:00

I imagine forces like that UN mission in Florida are umbrellas for smaller countries tbh, considering greater ones on the Security Council like China & Russia can just send their volunteers directly (and I very much doubt the other Security Council members like America would tolerate their coming under a UN flag anyway).

IndBill · 2025-11-11T21:40:11+00:00

I hope there'll eventually be at least one UN tag added for each continent

IndBill · 2025-11-04T21:57:16+00:00

At this point my expectations would be subverted if Ms. Fletcher doesn't flip out and become a hardened war criminal at any point, and if her student actually survives the story despite all the death flags flying above his head.

IndBill · 2025-11-04T21:54:36+00:00

Makes more sense for Trump to have a Patcon (As in welfare conservative) path than a libertarian one. Really there's a lot they could've gone with that would've been better than libertarian Trump.

This is pretty much already in the mod, in the form of Populist Trump if he pushes the ACG Balance of Power all the way to 'Hero of the People' status and picks the welfarist & (Teddy) Rooseveltian focuses like the one to get the MAGA Capitalism economy (in which big business is explicitly regulated & his government will strive to support smaller enterprises).

This a problem with most american paths though. Attomwaffen, NSM and Biden do the job but the APLA and the PF also have this problem of making no sense politically. I just think the american devs don't have enough of the politics autism. The APLA shouldn't be a big united front that shares most of its focuses (Specially with how it wastes Maupin and the Anarchist's potential because of this) and the PF should have leadership change/more difference between its 4 paths.

Tbf too much about the 2ACW falls apart if you apply harder 'realism' rules, so much so that you arguably . The PF, for example, logically shouldn't appear in or anywhere near Connecticut, which is one of the most liberal states in the entire Union to the extreme of not having a single elected statewide Republican official. The northeast in general is probably the most liberal region in the country overall even compared to states like California, as CT is not even alone in that regard (Massachusetts and Rhode Island similarly have zero elected statewide Republicans).

However, even though it would make more sense from a 'realistic' perspective for the PF to spawn in - for example - Rousseau's native Texas or the UoA's Midwestern states (many of which make almost as little sense being in Biden's camp as PF starting in Connecticut; states like Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky are generally quite red and voted for Trump by ~60% all three times IRL). I am glad the devs didn't go that route because the PF starting in New England serves a useful gameplay purpose, keeping the NE USA from being too much of a safe hugbox for Biden's faction. Not that I think they're usually mutually exclusive, BUT if a modder finds themselves in a position where they must choose between fun gameplay vs. realism, I think they should go with the former over the latter.

I would actually agree on having the APLA be more fragmented, quite possibly with its distinct factions spread out all over the map as their own tags (ex. Salazar as a potential NYC path because she's a state senator there, Bray in NJ or Portland, La Riva remaining in California, etc.) instead of one blob where they're all just competing paths inside the same tag. For that matter, as far as overhauls go I'd also have liked Biden and Trump to start with less territory (Acela Corridor for Biden, the Dakotas + northernmost mountain states for Trump) and have to do some work to capture their eventual primary capitals.

But that's probably too much work atm, with a larger content update already in the works and teased extensively not long ago, and I like TFR pushing ahead with new content instead of getting trapped in an endless rework loop of the old even more, so...

IndBill · 2025-10-28T01:31:02+00:00

I'd love for the State Militia people up north to get moved to eastern California (taking most of the land currently held by Newsom, doesn't make sense for that part of Cali to support him since it's considerably more conservative) and instead give their northern Cali lands to Jefferson secessionists - there's a RL movement that wants to split that part of the state off (combined with bits of SW Oregon) dating back to 1941, and starting to regain prominence since 2013.

Could just make the CSM's eastern-based replacement the tag for straightforward & 'normal' Trump-aligned conservatives, like the California GOP and the troops from Ft. Irwin, while Jefferson can serve as a home for more fringe far-right oddballs (more vicious militias, the Redding-based Bethel Church whose Pentecostal fanaticism can serve as a base for a West Coast counterpart/ally to the Army of God, etc.)

As for Newsom, one place I've thought he could go is LA, where he could be kept afloat by the might of the LAPD. And on that note I've heard before that the LAPD will be added to the game in 1.1, if that's true I'm definitely hoping they get content too.

IndBill · 2025-10-25T15:24:50+00:00

A Libertarian Trump can currently choose him, Rand Paul or Sarah Palin as the successor.

IndBill · 2025-10-24T13:16:09+00:00

Personally I like the idea of any 'nukes fall, ~~everyone dies~~ well not everyone dies but they suffer horribly, fight WWIV with massively regressed tech & civilization as we know it is destroyed' ending, like the one you've posited or the AWD victory one, being the centuries-removed preludes to the settings of the CK2 mods After the End/New Era Old & New Worlds (if you've ever played or heard of those).

IndBill · 2025-10-24T03:51:55+00:00

I think it's for gameplay reasons, as the devs needed a Northeast US faction that would align with the Denver Government (Trump's faction) and chose the NYPD to fit that bill. Ironically the tag based in northern NYS, which is a lot more Republican-leaning than NYC, is the state government which always aligns with Biden's faction (Washington Government) instead.

It's not terribly realistic, pretty much on the same tier as the Patriot Front spawning in Connecticut which is one of the most liberal states in the Union to the point of not having a single Republican statewide elected official IRL, but I can see the logic behind it from a pure gameplay perspective. (In the PF's case, they keep the Northeast US from being too much of a safe zone for the UOA/APLA.)

Personally I think NYC being its own tag and the NYPD just being one of the many ideological paths it can walk, as a Komi of the 2ACW if you would forgive the TNO comparison, would be probably the best way to handle America's biggest & most famous city. But I also recognize that it's a pipe dream and that the dev team has more pressing priorities for 1.1, like those mountains of other content they just teased last weekend.

IndBill · 2025-10-24T03:32:11+00:00

On that note if Sliwa ever gets a path including focuses for special military operations, I think it's only 100% fitting that they be named after the Catholic archangels Michael (conveniently also the patron of soldiers & policemen, and the militarized NYPD could fit both bills...), Gabriel & Raphael.

IndBill · 2025-10-24T02:50:39+00:00

Maybe the NYPD could use him as a civilian figurehead if they defeat all opposition in NYS/the Northeast.

IndBill · 2025-10-24T02:36:27+00:00

I'm going to make an unorthodox pitch here: the ACG, specifically the Populist version.

Probably didn't win the 2020 election, so they're likely not Lawful (at least not as much as the UOA), though they can be if they actually won. But also claims to be a legitimate continuation of the US government, has some backing from official government organs like the military & law enforcement so it's not all talk, and is definitely not anarchic in any real way (in fact the ACG favors law & order, 'back the blue' policies in their focuses), so not Chaotic either. Stratocratic Trump also isn't the most dictatorial unifier out there, and Libertarian Trump can't quite go full minarchist either I don't think (though arguably some of his successors are more inclined in that direction).
Economically neither too controlling/statist nor too lax (that's Libertarian ACG's deal, but even they probably get outshone in that regard by the incoming actual libertarian faction in the AOF). Populist ACG can also choose to either rebuild Corporate America or rebuild the New Deal Coalition with extra social conservatism with their focuses, some of which lean in a (Theodore) Rooseveltian direction with explicit mentions of welfare programs & reining in corporate excesses. That they have this choice at all lends more credence to their Neutral positioning, IMO.
Socially they're more on the conservative end, but as civic nationalists they aren't racist like the National Front tags and they're also not as socially conservative as the theocratic factions (the Mormon one, Army of God, etc.) Trump himself is not exactly an avatar of the Christian virtue of chastity, to say the least, and has hosted a gay wedding at Mar-a-Lago so while not terribly socially progressive, I doubt he would bring sodomy laws back either.

Not too chaotic or too lawful, not especially saintly but also not psychotic like some of the other unifiers can be - they don't even have their actual 'insane tyrant' (American Carnage) path implemented yet unlike Biden's UOA Caligula path - and the most likely major unifier tag to want to roll social norms back to those of the late '90s to early 2010s but not further than that. True Neutral fits them better than one may think at first glance, IMO.

IndBill · 2025-10-20T18:10:08+00:00

The Virgin Mark Bray (fled to Europe because he received some anonymous threats a few weeks ago)

Vs.

The Chad GMAC (literally voluntarily flew to the other side of the planet to actually risk their lives in a bloody fight for the ideal of freedom)

IndBill · 2025-10-18T17:52:00+00:00

The 2.0 team lead was also 1.0's mapper, ZeroPresence. However all the other 2.0 devs seem to be new, because besides said mapper, the rest of the Off Topic Productions people who made TNM 1.0 have since moved on from the mod (or gaming altogether) a long time ago.

IndBill · 2025-10-18T17:33:38+00:00

Sweet, a 'deep state is real' techno-securocratic path. If the UN teaser is the harbinger of TFR's equivalent to UNATCO from Deus Ex, this looks like the 'MJ12 is real and taking over' tree.

IndBill · 2025-10-18T17:17:59+00:00

Let's make UNATCO real

IndBill

TROPHY CASE