Any way to get the AI to control the military?

[mahler5]

Considering the insane amount of micromanaging this game involves, I find myself enjoying the economic, diplomatic, and technological aspects much more than the actual combat parts of the game. Is there any way to hand off the actual military operations to the AI, so I can direct things more from behind the scenes? Please don't say "just play HOI3." I like DH better, so I'd rather find a way in this game, even if it is difficult to do so.

 

[Limith]

If you have allies, figure out who is the 'front leader', and give all your forces as expeditionary troops to the ally. A front leader is the AI country that is in charge of all offensive operations on a front. Only 1 AI country can do so in an alliance. It is usually the largest AI country. Human players cannot be front leader.

 

[Ilyasviel]

It would be amazing if we could do that. Even if just in a crude way, like by giving total control without being able to give them indirect orders in like hoi3.

Maybe you could try giving all your divisions to an allied country. I've wanted to try that for a while, but I never got around to it. Please report back if you do try it, I'm curious.

 

[mahler5]

It would be amazing if we could do that. Even if just in a crude way, like by giving total control without being able to give them indirect orders in like hoi3.

Maybe you could try giving all your divisions to an allied country. I've wanted to try that for a while, but I never got around to it. Please report back if you do try it, I'm curious.

You know, maybe I could give an expeditionary force to a puppet. Like how the Soviets get Mongolia, and the Germans get Slovakia. This may actually work.

 

[mahler5]

Okay, so I just tried a game as Germany, and released Slovakia as a puppet when I annexed the Czechs. I gave all my forces as an expeditionary force to the Slovaks, and they promptly stacked all of them in their four provinces. I'll see if I can figure something out.

 

[mahler5]

Since that didn't work, I was thinking, maybe I could switch over to Slovakia, and assume military control, and then switch back to Germany. However, Germany will refuse to give me control, even if I use the "acceptall" cheat. Does anyone know what I can change to override this refusal?

 

[Colt556]

If I am not mistaken, if you give troops to somebody as expeditionary forces they will use that country's doctrines and technologies, so you might be shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[spannbeton]

As far as i know you should send them to the Italians as Germany. But be sure to load as them first and change doctrine paths.

 

[Limith]

A front leader is the AI country that is in charge of all offensive operations on a front. Only 1 AI country can do so in an alliance. It is usually the largest AI country. Human players cannot be front leader.

Documentation on frontage behavior is in the Modding Documentation folder:

# DH 1.03 - Introduced 2 new AI front settings used to determine the front leader for fronts in areas controlled by multiple AI countries.
# Notes on front leader calculation:
# Only AI countries that have at least one province in the allied area and are not military controlled by another country can become front leaders.
# Only one country can be front leader in the allied area.
# A simple scoring system is used and the country with highest score is elected for front leader.
# Score = Number of controlled provinces in the current area() + 5 (for alliance leaders) + 5 (if GER, JAP, ITA, SOV, USA, ENG, FRA) + 7 (if any of the province borders enemy province) + (front_leader_home or front_leader_overseas)
# The above calculation is performed for the controller of each of the country areas (an allied area can contain one or more country areas or even more then one country areas for a country).
front_leader_home = X # Default is 5. Used when calculated for areas direct land connection through allied or own controlled provinces to the capital.
front_leader_overseas = X # Default is 0. Used when calculated for areas with no direct land connection through allied or own controlled provinces to the capital.

 

[mahler5]

Okay so I tried to write an event that would do this to give Slovakia military control over Germany. Could someone explain what's wrong here, as every time I load the savegame, it CTDs.

event = {
id = 99999998
random = no
country = { GER }
decision = {
ai= no

persistent = no
trigger = {
exists = GER
}

name = "Grant Military Control to AI"
desc = "No more micro-managing!"
style = 0
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1914 }
offset = [0]
deathdate = { day = 30 month = december year = 9999 }
action = {
name = "Yes"
ai_chance = 0
command = type = { military_control which = SLO where = GER value = 1 }
}

I feel I should mention I have zero modding or coding experience.

 

[nhinhonhinho]

Well you can do it but only if you're playing the minor nations. Say if you play as Romania, Hungary...then you give them expeditionary force and the German will do the rest. That way you still can be able to control the other units

I personally like to play as these minor nations since managing the entire front is too much for me!

For the Croatia I think you should give your troops's control to the Romanian instead, they're the biggest AI in the East generally. The smaller AI will only trying to defense its own territories

'

If I am not mistaken, if you give troops to somebody as expeditionary forces they will use that country's doctrines and technologies, so you might be shooting yourself in the foot. '

I don't think so. I did it before in both way, I was Hungary or Romania, I gave my troops for Germany as expeditionary troops and my troops still perform as poor as they're (can see clearly through the org, if they're using German's doctrine then they should be much higher) and their stat should be better.

Oh and since we have this threat I want to ask this.

In vanilla HOI2 both the receiver and the owner of the expeditionary force can't interfere with those formations (i.e they can't split the expeditionary force to smaller units). However in DH it's possible which is very annoying, say I have a corp of 12 infantry with Art and Eng, together they're a big corp and worthy, when I give them as expeditionary force the AI split them out which is very silly!

So how can I disable the ability to split expeditionary troops?

 

[Taylor]

I fixed up your decision:

event = {
	id = 3333444
	country = GER

	decision = { 
		ai = no
	}
	decision_trigger = {
		exists = GER
	}
	trigger = { 
		exists = GER
	}
   
	name = "Grant Military Control to AI"
	desc = "No more micro-managing!" 

	date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1914 }
	offset = 1
	deathdate = { year = 1964 month = january day = 0 }

	action = {
		ai_chance = 0
		name = "Yes!"
		command = { type = military_control which = SLO where = GER value = 1 }
	}
	action = {
		ai_chance = 100
		name = "Rather not."
		command = {  }
	}
}

And it seems to work. That is, the diplomacy screen tells me I'm granting military control to Slovakia. However, German troops just stand around doing nothing, and I'm still able to order them around as I wish. So something is still not working.

 

[mahler5]

Just curious, where are you putting that event? I'm putting it directly in the German events file, and I'm still getting nothing.

 

[Taylor]

Just curious, where are you putting that event? I'm putting it directly in the German events file, and I'm still getting nothing.

I put it in the file Mods\Darkest Hour Full\db\events\Mods.txt.

But putting it in the German events file should work too, afaik; so I'm surprised it doesn't work for you. In order to exactly copy what I did, put it in the above-mentioned file, run darkest hour full and start the 1940 scenario. When I did that, the decision was there and gave Slovakia military control over me, nominally at least.

 

[mahler5]

I put it in the file Mods\Darkest Hour Full\db\events\Mods.txt.

But putting it in the German events file should work too, afaik; so I'm surprised it doesn't work for you. In order to exactly copy what I did, put it in the above-mentioned file, run darkest hour full and start the 1940 scenario. When I did that, the decision was there and gave Slovakia military control over me, nominally at least.

There we go, that got it to "work." At least we're making progress.

 

[Limith]

I've posted on this TWICE now, seriously you guys don't read my post or something.

In an alliance, the AI who is the FRONT LEADER is the ONLY one who will attack militarily.
You must transfer units via MILITARY EXPEDITION to the FRONT LEADER, NOT Military Control.
The formula for determining front leader is posted above/in modding documentation. Usually it is the largest AI country in an alliance.

So in short what you are doing wrong:
-Picking slovakia which is tiny and 99% of the time NOT going to be the front leader
-Using military control instead of military expedition

Even if you did do this, you would have to write an AI file for the country you give it to so it uses your troops wisely in war, or write an event to have it switch to using the GER AI file (even that would be sub-optimal as the production AI would be messed up). Lastly, if you give all of your units over during peacetime, your borders will be undefended as AI does NOT defend allies borders in peacetime properly. So make sure to keep at least a few in reserve to guard your borders.

DH was not designed for the AI to play for you. It was designed to be as easy and painless as possible for you to have direct control over your troops. If you really only care about diplomacy and production (which is very shallow in any HoI game compared to combat) and you don't want to do the above hard work, play HoI3.

 

[nhinhonhinho]

So the Front leader is the Italian if I'm playing as Germany right?

 

[mahler5]

I've posted on this TWICE now, seriously you guys don't read my post or something.

Sorry, I got a bit tunnel visioned. I know DH isn't designed to have the AI play for me, I was just thinking maybe there was a way. There's something about the aesthetics of DH that I really liked, particularly the flavor of the new nations you could form (the various Reichskommisariats and Communist puppet states for example). I can't really give a logical explanation. But I'll look into HOI3 and see if it will scratch that particular itch.

 

[versasm2]

Sorry, I got a bit tunnel visioned. I know DH isn't designed to have the AI play for me, I was just thinking maybe there was a way. There's something about the aesthetics of DH that I really liked, particularly the flavor of the new nations you could form (the various Reichskommisariats and Communist puppet states for example). I can't really give a logical explanation. But I'll look into HOI3 and see if it will scratch that particular itch.

The AI in HoI 3 sucks when it comes to running your military (and at pretty much everything else as well, just sayin`...)