Dev Diary #14 – United Kingdom Beta AAR –December 11, 2009

[x260bm]

Part I - The prewar years 1936-1939

For the second Arsenal of Democracy AAR, I am going to be playing the United Kingdom. I held a poll yesterday and the United Kingdom was the country most requested by the community. Since the game is going to be released in a week this AAR will move at a faster pace than the first one. There may be multiple updates each day, so check back often. This game will also be played on normal difficulty, but I have set the AI aggressiveness to normal to test out the new invasion AI. Again this AAR’s primary purpose is to showcase the new features in Arsenal of Democracy.

Some things have changed since the last AAR. It is now slightly easier to get rid of dissent. Free slider moves now occur every year instead of every 18 months. Research speed has been increased. Transport capacity has been increased. Noncore IC/resource penalty has been decreased. Tooling and retooling time has been reduced to 80 and 40 days respectively.

We are going to start off with a few new features not discussed in the Soviet Union AAR. The first screenshot of the AAR is of a new heavy submarine flotilla. The heavy submarine flotilla was created to allow for longer ranging submarines earlier in the game.



In the next screenshot you will see that light aircraft carriers have been given their own aircraft brigades.



Next we have a screenshot of the new tech teams the community has added for the United Kingdom. Also shown are the new secret weapons techs.



Continued in the next post because of high number of screenshots.

[great_chairman]

About the rocket interceptors, can we now go Advanced INT ---> Turbojet INT without having to research Rocket INT which were historically a dead end?

[Zer00]

Looking forward to this AAR and seeing more AoD features. It's all very exciting. Though I'm not too sure how I feel about heavy subs and their 5000km range.

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Since the United Kingdom starts with a large peacetime IC penalty it is very difficult to do much early in the game. I changed a few of my ministers and was forced to cut down on my research spending. Technology research now moves fast enough that I was able to keep up on my research with only 8 tech slots at the beginning of the game while only funding my research at 75% of capacity. This is a big change from the last AAR where I struggled to keep up on technology.

The United Kingdom starts out with 158 base IC which is enough for 8 tech slots. I was able to get nine tech teams by building some infrastructure in my high IC cities.



Since trading resources uses convoys in Arsenal of Democracy, I ran out of convoys rather quickly. I was forced to prioritize convoy building from the start of the game. Also in Arsenal of Democracy there is a new feature that allows you to convert transports to convoys just like you can convert destroyers to escorts. This should only be done in emergencies though because transports cost more than convoys.





The United Kingdom unit setup for Arsenal of Democracy has also changed. The Somaliland Camel Corps is one of the new divisions added to the colonies.





continued

[x260bm]

About the rocket interceptors, can we now go Advanced INT ---> Turbojet INT without having to research Rocket INT which were historically a dead end?

Not sure, but we will probably find out this weekend.

[Raaritsgozilla]

Yikes it looks a little harder to play the UK now. Looking forward to it though!

[x260bm]

Since the United Kingdom itself has an abundance of energy and little else, I have decided to use two new features that turn energy into oil and oil into rare materials. As discussed in the previous AAR conversions are no longer free and you can convert as much raw materials as you want with the appropriate buildings. Having synthetic oil and material plants will shield me somewhat if the Battle of the Atlantic goes poorly.





Another new feature of Arsenal of Democracy is the ability to deploy units directly overseas if you have enough IC in the area. The United Kingdom is now able to deploy units directly to India. This is much more convenient than continually having to rebase transports to move troops to India.



Also, brigades are no longer stuck in the area the unit they were attached too was stationed. This way it is no longer necessary to rebase a ship to England if you want to change the brigades on it.



This concludes the first part of the AAR. Check back tomorrow for the next set of updates.

[Jarno]

Looks Good.

[EnglandWarrior]

Very nice

[trekaddict]

You, good Sir, have fixed two of my three main complaints about the UK in HOI2. Also, can one at last now get Manpower from India whilst at war?

[PSJK]

Looking good, altough Japan seems to advance pretty rapidly on China.

[Karaiskandar]

A lof of nice new features here.
Very informative AAR, eagerly waiting for the next parts!

[ALordaB]

"Converting this unit to transports will give you 10 transports"
Shouldn´t that be convoys instead of transports even if it´s just to avoid confusions?

[Vlasta]

Heavy submarines have Shore Bombardment value 2? They must be carrying some highly-piercing torpedoes.

[EnglandWarrior]

Heavy submarines have Shore Bombardment value 2? They must be carrying some highly-piercing torpedoes.

A lot of the submarines of that era carried deck mounted weapons still.

[Blecky]

A lot of the submarines of that era carried deck mounted weapons still.

True, but early DD´s surely have more guns than those subs and have a shorebombardment value of zero (unless this has been changed in AoD). I just wonder why the planes attached to a CVL won´t be able to attack enemy ships?

But anyway, I´m still convinced AoD will be a major improvement compared to ARMA. And of course I´m curious how UK will do in the next part of this informative AAR .

[Bummy]

Nice AARs, thanks
And faster updates, great!

Does that deploy to overseas territory mean only deploy after unit is built or are you able to redeploy them from Britain -> India?

[makif130289]

I hope that Japan's performance in China is just for this particular game, not usual game result we will see..

[LeeDub]

+1 on Japan. Hopefully this is a freak occurence.

[General Guisan]

I hope that Japan's performance in China is just for this particular game, not usual game result we will see..

In the other AAR there was a screenshot with Japan being stuck in China pretty much historical (with Guangzhou free, the coast being hold partly by Nat. China) so I hope this will be rather a special outcome here. Maybe Chiang Kai-Shek had an accident and other warloards started an internal struggle again etc., there are tons of different ways history could take. (In ingame that means: A Xi'An accident event firing another way for example)