Paradox Games

The MacArthur stuff is pretty toxic too. Plenty of unironic support for an actual military dictatorship and calling for death flights for anyone to the left of Quentin Roosevelt.

Basically, the modders are constantly working on providing better portraits for the characters in Kaiserreich - for example, Jack Reed was originally using a portrait that showed him when he was much younger than he was during the game's timeframe. Others' portrait were based on low-quality photos, which was recently rectified.

In some rare cases there was probably also some deliberation about how their portrait didn't fit what they represented - for example, Mussolini - who is part of the Totalist crowd - was previously wearing a top hat, which really clashed with the whole socialism thing.

The usual crowd of course threw a shitfit over how "the devs are taking our hats away", same way they threw a shitfit over Ungern-Sternberg's lore being improved or the devs refusing to cater to their waifu fetish. It's utterly ridiculous.

To be fair, that's not mainly a Kaiserreich-related issue - Paradox games, due to their alternate history nature, have a long-standing issue of far-right and far-left loons latching onto them.

The main difference is that the meme culture in the Kaiserreich subreddit makes it easier for them to publicly thrive (though the moderators do their darned best to get rid of the obvious arseholes).

They did actually an online census a while ago - while most players were (to no one's surprise) single teenagers, the ideology most of the player base actually identified with the most was social democracy, with unironic NatPops or Totalists being a minority. So there's some hope.

One example of the mod creators cracking down on the more toxic elements of their fanbase was the meathook ban - they also used to have a dedicated politics section on Discord, but deleted it because a) people started joining only for politics (which is not what the modders want people to join for) and b) it was an absolute toxic mess. So they got rid of it.

Long story short: Kaiserreich doesn't necessarily have more toxic fans than the main game, but the edgelords tend to be more overt.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 26th 2019 at 6:18:31 PM

Reminds me of the time when they mentioned that the most common ideology actually played in Stellaris was some kind of Xenophile, for all the memes about the game being a genocide simulator.

Well it helps that the post 2.2 meta heavily favors xenophillia because immigration boosts your pop growth and pop growth is the One Stat to Rule Them All atm.

Before Autocracy was pretty busted with Caste Slavery being too self-managing for the amount of boni it gave.

Edited by Kiefen on Feb 27th 2019 at 11:16:43 AM

I'm normally Authoritarian Democrat or Paternal Autocrat myself. So even if I'm somewhat authoritarian it's more benevolent dictatorship in my case. Or constitutional monarchy and the like.

And even then when I'm playing Germany I do things like give women suffrage, welcome Jews into the country, and things like that, and often go for compromises when I'm playing other countries.

Edited by theLibrarian on Feb 27th 2019 at 10:48:11 AM

This was from before 2.2, though.

Playing the Evil Empire is usually the most fun thing to do, though. It speaks to something primal deep in our brains, I suppose. The evolutionary part of the brain, so to speak, as opposed to the cultural one.

You can see that very strongly with ancient cultures like the Greeks and Romans. They did not really do compassion. They knew it was possible, they just didn't think much of it. It was something humans had to learn. It took a certain upstart religion to do it in the end.

[citation needed]

This more or less sums up every claim in that post. :/

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 27th 2019 at 5:34:05 AM

True. If anything, most of the worst evils, the "base impulses", are more "civilized" than the "higher ideals". After all, it was "civilized" people who invented our worst evils, like slavery and genocide.

Also, I was considering suggesting that the "upstart religion" was Jainism.

What proof do you have that slavery and genocide were invented by civilized people? If anything, archaeological evidence of prehistoric peoples points to the opposite, at least as far as genocide goes.

Archaeological evidence also points to pre-historic tribes and civilisations having Laws And Customs Of War, so it's more of a mixed bag.

As for the "primal urge to play evil empire"; heck no. I tried it a couple of times, but I just can't get into it. Evil just doesn't feel good.

Edited by Kayeka on Feb 27th 2019 at 1:06:05 PM

To my knowledge, the first acts of what would now be considered genocide were the Assyrian Empire's forced deportations, and as a settled, agricultural society that lived in cities, I'd consider them "civilized".

Also, seconding that evil does not feel good. I can't really enjoy building an oppressive, genocidal society.

Edited by Balmung on Feb 27th 2019 at 6:57:59 AM

There has been evidence of a 10.000 year old mass killing. Is that close enough to genocide to count? Does it count if it's just the tribe next door?

I apparently missed Wallis Simpson becoming Queen of America, so shame on me. I kinda have to go with the posters suggesting that its the weirdest alt history in the mod, white Southeners getting pissed about desegregation and revolting makes more sense than that, Communists infiltrating the Japanese Government and causing a Revolution is still weird, but nowhere near the levels of ludicrousness of Queen Wallis. Heck, the only thing that comes close would be the HRE path. Having a Kingdom of America...is Red World-esque, in that it makes utterly no sense but the game will likely pretend it does anyway.

Slavery and things like that in Stellaris tend to be a lot of trouble anyway. Slaves rebel, purging populations is time-consuming and finnicky, and warring a lot brings more nations against you.

And your claim is, what, that people suddenly stopped genociding each other once "a certain upstart religion" came into vogue? Cause history would disagree with you on that one.

The existence of codes of law and ethics before most cultural changes that you could be referring to (pretending that we don't know which religion you're talking about) disproves the idea that those changes were required for humanity to accept such things. The existence of genocides and atrocities - by those very cultures, no less - after those points disproves the idea that those changes were responsible for civilization becoming compassionate.

That there were instances of genocide before and instances of compassion afterwards are irrelevant to your initial point, since it's the prior two that are required for it to be correct.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 27th 2019 at 8:40:27 AM

America doesn't just "become" a kingdom - you turn it into one if you puppet it as monarchist Britain under Edward.

Which means that basically it only happens if the player does it.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 27th 2019 at 5:48:35 PM

I figured, but it still feels laughable. It would have made slightly more sense to have a Dominion or something, rather than a full client Kingdom.

On the topic of evil game play, I guess I try to play on the side of "good" by default (ie neither "Totalist" or any kind of fascism). Like, if the game gives me the choice to Kick the Dog or not, I won't. Sometimes I'll play as the 'bad guys' to fulfill a certain objective, like reforming the Roman Empire, but that too is subjective depending on the detail of the mod (you'd never get me to do a fascist America run on Red World, for instance).

I feel like the religion conversation would be best suited for On-Topic, right?

You know what's also laughable? Carol naming conquered cities after his mistresses. Venezuela starting out as fascist. Not to forget Germany being able to win the war.

Paradox' alternate history was always of the pop culture quality, i.e. they always had implausible scenarios based on historical tidbits they found.

Singling out Queen Wallis as this one thing that doesn't make sense seems weird.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 27th 2019 at 8:09:18 PM

Less Weird then you might think, the JPC was pretty strong in the run up to WWII.

....

I blame it on there great music.

Edited by Imca on Feb 27th 2019 at 11:13:42 AM

Was it? Ah, interesting, I did not know that, I was under the impression it had been marginalized like Italy's.

I do think you are underestimating just how little Americans think of having a Monarchy. To say its a fringe position would imply it has some level of support. Though, I will agree that HOI 4 is not known for its realism (Manchukuo's Focus Tree, anyone?)

No, I'm just not letting American Exceptionalism determine which implausible AH scenario is or isn't laughable.

"American Exceptionalism" Sure, lets go with that. Definitely a firm believer in American Exceptionalism you're talking to.

And who's to say I didn't find some of the other scenario's laughable? I just found this one to be particularly egregious. Nor am I opposed to including it: so long as its fun, I tend not to care how plausible the path is.

Thing is, with most of the other crazy paths, they took some facet of that country and blew it up. Trotsky in Mexico? Bring him on as leader! Hungary has a vacancy? Bring in the Hapsburg! Manchukuo led by the former Qing Emperor? Give him a chance to take the throne again! Stuff like that.

Giving America a Monarch makes as much sense as giving Switzerland one, or San Marino. It has no traditions of the sort, so establishing one goes against the grain of the very fabric of the country itself, with no precedent to draw upon.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Feb 28th 2019 at 3:02:26 PM

Nope, it was doing pretty well for itself, it wasn't until after the war and the US doing what the US does that it was basically eradicated.

They wanted an anti-communism buffer, and an active communist party is not very conductive to that.