Making History: The First World War

I've spent enough hours colour-coding resource spreadsheets in Hearts of Iron to know when a grand strategy is bluffing about its depth and when it's actually delivering. Making History: The First World War lands somewhere uncomfortable in the middle: the systems are genuinely layered, the documentation is genuinely thin, and the gap between those two facts is where most newcomers will quietly quit. The core loop runs on turn-based decision-making across a map carved into over 2,000 land and sea regions. Each turn you are juggling troop movements, factory orders, research allocation, and diplomatic positioning simultaneously. The research tree runs from pre-industrial basics up to machine-age technology, which means the early turns of a 1912 Balkan Wars start feel very different from a 1917 scenario where tanks and aircraft are already reshaping the front. Three scenario start dates, 1912, 1914, and 1917, give you meaningfully different strategic puzzles: the 1912 start is the one for players who want to build infrastructure, manage trade routes, and pre-position before the shooting starts, while the 1914 jump-in throws you straight into attrition management. Hundreds of scripted historical events nudge the timeline toward recognisable WWI beats without strapping you to the rails. You can keep Austria-Hungary intact, knock Russia out early through social unrest scripting, or pursue unrestricted submarine warfare as Britain's nightmare scenario. Alternative history paths are covered too, which adds replay incentive once you've done the obvious major-power runs. The nation selection is legitimately one of the game's strengths. You are not locked into Germany, Britain, or France. China, Serbia, Denmark, and various Chinese warlord factions are all playable, each with a different resource base and diplomatic pressure to manage. Playing a minor or poor nation is where single-player actually generates tension, because the AI, while improved over earlier entries in the series, is still a weak opponent when you have comparable resources. It manages its economy competently enough, but it struggles to exploit gaps in your frontlines, rarely pulls off credible naval landings, and can behave ahistorically in repeatable patterns that break immersion. Multiplayer entirely changes the calculus, and if you have even one friend willing to share a WWI session, the strategic tension scales up dramatically. Here is the part I want to spend real words on for anyone thinking this looks too complicated: it is approachable if you treat the tutorial as a UI orientation rather than a complete education, which is all it ever claims to be. The manual is unfinished, a real and acknowledged problem, but the previous entry in the series, Making History: The Great War, has a substantially more complete PDF manual whose mechanics carry over well enough to fill the gaps. Start with a major power in the 1914 scenario, keep your treasury out of the red for the first ten turns, and the interlocking systems of infrastructure building, factory output, troop supply, and regional radicalism start to make sense organically. High radicalism feeds unrest and revolution events, so domestic policy is never just a sideshow. Gas attacks, trench networks, machine gun units, observation balloons, and armored units all carry real tactical weight once you understand supply chains. The Steam Workshop support is present and the scenario editor is functional, though mod tooling documentation has the same rough-edges problem as the main game. Community scenario work exists but the player population is small, which limits how much the workshop will grow. The mixed Steam reception, sitting around 67 percent positive across roughly 107 user reviews, reflects an honest split: players who engage with the systems find replay value; players who hit the documentation wall early do not come back. At an indie price point, the risk-reward on that split is more forgiving than it would be at full AAA cost.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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