Ultra Historical Mod - Realism Overhaul

0.19.3 beta for HOI4 1.19.3

Changelog

Steam forum/discussion is disabled, please use Discord to contact mod developers

Other links

Reddit Paradox forum

What is Ultra Historical Mod?

Ultras goal is to make Heart of Iron more historically accurate. Our ambition is to make only necessary changes to the base game and rather adapt it to a realistic historical balance which is still fun in single- and multiplayer. The original goal was to create a historical representation of industry, but the mod has developed far past it once we started to add/fix/tweak other content we feel is important.

Reasons to play ULTRA

• More historical immersion without changing the whole game

• A multiplayer game balanced toward history and realism

• Feel the power of a major country during WWII

• Lack of fantasy/implausible alternative history paths

Compatibility

• Compatible with HoI4 1.19.3

• NOT Ironman/achievement compatible.

• NOT compatible with any mod changing the checksum, if you want your favourite mod integrated, just ask it (and the mod creator too) and we'll see what we can do and if it fits.

• Certain DLCs ( LaR, NSB, BBA, TAAT ) required for a complete experience. We cannot promise an issue-free experience if you play without the required DLCs.

• Alternative history focus trees are generally not supported.

• Only the English version is supported.

Industry Rebalance

The primary objective of our work was to "correct" the industrial balance in the game: In vanilla, industry is balanced around "playability" and not around historical facts. For the HoI4 dev team, each minor country should be "playable", the Axis should have a chance to "win", global conquest should be a possible achievement. We don't agree with this view and rather want to play with realistic historical values concerning the relative power of each country. That's why we did a lot research work about the industry before and during the WWII timeframe in order to translate it into a mod as accurately as possible. Our main sources are:

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze

Economics of the Second World War by Mark Harrison

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy

Mark Harrison was so nice to actually answer some additional questions personally. From Kennedy we took the concept of "war potential" for each country and translated it into ingame industry (civilian, military and dockyards). To give some figures, the 7 Great powers have more than 90% of the worlds industrial capacity and the gap between the last major power (Italy) and the first (the USA) is more than 1 to 10. To improve representation and granuality, we made each vanilla IC equivalent to 4 IC in the mod.

To keep it within the realm of plausibility, we also had to change 2 keys elements: the industrial growth rate (nerfing heavily industrial snowballing, we now get a growth rate of under 10% per year in 1936) and the resource system. Coal, Iron and Bauxite were added and globaly ressources are less expensive to get (depending of the resource) to avoid overpowered minors from lots of resources sold and majors having to trade away half of their industry.

Features

We tried to keep things close to vanilla whenever possible, so most of our work here are balance tweaks for a more realistic gameplay. Here is a list of some features we added or changed:

• Division designer overhauled

• Combat width and casualty rates overhauled

• Logistics designer allowing to decrease supply use the cost of additional trucks and manpower in divisions

• A comprehensive naval combat and ship desing overhaul ("Naval Rework" mod integrated)

• Accurate AFV, artillery, and aircraft trees for all major nations

• Macrobuilder to ease construction of multiple buldings at once

• Integration of some QoL mods

• Infantry Squad & Support Designer

Ongoing Projects & Development

Since you can never test enough, we'd be pleased to hear your feedback and suggestions to improve the mod within the same philosophy. Please contact us on our Discord, you can write bug reports and suggestions there!

Sub-modding is also encouraged if you want to integrate your favourite mod or create a feature inside the mod, you're welcome ;)

Resource Rework, Naval Macrobuilder, Tank Designer integration are the next big projects on the list.

Partnership

A special thanks to (https://steamcommunity.com/) of the World Ablaze team with whom we had a fruitful partnership at the beginning of this mod!

Credits

Special thanks to all the excellent modders which let us borrow part of their work to be integrated into Ultra:

• Atreides for his BIG resources features in the Yet Another Mod - The Case of Resources mod.

• Wunderwaffle for the nice WW's Buttons+ mod

• Dziurkacz for the cool Coloured Puppets mod

• Gundahar for the obligatory Coloured Buttons mod

• Elouda for the totaly awesome Naval Rework mod

• Yard1 for the usefull Recall Volunteer mod

• Lennard for his Topbar Resources mod

• Myzael, Alex Brunius and Voigt for big help and ideas from Improved Historical MP mod

• RPM, Tank Encyclopedia and Wardrawing for the very niice equipment images.

• German Generals for extra officier portraits

• Xpanded Propaganda for extra propaganda decisions

If we've forgotten anyone, please tell me so we can credit you!