AiF - America In Flames Announcement

[Breadboy]

What if the Axis had achieved all of their goals? What if the Swastika flew high over all of the Europe, and the Rising Sun through all of the Pacific? America in Flames explores this what if scenario. America and her remaining few allies are left alone to defend against the incoming onslaught of the Axis powers. Frenzied and high on victories around the world, Germany, Italy, Japan (and… others?) look towards the America’s.

In this mod, players will be tasked to simulate "What if the the Axis Powers invaded North America in WW2". Playable factions include the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan and Italy (Along with Minors), with new friends such as Axis-Aligned Mexico, as well as the Allied Powers of the United States, and Canada, along with the British loyalists who escaped German occupation. Featuring a fully custom made and highly detailed 1:25km scale map of North American from Northern Canada to Venezuela, the world war will finally arrive in the western hemisphere. It will be up to you to decide the fate of the New World.

America in Flames has been a passion project for me on and off for about a year now, and finally I feel I have enough done to announce this project to the community.

So .... what's done so far?

• As of now, a ~1:25km scale map of North America is at about 90% completion, with only small areas of detailing to finish in Canada, and the Caribbean, as well as large parts of Mexico that need finished or polished. This is what I have spent much of the past year working on and I am very proud of the results. The map attempts to recreate the conditions of North America in 1942. I used as much historical data for railways, production facilities & factories, resources, rail lines, and city sizes in order to create as close as possible the conditions that existed in the 1940s.
• Economic balancing is mostly completed, though of course this will be an ongoing task through the life of development.
• The starting Order of Battle for both Axis and Allies has been set, as well as units and production.
• The lore bible for this scenario is nearly finished, and will be uploaded for reading in the coming weeks. This document will describe the alternative history and points of divergence from the historical timeline that make this scenario plausible.

And what is in progress..?

• Currently, the largest thing I am working on is learning to write and create events. I am no wizard with this, and progress is slow. A mod of this size requires a lot of them, and some sequences have been proven to be quite tricky and complicated for what I am trying to do with them. I am sure I will be quite active in the forums over the coming months, trying to learn from folks who have done this before.
• Time and patience permitting, I may put out a serious of videos or posts about how to do these events/scripts as I learn them myself in order to help folks in the future, since I am finding a real lack of good tutorials/discussion surrounding this stuff, beyond these forums and manuals.

So when can I play this already!?

• I am hoping in the coming months to have a playable alpha of the mod open to everyone to try out. But I am wary of releasing too early, as I want to make sure it is a mod actually worth testing, not a broken un-fun mess. The point of posting before it is ready was to build a little hype around the project and help motivate me to keep with it.

I'm really looking forward to getting this out for folks to see. A big thanks to Lothos (though eh may not know it), as he was a major inspiration to embark on this project after having played so much of TRP - World. Another shoutout to Elessar2 and his 20km Europe map, which was another big inspiration for me to start this project!

Below is the overview of the map size, and some teaser images of a few areas of the map:

Map.png (17.21 KiB) Viewed 288 times

[Breadboy]

PLACEHOLDER

[Lothos]

very cool

[Beriand]

So, the final capital somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? One wonders if in this world someone makes an implausible scenario about lucky Allied victory

Sounds great, any big mod is nice, though people tend to hug main WW1/WW2 campaigns tightly and not that many try out other scenarios.

Can I ask what is the dynamic of the campaign? That is, which side is on the clock? Such an Axis is probably stronger than US, so are there some revolts/internal problems crippling Germs/Japs if they do not smash Americans quickly enough? Just curious, almost all scenarios start with one aggressive side considerably stronger, but then with relative strength changing over time due to mobilisation/allies.

[Breadboy]

@Beriand

To answer your question, the Axis really are 'on the clock' so to speak. You are correct regarding changes over time in relative strength, as in the mod the intention is to have the United States & Canada start in a very weakened state, and rapidly be able to come up to strength with the invading forces. Success for the Axis will depend heavily on the first year of the campaign, as early failures will likely spell an eventual defeat, but early success could bring a quick victory. I think the best parallels is that on the Atlantic side (the Germans & Italians vs the Eastern US & Canada) will resemble a Barbarossa campaign, wherein the Axis forces are much stronger at the onset, and should be able to rapidly establish a foothold in the mainland, but the US player, like Russia, if it can survive the onslaught, can grow into a giant on its own, and be very competitive to the Axis forces. The Axis have another major disadvantage, which is that all reinforcements will need to be shipped overseas, which adds 2-4 additional turns for additional troops. In addition, occupation of the mainland will exact a heavy toll on the Axis, through partisans and resistance, so even though the Axis Army will be large and powerful, it can still be ground down over the course of the campaign.

This scenario was also made first and foremost for my group of friends (the four of us) and we like to play these games as a 2v2, so the intent is to balance around this, and the scenario really feels like two distinct fronts, almost like two different 1v1s. Ideally, both sides have an equal chance at succeeding. For the US, victory is loosely defined as kicking the invaders back into the sea, and for the Axis, taking over significant parts of the US. The US East capital can go from DC -> Pittsburgh -> Chicago. So if the Axis player can reach Chicago, that is a decisive Axis victory. Even crossing the Appalachians could be considered a minor Axis victory.