The Wrath of the Red - A somewhat alternate history mod

[unmerged(45769)]

The idea is, what if the Soviet Union had responded in more force to the revolutions that occured in Eastern Europe in 1989. What if Soviet Army units had attacked the rebels?

There is a whole deal of interesting scenarios one can come up with here. For example, what if the US intervenes? What if the revolutionaries gain enough support to launch an attack at the Soviet Union directly? What is your input on this mod?

 

[Sarmatia1871]

There'd probably either be a massacre as NATO stands by, or a global thermonuclear war, unless you can handwave a workable SDI system for both sides!

It would be a reasonably interesting mod, but there are already at least two of these Cold War mods in development already (albeit for slightly different periods). So, it may be better to input ideas into one of these, so at least one scenario can be made quicker, rather than divide energies up with more projects...

 

[unmerged(41998)]

i'd rather a cold war mod where the Soviet Union survives to the 1990s-2000s, opening up new challenges for both the US and the Soviet Union in the new millienia.

 

[unmerged(48658)]

first of all, with Gorbochev in the ruling position SU was incapable of making any intervention into the eastern europe (what with all the Defence budget cuts and noninterference agreemnets), are you going to replace him?
In fact SU probably wouldn't able to do much even under the rule of some hardliner (like Ligochev maybe?), since it was very weak economicaly by that point and would most propably be driven apart by natianlists by the year 2000. of course you can pretend there was someone among the eldery buerocratic elite who could reinvent Socialism and set it back on the path to greatness...

as for SDI, i have an idea:
there is a trigger to find out in which province a nuclear device exploded, right? let's set it's power to zero, and have one of two events trigger every time someone does that. one event is would be for SDI intercepting the missile (nothinh happens), the other that it doesn't (all provincial values take a hit) each one deactivates the other.
or you could just claim that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to use (and lock them, you know like that US force in colon...) and only allow people to get them if their capital is lost (this is done through an event where they have a chance to refuse their use, but if they don't all the nuclear nations get ther arsenals unlocked), and offcourse some of the 70s treaties (or was it early 80s?) deny you from producing any more.

 

[NikkTheTrick]

and offcourse some of the 70s treaties (or was it early 80s?) deny you from producing any more.

But those would not be respected in an all-out war.
Besides, who needs to produce when there is anough nukes to cover every province :rofl:

 

[Sarmatia1871]

first of all, with Gorbochev in the ruling position SU was incapable of making any intervention into the eastern europe (what with all the Defence budget cuts and noninterference agreemnets), are you going to replace him?
In fact SU probably wouldn't able to do much even under the rule of some hardliner (like Ligochev maybe?), since it was very weak economicaly by that point and would most propably be driven apart by natianlists by the year 2000. of course you can pretend there was someone among the eldery buerocratic elite who could reinvent Socialism and set it back on the path to greatness...

Yeah - any real-life "USSR suddenly decides to attack everyone!" scenario in 1989 is probably a bit unrealistic - you'd need significant changes before then to make anything like this possible.

One possible option is to keep Andropov alive and, with a lot of handwaving, have him conduct various reforms and streamlinings over the course of the 1980s, to keep the Soviet political system in place while improving the economy, with military strength growing accordingly. This would at least put the Soviet Union in a much stronger position than it was in real-life...

 

[unmerged(61810)]

I've been bumping old threads all day now... Anyway, If the scenario was when Mr. Leonid was in power, before the destruction of the Soviet economy by his enormous military buildup, the scenario in which the USSR attacks rebels all over Europe, and starts controlling these nations, making them not much more than Soviet Socialist Republics would be very realistic.

 

[Phoenix Dace]

The problem with any hypothetical scenario involving a revival of the Soviet economy in the 1980s is that one of the decisive factors in the downfall of the Soviet economy was not caused from within and could not, no matter what, be remedied by internal Soviet reforms. This being the drop in oil prices. Ronald Reagan, as president, befriended the Saudis enough that he could convince them to drop the price of oil exported from Saudi Arabia, and as anyone who's ever studied economics, even on a minute scale (why did the mom and pop bookstore go out of business when the big chain moved in across the street, etc.) knows, that will (and did) cause a worldwide drop in oil prices of around 75%. Since much of the USSR's exports at the time were composed of Siberian and Caspian oil, this caused a massive drop in profits made from Soviet exports to the world market and, over the course of the 1980s, helped in a major way with the decline of the Soviet economy.

However, this cannot be effectively modeled in HOI2. It could be in Victoria, where prices of commodities actually have an effect on the game, but in HOI2 the best way to model it would be to drastically lower the ratio of oil to other goods, which determines how much countries are willing to trade for goods (I believe by default it is 1 energy:2 metal:4 oil:8 rares:16? supplies:32? money) and devalue oil. However, since I don't know if even this would work, especially since the USSR is self-sufficient in many other respects in HOI2 terms, any alternate history created would have to involve not only the Soviet Union but also would have to involve a change in American diplomatic and economic foreign policy, and leave out the bit about devaluing oil.

Not impossible to write, but it basically makes the whole thing into a global alternate history, not just a 'what if the USSR cracked down on the revolts in Eastern Europe'.