There’s no similar bonus for Italy invading France, for example. This certainly does the job, but it’s also quite a bespoke method that restricts the potential for early-war scrambles like the Marne solely to players taking the historic route. For example, the Great War Mod provides a one-off Schlieffen Plan bonus to Germany, allowing them to briefly punch through Belgium before the bonus is removed and the game’s stagnant pace resumes. I may have mentioned previously that I’ve seen other WWI mods for HoI IV handle this in a particular way: with the use of special in-game events and bonuses. How can this be done? One-Offs or Combat Models?

Division HP and attack needs to result in the Battle of the Marne at one point in time, and Paschendale at another, or the Isonzo in one location and Tannenberg in another. We’re essentially trying to design a game pace that can flip like a switch - Sommes, Gallipolis, Brusilov Offensives, 100 Days Offensives, Schlieffen Plans, and Sieges of Kut - the entire array of mobility that existed in the historic war, but with the same set of values. The problem is balancing for such complicated behaviour. I’d really like for Germany to have an initial - but narrow - window of opportunity to rapidly advance to Paris, but face the reality of the stagnant front if they fail to do so, wherever that front may fall. I really want my players to be plotting fights bridgehead-to-bridgehead over on the Western Front in 1915, while being able to make huge advances on the Eastern Front at the same time. I’m really aiming to encapsule these different speeds and senses of urgency in my mod.

Other fronts, however, were a little more dynamic (though certainly not as fluid as WWII) and, of course, different fronts advanced at different speeds during different phases of the war: trench warfare didn’t set in until the Battle of the Marne - before this, the German offensive was rapidly pushing through northern France - while what followed was a few years of utter stagnation for the Anglo-French until various tactical innovations finally started to thaw the deadlock in the conflict’s later years. This means a slower, more tenacious war than World War II (which vanilla HoI4 sets itself in), where battles over individual valleys and villages may have played out over weeks or months (in particular, on the Western Front, the Italian Front, and Gallipoli). The aim of the World War I Mod for Hearts of Iron 4 is to simulate a war that resembles the one that took place historically.

The great war hoi4