Why is Kaiserreich so much more immersive than the base game?

[Falcolner]

As above, I enjoy KR because of the event chains like the ones for AH in the base game. They make you feel like you're playing a game of chicken with the fate of Europe or the world at stake. The really nice thing, is that I've seen France and the KR face off until 1941 sometimes, and I've seen them go to war in 1938. You don't know what's going to happen, and it gives you a great feeling of suspense.

 

[zukodark]

I think the changed mechanics in Kaiserreich are the ones that truly make it feel great. Dealing with stability before vanilla was really a big draw, yet vanilla is still behind on for example ideologies. The feeling of having all these ideologies and paths to choose from in Kaiserreich feels much greater than the 4-ideology system of vanilla. It also actually captures a slight bit more nuance in democracies. It really is immersion-breaking having no semblance of opposition parties in democracies. Furthermore Kaiserreich has its way with negative modifiers. Almost nothing in vanilla has negative effects, and it hardly feels like anything bad is happening due to your choices. Vanilla world is one of exponential increase and betterment.

Other than that stuff comes down to personal preference. I personally think the Kaiserreich timeline seems possible in most cases, though not necessarily plausible or likely. Kaiserreich takes every country and wonders how to make each of their timelines most enjoyable. It truly feels great as an alternate history game/mod, while not a plausible alternate history. Also I love the event spam most of the time, truly makes it feel like things are happening in your country.

 

[BeyondExpectation]

Other than that stuff comes down to personal preference. I personally think the Kaiserreich timeline seems possible in most cases, though not necessarily plausible or likely.

What Kaiserreich lore do you consider implausible?

 

[Roland Traveler]

There are several reasons. As @Nuklearius points out, there's no need for historical research beyond the odd wikipedia article. Another reasons is that Paradox has to put together and patch the whole game, KR just builds off of Paradox's work using tools that Paradox has provided.

The biggest reason, I think, is the number of focus trees. In KR just about every nation has one (even if they're very basic) so it feels like more is going on. With more nations having focus trees, they can be more reactive to each other as well.

There's also an issue where people confuse war with immersion, and since there are so many random wars in KR it "feels" immersive because, well, stuff is happening! But the problem is that Weltkrieg 2 is always a huge disappointment because the insane number of regional wars weakens everyone to be glorified speed bumps for the communists/Germany. I wish for the days of Darkest Hour Kaiserreich, where the Weltkrieg was a truly global and truly epic conflict with unpredictable outcomes.

Ultimately, if nothing changes on the KR end, I think Paradox will have a better NF tree "web" if you will, since it will all be focused around WWII. KR seems to be thinking in terms of "how do we make country X or region Y interesting" which results in gratuitous regional wars, whereas Paradox seems to be thinking in terms of "how do we make country X interesting in a way that contributes to the global conflict," meme alt history aside.

100% this. In the real world, the only somewhat interesting thing from a war game’s perspective to happen in South America was a border conflict between Ecuador and Peru that lasted less than a month. Now compare that to Kaiserreich: Argentina’s in a civil war and the player either has to contend with minimal manpower as Patagonia or enemies both internal and external. Bolivia can be revanchist as all hell and attack everybody around them. Peru can reform the Confederation and try to retake land. Brazil can shatter into civil war and needs to be put back together. Colombia can go on a murder rampage in the name of Simon Bolivar. Leaving the global static, Australia can go through multiple coups and end up in a 1936 War with its former allies. Vietnam can break out into open revolt, the Commune can melt down, allowing for Nat France and German invasion. The Balkans and the Middle East are all poised to tear into each other. A-H can collapse due to the Augsleich. Italy is a myriad of warring factions. The US and Spain can collapse into three way civil wars. Central America is under the control of multiple regimes that want to unite the region. The entire Mongolian Khanate. You can play as bloody cartels in China. There’s so much instability in the world of KR, war can break out anywhere and you can guide your nation through that turmoil (even if how it got there in the first place is contrived). Compare with OTL, in which the sudden change of government like you see in KR is extremely unlikely and instability is concentrated around Germany (note the around part) and in China. The rest of the world is downright concrete compared to the absolute clusterfuck of KR.