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Very interesting. I just wish I understood French.
Introducing Darkest Hour
By fans, for fans,
The new casual game Real Time Strategic Darkest Hour, proposing:
- Long and short campaigns that allow you to replay the darkest hours of the twentieth century, the
Great War to the beginnings of the Cold War.
- A world map drawn entirely Offir for the most strategic opportunities and possible tactics.
- A dynamic diplomatic system that allows players to have a real impact on the course of events.
- An innovative artificial intelligence that adapts reactive to hundreds of different situations.
- A very large moddabilité through text files ... and much more!
Released in early 2011.
Verdun and Stalingrad
Scheduled for next March, Darkest Hour is a casual game developed by independent strategic from the engine Paradox Interactive's Europa (which have been built including the successful games Hearts of Iron, Victoria or Europa Universalis which inspired Darkest Hour ). The player, who plays a head of state trying to resolve the strategic dilemmas faced by his country during two world wars.
Darkest Hour is part of the very exclusive clan of those games that combine diplomatic management of international relations and military management tactics, the unit being used to serve a strategic vision is essentially to survive and win in a total conflict. The game invites us to take part in diplomatic frames, the economic turmoil but also to military maneuvers in action during two world wars as head of the country of his choice. That no enthusiast invitation strategy and history can not refuse!
A geographical atlas
As with any wargame, the development of Darkest Hour has attached great importance to the achievement of the game map hand drawn by a team of geographers and a cosmopolitan military historians, it was introduced in the game on a model in two dimensions. Map of Darkest Hour is thus divided into several thousands of boxes called provinces bearing the name of a great city that comprise the province. Some provinces, including islands such as Malta, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, or are represented using a zoom lens that is reminiscent of the atlas of geography and allowing a rather fine management tactics for fighting great strategic game.
The presence of coastal sea areas allows it to guard against the surprise of a landing in ordering his fleet to patrol and report any enemy presence. Territories are also attached the membership values that will determine specific including productivity and the presence of supporters. A province may indeed be regarded as a national territory controlled or claimed as a territory claimed but not national (including the colonies) or as occupied territory but neither national nor claimed. It will be for nations to claim territories dynamically to legitimize conquests to come. The AI will tend to give it to his allies and their claimed territories it controls. But take care not to increase too much distrust of your neighbors by claiming their territories because you could soon trigger a conflict ...
Conflict in which case your nation would have to mobilize! Darkest Hour offers indeed a unique system of management of national mobilizations that have marked the history of both world wars. It is therefore open to the player to change the laws of conscription if the political conditions are met (for example by extending the duration of military service of one to two years) or to call for military service all able-bodied men of a age class in war. This system avoids the formation of armed size unrealistic even before the outbreak of conflict since the passage of a peacetime economy to a war economy is actually felt in most countries.
Rewrite the history of two world wars
Darkest Hour also innovates by proposing two scenarios to play each of the two world wars. The unit models and trees and extend technological research of early twentieth century to the 1960s. The 'Great War began with the assassination of Crown Prince of Austria, Franz Ferdinand by Serbian Gravilo Prinzip. Austria-Hungary can then send an ultimatum to Serbia, which causes the breakdown of the Triple Alliance with Italy. Serbia can then accept all the conditions of the Austrian ultimatum or not accept a part, leading Austria-Hungary to declare war. It is then open for Russia to mobilize support for its ally Slavic, causing tensions with the German Kaiser. The generalization of the conflict becomes inevitable when Germany supported Austria-Hungary, which France supports Russia and the United Kingdom maintains Belgium (as long as Germany opts for the Schlieffen Plan ").
The conflict started in 1914 can be avoided in various stages of escalating diplomatic while future opportunities to enter the war will inevitably arise. The powerful and highly immersive system policy decisions Darkest Hour also enables the Central Powers and the Entente to request entry into the war powers hitherto neutral, such as Bulgaria, Japan, the Ottoman Empire ( it is also necessary that Germany agreed to sell its vessels and Breslau Goeben early in the conflict) or U.S. (depending on the policy of blockade the British and German reactions frames with Mexico). These new alliances will allow to hope for a turnaround in the balance of the conflict since the positions are figeront on the Western Front (which, although very common, is not inevitable).
The same diplomatic frames are at work in the War scenario including the management of Rethondes armistice in 1940, on American-Japanese or American aid to the Allies under the Lend-Lease Act . The database of Darkest Hour is impressive in this area and simulates a very open but still plausible that the various paths the player may borrow from the history of his party.
Darkest Hour indeed intends to give players a real impact on the course of historical events through its diplomatic decisions, domestic as well as economic. Various mechanisms are used to control certain aspects of the national economy but Darkest Hour make a game centered on economic management. This will open the player to decide to devalue its currency to make it more competitive, as issuing currency in case of budget deficit or to pursue a policy of creating great works of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs to absorb the unemployment. All the economic mechanisms of the game are embodied in an abstract notion of industrial capacity spread over the territory controlled by a State. Various raw materials are necessary for the functioning of the economy (energy, steel, strategic materials or oil) which can not however be stored indefinitely. Diplomacy and the course of these events are dynamic not only because the player can decide when certain decisions are taken that can change the course of history but also because the AI will not take these decisions at the same time but according to the parties according to parameters semi-random. Darkest Hour nevertheless avoids the pitfall of alternate history would become inconsistent because the sequence of events plausible and realistic enough. But the player also presides over the destinies of the nation which he plays the leader in directing his forces.
The movement is attack
The mechanics governing the clashes between ground units is based on the principle that "the movement is attack". In other words, when a unit occupying a given province is moving towards a province occupied by an enemy unit, initiated a fight between the two. This is solved according to the ranks of various parameters which can be considered the rank of the officer commanding the group of units (a two-star general can not effectively control such a large number of units) or qualifications. Various modifiers (also moddable) can still benefit the defending units, such as terrain, weather, the value of retrenchment or the morale behind. These mechanisms reflect the nature of ground combat of the two world wars since both the war of position that the war of movement or the offensive lightning are possible depending on the forces involved and the tactics adopted. It will, for example, the German Army in 1940 to support an offensive on a few key ally of the defense system (Schwerpunkt) by the use of tactical bombing and operated by moving bodies gaps thus created. The rapid advances, however, is the obvious gap that belong to the player scenario "Great War" to overcome since the tanks will make their appearance until about the years 1916-17 and that aviation can not play that a marginal tactical role.
Instead mired in the war of position, the player will suffer major losses which may in turn trigger mutinies in the army or strikes and uprisings in the rear. The victory in the scenario "Great War" is indeed a function of these particular phenomena of dissidence in the back who are born of military defeats and will create conditions for a revolution on the Russian model or at least bring a country to the negotiating table.
The artificial intelligence of Darkest Hour has finally been designed to adapt reactively during the events. Thus the Allies could undertake an invasion of Norway and key points in the control of the iron road to strangle the economy of Nazi Germany if it fails to secure its northern front, after the conquest of Poland. Generally speaking, every great power game has qualities that artificial intelligence is trying to exploit (reservations Human Soviet Union, surprise for Germany, for example) while it seeks to offset its weaknesses.
Having played several times with a beta version of Darkest Hour (also very stable), the Great War scenario is quite difficult to win for both camps. WWII scenario is more specific because it is often witnessed a breakthrough followed by a reflux of the Axis forces, but in any event provides an interesting challenge, whether to try to overcome China and its supporters, to reproduce the breakthrough at Sedan and encircle the Allied armies, the successful landing or even destroy the Soviet armies in a few weeks.
As a veteran of Paradox Interactive games that the amateur game of strategy and war games should be seduced by this title is both ambitious and original.
OH nice you differentiated the color of territories owned and occupied by the enemy in the diplo map filter! But it would be good to also differentiate the color of the player's owned and ocupied territories.
Yes they did. Enemy provinces are red like before, but provs you lost are now canada red. (hope you understand)
The pink red just means you have claimed a province, and it is now in enemy hands.