Hey, I've been interested in this period of time for a little while. Looking back we were lucky to get out of it without a nuclear war. I'd like to explore this time period a bit in a potential Hearts of Iron IV mod.

What do you think absolutely NEEDS to be in a grand-strategy game set in this 12 year period? What kind of alt-history would you be interested in?

Things I think would be essential:

  1. Iranian Revolution and an alt-history where it goes Socialist under Ashraf Dehghani or some other leader.
  2. Alt-historical successful Kurdish uprisings in Iran, Iraq, Syria
  3. Iran-Iraq War
  4. Soviet-Afghanistan "War"
  5. Alt-historical invasion of Taiwan by PRC
  6. US Invasion of Grenada
  7. Gulf War
  8. Meme Red Dawn invasion
  9. Meme US Civil War
  10. USSR alt-history, either Gorbachev somehow manages to reform enough that the USSR holds together until the 21st century, or more traditional hardline communists takeover instead, or the '91 Coup goes off successfully.
  11. PRC alt-history, a return to Maoism or actual Capitalist-Roaders
  12. Some of the African conflicts during this time, maybe an early First Congo War, US bombing of Libya, France intervening in Chad-Libyan dispute, Ethiopia-Somali conflict
  13. Able Archer '83 going wrong
  14. Korean Airlines 007

I've got more, but I'm curious what you all would think is needed.

I mocked up some national spirit icons, curious what you all think. The name comes from the Chinese localization of "Hearts of Iron" which is, apparently, Iron Ambitions or Steel-Plated Ambition.

  • PrincessMagnificent [they/them, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    What do you think about a RNG based system where, based on something like World Tension, there is the possibility of a Able Archer type event starting a nuclear war? Like maybe the game rolls some dice and once a year there's a small chance that a flock of geese gets misinterpreted on radar as an icbm.

    • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah definitely. It could be that you receive these occasional warnings about an airliner, or balloons, or geese, space debris, and as tension ratchets up it you lose the peaceful/non-nuclear response.

      I definitely think nuclear disarmament should be an important theme in this.