Games are Too Tedious to Finish

[RickMuir]

Basically, I hate world wars and endless combats. I hate the invariable comflict between superpowers, that drags everyone in. I don't want to play a world war game, I just like the engine. Basically, I want to play something like EU3 with WW1/WW2 technology. I have played hours of this game, especially HoI2 standard, but every time I either: find it impossible to do anything, being a small country unable to significantly affect the world powers or to do what I want without coming up against them or; 2. end up with so many units and options that I completely lose interest in actually pursuing the war.
Several times as the USA I've had Germany/Japan/England (depending on my enemy) utterly crushed on a naval level, but I'd rather drink antifreeze than actually give the ten thousand base/rebase-assault/reload commands required to take a bunch of islands, especially since I don't actually have any use for any of those islands except as some mysterious war requirement.
It's not the micromanagement perse, it's micromanagement in some insane conflict that I'm not interested in. Like I said, I basically want the engine but without the setting, even Kaiserreich devolves into world wars. I find small scale, opportunistic conquest a lot more interesting than trying to keep track of the 100+ aircraft carriers and 300 divisions of marines I have wandering all over the place.
Is there any mod that nixes the whole 'grand conflict' aspect of HoI? I just find it impossible to care who wins WW2 and hate these 9-front forever wars. I find it even more impossible to care b/c to make anything happen over large distances (ocean deployment, for example) you have to crank it up to max speed, and I'm not going to slow it down for every random combat between my hundreds of air and sea divisions, especially when most of these battles will be curbstomps where any losses I take are irrelevant. I have no incentive to be efficient b/c being efficient actually makes things take much longer IRL than just throwing meat and metal until the enemy folds.
Understand here, it's not that I don't understand the general nuances of terrain, weather, different unit types, it's just that it's more effort than it's worth to pay attention to them. Managing and keeping track of units is a total wrist-killer and time-sink without much reward. It'd be rewarding if you played smaller countries, but I refuse to be involved in a war where I have to depend on the AI to win (ie minor powers).

 

[tooichan]

While I can see where the lack of desire to keep track of units comes from, the point of Darkest Hour, and the HoI series in general, is grand strategy with focus on the wargame aspect in particular. Compared to HoI3 and, indeed, many WW2 wargames, Darkest Hour is already relatively simplistic without being laughably abstract. You've pointed out that you don't really like commanding hundreds of divisions in pursuing victory but... that's pretty much what sells the game. Darkest Hour especially is extremely lacking outside combat and what events it has. To put it honestly, Darkest Hour is BORING outside conflicts (and winning them utterly also, which is why no one really plays USA).

One of the few mods which significantly increase the punch of smaller nations is Kaiserreich, and mods which seriously decrease the scope of the game is, maybe the Yugoslav Wars mod and other combat scenarios included in vanilla and Kaisereich. If you don't fancy them, I'm pretty sure you won't enjoy Darkest Hour at all.

 

[Epaminondas]

I agree that once the game is won the gloss wears off the gingerbread when you have to keep pushing units around to get to the foregone conclusion. But I think tooi's right - it's the unit content that sells the game. DH isn't a grand strategy game or even a strategy game, it's an operational level game in a grand strategy package. There are plenty of genuine strategy and above games out there to try, Rick, and if you need specific recommendations they won't be hard to drum up.

 

[MacGowan]

There are minor powers that you could do minor conquests with. White Russia (if you make a save game around 1917 when Russia collapses), Had a fun game trying to take over the Soviets, and battle partisans.

Mexico 1914 is also a smaller nation with several small enemies it must battle (away from WWI)

But as the other blokes have said: If you don't like football, but baseball. Maybe you shouldn't play football. Go play baseball.

you need specific recommendations they won't be hard to drum up.

 

[Lucifer]

The scope of EU is over centuries. The player can play a minor country and turn it into a superpower over time. But DH's timeframe is 2 decades at the most, the player's expectations can't be the same.

 

[Gukpa]

The scope of EU is over centuries. The player can play a minor country and turn it into a superpower over time. But DH's timeframe is 2 decades at the most, the player's expectations can't be the same.

This

You just cannot take a country like Albania and turn into a empire in the 1930s, the international order had changed