Darkest Hour?

[Agelastus]

Actually, I had seen you were working on it; I think I'lll wait until the CSA/Entente is able to pull off a draw at least one time in four.

The problem is I'm not sure how to plausibly do that unless you pretend that the South has become one Dark Satanic Mill. Holding out until 1917 is pretty appropriate, and it's how it usually does. (The problem being that a human led US can do much, much better)

Am I right in remembering that someone at one point in the books says that the USA outweighs Canada and the CSA combined by about 3:2? Or was it 3:1 and the casualty ratio the Entente was inflicting on the USA 3:2.

Anyway, since Canada held out as long as the CSA in the books, I guess that that is your problem - plausibly strengthening Canada so that this is possible.

[Agelastus]

OK. My opinion of the land combat system in DH?

Somebody's playing a joke on the players.

Attacks are stopped dead whenever opposition is reached (no forward movement at all, as if it was WWI.) This, combined with the enemy's ability to retreat faster than you can advance while recovering (even with motorised units against foot) turns it into a no-fun attrition fest where careful timing can allow you to "steal" provinces being attacked by someone else.

Consider Malta - 11 Canadian divisions spent 3 months* reducing the defending division, only for two UoB divisions that had joined the fight within the last two weeks to steal the province. And no, UOB does not have a core, claim or anything else to Malta.

The same thing is happening in France; not only is encirclement virtually impossible, but key provinces that I as the Entente have been assaulting for weeks are falling to latecomer co-belligerents.

It is, quite frankly, infuriating.



*A problem in itself - the idea of an amphibious assault continuing for that long against an island the size of Malta is, ahem, "Alien Space Bats".



Edit: Actually, I think the best description for the combat system is "Last Man Standing"; that could be said of all HOI games but this is even more pronounced in DH.

[Faeelin]

Am I right in remembering that someone at one point in the books says that the USA outweighs Canada and the CSA combined by about 3:2? Or was it 3:1 and the casualty ratio the Entente was inflicting on the USA 3:2.

I've been on a WW1 kick lately, and ISTM it's a bit hard to buy the claim that the side with heavier artillery, tanks, more planes, and the first use of poison gas is actually taking more casualties than the other side.

So unless you get Confederate ubermen, I think it's pretty onpoint. I'll add some other changes; putting a VP in Halifax, maybe some more Canuck divisions, but still.

[Agelastus]

Am I right in remembering that someone at one point in the books says that the USA outweighs Canada and the CSA combined by about 3:2? Or was it 3:1 and the casualty ratio the Entente was inflicting on the USA 3:2.

I've been on a WW1 kick lately, and ISTM it's a bit hard to buy the claim that the side with heavier artillery, tanks, more planes, and the first use of poison gas is actually taking more casualties than the other side.

So unless you get Confederate ubermen, I think it's pretty onpoint. I'll add some other changes; putting a VP in Halifax, maybe some more Canuck divisions, but still.

On reflection, I think it was the "3:1 outweigh but we are only inflicting casualties at 3:2"; which is believable as the USA was continuously on the offensive and I think this was stated before the use of tanks became widespread.

[Josephus]

The Maltese have always been historically very resilient. 

[Razgovory]

Actually, I had seen you were working on it; I think I'lll wait until the CSA/Entente is able to pull off a draw at least one time in four.

The problem is I'm not sure how to plausibly do that unless you pretend that the South has become one Dark Satanic Mill. Holding out until 1917 is pretty appropriate, and it's how it usually does. (The problem being that a human led US can do much, much better)

Am I right in remembering that someone at one point in the books says that the USA outweighs Canada and the CSA combined by about 3:2? Or was it 3:1 and the casualty ratio the Entente was inflicting on the USA 3:2.

Anyway, since Canada held out as long as the CSA in the books, I guess that that is your problem - plausibly strengthening Canada so that this is possible.

I think the problem is that the books aren't plausible.  A friend and I played a TOAW scenario based on this.  Despite a much more militarized Canada and Britain, the Entente was still overwhelmed.  They even had Mexican troops along with Russian and Japanese expeditionary corps. I was stuck however by how much it resembled the US civil war though.  Stalemate in Virginia and Maryland while US forces crushed Kentucky and marched though the heart of the Confederacy.  The war was essentially over in 1916 with both Canada and the CSA completely overrun.

[Agelastus]

The Maltese have always been historically very resilient. 

True!

Anyway, I spent yesterday playing Darkest Hour itself as Britain (and browsing the event files when I couldn't believe what I was seeing.)

(1) For some reason, Britain gets no IC increase from "gearing up for war" - France does!

(2) The build AI is as useless as ever; but at least with HOI2 you could rely on France building infantry to hold the line. Now, with limited manpower, does it build planes? Does it build ships? No, it builds factories  - which is a real pain for Britain given how close they are economically and how I prefer not to let the AI run its' own armies (military control, the big thing missing from HOI3. )

The French AI also doesn't upgrade units while having low manpower...fortunately, neither does the German AI...

(3) Mobilising causes dissent (which, as we all know, is a pain to get rid of in DH.) I thought "fine, this is peacetime, surely the penalties won't apply when I'm at war?" So I looked at the event files and...yes, they do apply. So you go to war, mobilise, and cripple your war making industry (which is what IC is supposed to represent, not your total economy!) In real life governments found alternatives to keep things going (employing people on the dole, reserved occupations, women in factories, mechanisation etc.) which DH ignores.

Obviously, DH's designers are trying to make Dissent substitute for manpower shortages in industry when mobilisation occurs, only the mechanism is not really suitable for it; if they really think a malus is needed, they should just directly apply it as a "mobilisation IC modifier". Dissent, after all, affects partisans and other things as well as industrial output.

(4) Ships take a long time to build...too long. Absent war, Britain could build a "King George V" class battleship in three and a half years (for which, see King George V herself, the only one of her class not significantly affected by the war.) HMS Nelson, in a time of budget cuts, the "Ten Year Rule" and peace took four and a half years to build. USS North Carolina took three and a half years to build.

The battleships laid down by Britain in 1936 in my game have a build time of five and a half years. 

(5) Which, of course, makes production sabotage all the more infuriating...one wonders what the saboteurs have done to delay a ship a further 10+ months...

(6) Sliders seem to be adjustable every two years rather than every one. This is not an improvement.

(7) Looking at the events, it appears the British Raj (puppet India) has a fifty percent chance of staying out of a war between Britain and Germany...to which one can only say WTF? The only Commonwealth country that came close to staying out of the war was South Africa, and they start off in the Allies!

In fact, the "Allies" are strange...the Raj starts off outside, Bhutan starts off outside, but Nepal is a member?

(8) It seems that the British OoB (which I was forced to edit to make it comply with the unitnames file, and to change the names of some units to avoid duplications) is not the only one that slipped through quality control - I am watching the French (now that they are actually building troops) produce new divisions with the same name as deployed divisions in the starting OoB - apart from minor variations in the abbreviations or diacritics used. This may be minor, but is very annoying...garbon...

Although to praise them, they did get rid of two of the three egregious spelling mistakes that Paradox had left in that OoB since HOI (the original game) itself!!!

Which means, in summary, the only good thing I can find about the game so far is the map; I feel ripped off, despite the price..

[Neil]

Quality control?  There is no quality control in the games industry anymore.  Your thinking is distinctly of the pre-Internet age.

[Faeelin]

Ah, Agel, are you posting this there as well?

[Agelastus]

Ah, Agel, are you posting this there as well?

I hadn't intended to..

And now I've registered the game and spent a little while browsing the tone of the forum and the Developers' replies, I definitely can't be bothered.

I think the discovery (via Fernando Torres' reply to a presumed bug) that normal mode no longer means "no bonuses for anybody" in one specific area was the final straw; if you are having to give the AI help in normal mode with dissent, then you've fucked up the dissent mechanism - it is not WAD.

Not to mention that further browsing has revealed that they've linked unit production time to your level of mobilisation, a link so egregious I just can't get my head around it - it's reverse logic to that which has led them (I assume) to apply dissent to mobilisation as far as I can see. Not to mention the reason that build times tend to be cut in wartime (at least for warships) has to do with the use of shortcuts and inferior materials - neither of which can be represented in the game (you have the ships quicker, but they are not as good.)

[HisMajestyBOB]

 

[Agelastus]

Hey, this is amusing.

Just being studying the effects of "partial mobilisation" and "increase terms of service" in the game.

Yes, they do cut production time - but they also raise production cost at the same time as they are gutting your economy with dissent. So the reduction in production time does not help as you can no longer afford to build the units.

[HisMajestyBOB]

And now I've registered and spent a little while browsing the tone of the forum and the Developers' replies, I definitely can't be bothered.

I think the discovery (via Fernando Torres' reply to a presumed bug) that normal mode no longer means "no bonuses for anybody" in one specific area was the final straw; if you are having to give the AI help in normal mode with dissent, then you've fucked up the dissent mechanism - it is not WAD.

Honestly, that's the kind of stuff that completely turned me off of Iron Cross.

At least AoD, even though it doesn't change the map or make as drastic changes as the other games, works and has a more receptive development team.

[Josephus]

So....one year later. Is this any good? Just remembered it today.

[ulmont]

So....one year later. Is this any good? Just remembered it today.

Yeah, it's pretty fun.