Additional Units Mod - Empire (AUM-EMP)

Best Empire Total War mods will always include custom unit models, and this is no different. AUM-EMP contains almost a hundred of new units, dozens of naval war machines, 4 Field Marshals and more than 60 Ornamentum units. Ready to fight for the colonies in the New World with your new soldiers, m'lord?

War Of 1812 Mod

This Empire Total War mod focuses on a seldom explored historical period. The Second war of independence is the highlight now, and you can take Canada to glory by freeing them from the powerful overlord. Or choose another side and try to pin the rebels down by force.

Colonialism 1600 AD

It is rare for Total War Empire mods to offer experiences such as this one. It transports the player back in time, to the 17th century. The mod gives access to new pike formations, new global borders, historically accurate soldier models, religions, and alliances. We can dive straight into the adventure or establish an alternative history of a new colonial empire.

Regiments of American Revolution [RoAR]

One of the best Empire Total War mods for those who love immersion and authenticity of history. This mod includes the uniforms and the weaponry of soldiers who fought for American Independence during the 1775-1783 period. Gear and uniforms changed over time in real life, and the mod reflects that as well. Neat.

HiFiMasteR Sound Mod Final + Fife and Drums

Best Empire Total War mods always have something to do with the sound and music. The author of this modification offers us a brand new experience with an overhaul of the playlist, using rousing orchestral music and instrumentation (piano, violins, etc.) The sounds of rifles, cannons and battles in general is improved as well.

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.

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.

This article was originally published in April 2019.

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 HOI4 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.

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 condens

Great War Realism Mod