Observations of Darkest Hour

[TomorrowsHerald]

Hello all, I thought I'd include a thread were everyone might share their observation of Darkest Hour.

My titbit for today is the importance of specialization of research; no matter how much IC you have, at the end of the day to have an edge, general research will put you down while focused research will give you an advantage. Low IC countries will almost always have to basically up-end infantry, doctrine, and perhaps a few other relevant techs, while higher-tech countries will have to choose according to their needs. The Union of Britain needs to focus on naval research, a superior air force, and a measure of ground forces besides and that in turn requires narrow goals that are reachable such as carriers, STG’s and Fighters, and an a marine infantry army. Commune of France needs tanks, tactical bombers, motorized infantry, and that is just about it. The German Empire with Black Monday in mind can’t really do that much for much of the early game, but it still needs naval and land superiority at the very least.
Those are my thoughts at any rate, what are yours?

 

[Crispin]

Recently I saw an individual change to one of the mods I like to play, where he upped the research slot to potential 10 for majors. I thought it sounded absurd at first, but maybe in fact it's not such a bad idea when I think about it.

 

[Dinglehoff]

I'm playing through my first game of DH full now.
As I go, I observe the following:

The battle casualty reports don't make sense to me with the colors and who lost what, and who had what.

Combat has been changed to be slower generally, with the org levels comparitively very low and the out of supply penalty reworked. There are also more mass surrenders, which I haven't figured out the triggers for, besides just racing/chasing defeated units. Air support, or comically overmatched land forces are required to get good quick results. I'm fine with all this, but it might could do with some explaining.

More problematically, there are more unknown events and nothing really to inform you what the longer term decision options will be.
For example: I invaded UK and eventually england surrenders. The unclear choice is to get 10% dissent to continue, or create a regional puppet government (which I suspected would not be the official entire UK surrendering). If you pick the puppet government you don't get a negotiated peace with the real UK government, but what would trigger that or what the options would even be is unknown. There's also no information given to me for why I would want to take, or leave, the two provinces for German bases if it makes a meaningful difference.

None of the information I'm putting in this post is available on any online guides that I've seen, and the game event files don't really explain anything plainly.

 

[Eugenioso]

1.- The losses report can be changed by right clicking on it, or if i recall correctly on the timer.

2.- Combat is indeed slower; this is a working fix from HOI2DD/arma/IC/AoD, where all battles would be concluded in about an hour. Org is not as important as the land doctrine you choose, since manpower doctrines work on numbers and lower org, but faster morale (org recovery) while Blitzkrieg doctrines work with high org to punch through and exploit breaches. Many things trigger units surrendering, be more specific. Air support is expected, but not as powerful as before, as well as you saying that you need overwhelming forces for a quick breach, well, yes of course.

3.- All events are explained as well as their consequences if you hover over both options. Some of them are historical, some of them happen due to different things you did or didnt do. In the UK scenario you mention, pursuing the war and occupation would be the historically unfeasible response, since they were already beaten in their isles, and the UK faction wont pursue peace, so if they came to ask you for peace and you reject it it would cause a lot of resentment. Negotiated peaces dont work and have never truly worked agaist the AI, its more of a MP thing.

 

[mad_otter]

To complement Eugenioso's per usual great answer, you can change the losses report style by right-clicking on the date and it will be in the menu that will appear. The best IMO, is the one with green for your side's casualties and red for the enemy side.

 

[Altruist]

There are also more mass surrenders, which I haven't figured out the triggers for, besides just racing/chasing defeated units.

If units fall below a certain percentage of organisation, the probability for them to turn around and flee gets higher.

Once they abandon the battle and flee this might lead to 3 results:
1) They flee to a free/friendly neighbouring region. After arrival, they accept new orders.
2) They flee to a free/friendly neighbouring region but at the time they arrive, this region is already occupied by enemy forces.... then they simply disband/delete (a message shows up). If the region hasn't been occupied but a battle is still ongoing, the units join this battle (due to low org with a high chance to panic/flee soon again).
3) The battle they try to flee can't be fled because the region is completly encircled or they could flee only onto the sea (which works with friendly transports but not without), in those cases fleeing forces can't flee and are disbanded/deleted at once (again with a message showing unit yx destroyed).

This is all great to destroy enemy forces, either by encirclement (Wehrmacht strategy) or by sending fast units like MOT or Tanks not only into battle but also with orders to rightaway move on into possible retreat regions (via Shift-rightclick, if I remember correctly) which would be the prefered tactic of the late Red Army (eg. 1944 the more or less end of Heeresgruppe Mitte/Center).

In case you are on the receiving side, it is, of course, worthwhile to retreat before your untis flee. This way you can at least choose to which region to retreat and avoid desaster.

Lenghty but worthwhile discussion of real and game strats concerning this points:
breakthroughs and attrition: why does it happen?

 

[Dinglehoff]

1.- The losses report can be changed by right clicking on it, or if i recall correctly on the timer.

2.- Combat is indeed slower; this is a working fix from HOI2DD/arma/IC/AoD, where all battles would be concluded in about an hour. Org is not as important as the land doctrine you choose, since manpower doctrines work on numbers and lower org, but faster morale (org recovery) while Blitzkrieg doctrines work with high org to punch through and exploit breaches. Many things trigger units surrendering, be more specific. Air support is expected, but not as powerful as before, as well as you saying that you need overwhelming forces for a quick breach, well, yes of course.

3.- All events are explained as well as their consequences if you hover over both options. Some of them are historical, some of them happen due to different things you did or didnt do. In the UK scenario you mention, pursuing the war and occupation would be the historically unfeasible response, since they were already beaten in their isles, and the UK faction wont pursue peace, so if they came to ask you for peace and you reject it it would cause a lot of resentment. Negotiated peaces dont work and have never truly worked agaist the AI, its more of a MP thing.

Thanks for your response.

2. What I've been trying to do is force the enemy to retreat with infantry assault and air support decreasing their org, with tanks and mobile infantry ideally not taking part in the attack if possible but they'll attack if necessary. Once they enemy is running away I send the tanks and mobile infantry after them and into other provinces further in, and keep the air attacks on them. The reason is that once the first attack is over, those forces can't attack again right away. I haven't seen if they are all surrendering if I beat them to a province or if it was on the way, or identified ways to prevent this on defense yet.

3. I'm referring to the actual events which fire, not the negotiate option in the diplomatic menu. One of these events is the UK negotiating peace, which the game told me was impossible if I chose to make peace with the puppet "England" government instead. I chose the peace puppet government choice, so the UK government is still existing but they don't own the home islands anymore, and the event where they seek negotiated peace will not fire. The information about this event; such as why it triggers and what it allows, and why I might want it instead is unavailable... Unless I want to figure out how to interpret all this event file code.

If units fall below a certain percentage of organisation, the probability for them to turn around and flee gets higher.

Once they abandon the battle and flee this might lead to 3 results:
1) They flee to a free/friendly neighbouring region. After arrival, they accept new orders.
2) They flee to a free/friendly neighbouring region but at the time they arrive, this region is already occupied by enemy forces.... then they simply disband/delete (a message shows up). If the region hasn't been occupied but a battle is still ongoing, the units join this battle (due to low org with a high chance to panic/flee soon again).
3) The battle they try to flee can't be fled because the region is completly encircled or they could flee only onto the sea (which works with friendly transports but not without), in those cases fleeing forces can't flee and are disbanded/deleted at once (again with a message showing unit yx destroyed).

This is all great to destroy enemy forces, either by encirclement (Wehrmacht strategy) or by sending fast units like MOT or Tanks not only into battle but also with orders to rightaway move on into possible retreat regions (via Shift-rightclick, if I remember correctly) which would be the prefered tactic of the late Red Army (eg. 1944 the more or less end of Heeresgruppe Mitte/Center).

In case you are on the receiving side, it is, of course, worthwhile to retreat before your untis flee. This way you can at least choose to which region to retreat and avoid desaster.

Lenghty but worthwhile discussion of real and game strats concerning this points:
breakthroughs and attrition: why does it happen?

Thank you for your response.

This does clarify what's happening some. Under the DH rules; it seems encirclements are not the best strategy anymore, because they can regain org while encircled and get a defense bonus in combat. So far, the best success I've got has been from routing the units and overrunning them in pursuit. I haven't fought the USSR yet, which outnumbers my forces substantially, so things might go horribly wrong if they start winning battles.

The manpower and production are significantly different from Vanilla HoI2 also, so mass surrenders of my army would be very crippling. It will take a long time to rebuild units, and coming off partial mobilization for more manpower hurts IC a lot.

 

[Eugenioso]

In no particular order:

- Surrounded units no longer lose org, true, but they do suffer titanic combat penalties for fighting out of supply. Encirclement is still better than grinding destruction.

- If you order an attack against a specific location, your units will have a period of 'down time' where they cannot be ordered to attack directly, but they can be instead ordered to 'move' to a province behind the enemy's so they wont have the down time period. That's why its better to push in a specific order of battle by holding SHIFT + Right clicking the province you want to move to.

- Hover over the event and it will tell you the possible options, results and what events will enable or disable others.

- Build time has been significantly extended in DH so that armies have more weight to them; in HOI2DDARMAICAoD, armies could be built up in a matter of months without too much hassle (the worst offender was the SU which, with the right doctrine research and industrial research as well as gearing bonus, could pump out an infantry division in about 3 weeks, and even less for militia divs, thankfully removed). This forces you to plan ahead in the long term rather than short term. Do i want to get 3 new panzer divs? Better to make a long line of them at least with 3 or 4 months of anticipation.

- Mobilization is also there for balance purposes, to avoid countries simply building up all their manpower into armies in a few years. Again back in hoi2 days, Germany would run out their MP by '40 mid war with France. Mobilization balances this out by preventing players and the AI from simply enforcing a war economy from the get go, and forces you to factor in risk vs reward. Less available IC, but more MP/MP growth and faster production, less CG needs but more dissent. More resources but... bad example, it does give you more resources. The step right before partial mob is in my opinion the best, and i always dread having to go partial mob because of a lack of manpower. If you go as far as total mobilization you better pray you get some kind of total victory.

 

[Dinglehoff]

- Hover over the event and it will tell you the possible options, results and what events will enable or disable others.

I know. The problem is that there's nothing telling me what the future events being enabled or disabled do, when they activate, or why I'd want them.

In no particular order:

- Surrounded units no longer lose org, true, but they do suffer titanic combat penalties for fighting out of supply. Encirclement is still better than grinding destruction.

- If you order an attack against a specific location, your units will have a period of 'down time' where they cannot be ordered to attack directly, but they can be instead ordered to 'move' to a province behind the enemy's so they wont have the down time period. That's why its better to push in a specific order of battle by holding SHIFT + Right clicking the province you want to move to.


- Build time has been significantly extended in DH so that armies have more weight to them; in HOI2DDARMAICAoD, armies could be built up in a matter of months without too much hassle (the worst offender was the SU which, with the right doctrine research and industrial research as well as gearing bonus, could pump out an infantry division in about 3 weeks, and even less for militia divs, thankfully removed). This forces you to plan ahead in the long term rather than short term. Do i want to get 3 new panzer divs? Better to make a long line of them at least with 3 or 4 months of anticipation.

- Mobilization is also there for balance purposes, to avoid countries simply building up all their manpower into armies in a few years. Again back in hoi2 days, Germany would run out their MP by '40 mid war with France. Mobilization balances this out by preventing players and the AI from simply enforcing a war economy from the get go, and forces you to factor in risk vs reward. Less available IC, but more MP/MP growth and faster production, less CG needs but more dissent. More resources but... bad example, it does give you more resources. The step right before partial mob is in my opinion the best, and i always dread having to go partial mob because of a lack of manpower. If you go as far as total mobilization you better pray you get some kind of total victory.

Surrounded units also get a defense bonus if there's nowhere to retreat to. The biggest change from the org not decreasing is the need for strong attacks to force surrender sooner, since their org won't waste away.

I'll try the Shift Right click and see how it improves what I'm doing.

I can see the gearing bonuses being much more important now. I now have to figure out if I want these extremely long tank and infantry runs which I have to upgrade later,, or if I want to lose the bonus to build a newer model from the start. For now; I decided to get 41 medium tanks and produce them in long lines until 1945, and I'll see how upgrading them once they are deployed works.

I'm trying to get by with only partial mobilization because I don't like the IC hit. I noticed that France and UK have these huge manpower reserves from higher mobilization, but they weren't able to use them making new units fast enough or replace losses in existing units because they were destroyed.

Minor critiques aside, I'm very happy with the game.

 

[Altruist]

Surrounded units also get a defense bonus if there's nowhere to retreat to.

If I recall correctly: That's not the case in vanilla DH but in the very good mod World in Flames (WiF) and perhaps in other mods I don't know.

In WiF, due to the defense bonus of surrounded units, sometimes it is worthwhile to leave one region free or rather to time the capture of the last surround region in a way that it happens only (shortly) after your main battle against the almost surrounded units... which then will retreat to that region but, since you reach it before, get destroyed upon arrival.

A good alternative is trying to master the concept of "Deep Space Operations" which was developed by the Red Army in the 30ies (and lost again shortly afterwards due to purges and the vast expansion of the Red Army). At that time the Red Army was probably the only other army in the world, besides the Wehrmacht, with a true modern mobile war doctrine. I've tried, as best as I could (the result is actually quite unsatisfying nevertheless) to explain a bit about it in this and the following post:
distinction between "Deep Operation tactics" and "Blitzkrieg"

 

[Dinglehoff]

If I recall correctly: That's not the case in vanilla DH but in the very good mod World in Flames (WiF) and perhaps in other mods I don't know.

In WiF, due to the defense bonus of surrounded units, sometimes it is worthwhile to leave one region free or rather to time the capture of the last surround region in a way that it happens only (shortly) after your main battle against the almost surrounded units... which then will retreat to that region but, since you reach it before, get destroyed upon arrival.

A good alternative is trying to master the concept of "Deep Space Operations" which was developed by the Red Army in the 30ies (and lost again shortly afterwards due to purges and the vast expansion of the Red Army). At that time the Red Army was probably the only other army in the world, besides the Whermacht, with a true modern mobile war doctrine. I've tried, as best as I could (the result is actually quite unsatisfying nevertheless) to explain a bit about it in this and the following post:
distinction between "Deep Operation tactics" and "Blitzkrieg"

They are getting +25% defense, I think, for having nowhere to retreat to.

Deep operations and Blitzkrieg look pretty much the same to me.

 

[Altruist]

Deep operations and Blitzkrieg look pretty much the same to me.

Interesting.
Could you name 3 things which are the "same"?

 

[Eugenioso]

I know. The problem is that there's nothing telling me what the future events being enabled or disabled do, when they activate, or why I'd want them.

Yes it does, actually. Hover over the choices and it will tell you clearly "future event will never trigger".

 

[Dinglehoff]

Yes it does, actually. Hover over the choices and it will tell you clearly "future event will never trigger".

No it doesn't. Future event isn't explained. I would have liked a detailed explanation of what the future event is and does. Maybe not in the popup hover, but somewhere besides me replaying the game and triggering the event in a different playthrough.

Interesting.
Could you name 3 things which are the "same"?

Force the breakthrough
Push into the rear
Surround and destroy

 

[Altruist]

Could you name 3 things which are the "same"? [for Wehrmacht "Blitzkrieg" and Red Army "Deep Operations"]

Force the breakthrough
Push into the rear
Surround and destroy

Well, perhaps the similarities are not as untrue as I initially thought. After all both armies saw as their main war doctrine the mobile war.

The biggest difference, nevertheless: In the Wehrmacht ONLY the armored spearheads were mobile. For more there weren't enough resources (and time). The majority of the army was on... foot. This is the reason for the "Kesselschlachten" which needed to be done by the not mobile infantry.
In terms of DH we all know what kind of strategic picture this leads to after a while: At first your offense if going rapidly forward but after a while the army gets horribly stretched out, coherence becomes lacking. Temptation gets higher to use your far ahead operating mobile units in risky manoeuvres while quite a good part of your infantry is still busy fighting far away in the rear and seems to take forever to reach the ahead fronts where they are urgently needed.

"Deep Operations" rely much less on encirclement and "Kesselschlachten" but rather make their breakthroughs and pushs into the enemies' rear to then overrun the retreating enemy on the whole part of this front in a way that he couldn't muster time and organisation to get up a real defense or front again.
The only answere the Wehrmacht had to this was to introduce a kind of defensive kamikaze-tactics: To avoid getting completly overrun, to buy the time to regain organisation and footage, they left behind so called strongpoints. In theory and often enough in practice those had to fight to the death, no evacuation and retreat was possible... nor intended or planned.

In a way, the armored spearhead doctrine was the best of a mobile war doctrine an army could achieve which was severly lacking in lorries, tanks and oil.
And an airforce completly integrated into combined arms warfare the best what could be done to fill all the gaps due to lacking material in other places.

The Blitzkrieg/armored spearheads/integrated arms doctrines, seen in this way, are the "poor man's" version of the Deep Operations strategy... and even quite successful... in the first 6 month.

The Red Army buildup, doctrines and equipment, though, was aimed to be a fully mobile motorized army... an aim which wasn't successfully reached at the beginning of the war: Instead it was caught in vast structural changes, purges, lack of experience, training, non-functioning logistics...

Perhaps, the biggest surprise of all, that an army, the Red Army, after or rather during experiencing the worst defeats and losses an army probably ever had in all time, was nevertheless able to rebuild, reorganise, restructure, relearn, rearm and re-recruit to become that envisioned fully motorized army at some time around 1943/44.

 

[Dinglehoff]

It seems like the numerical and material superiority of the Allies is what produced the meaningful differences in these doctrines results. Less overwhelming force would have produced pockets of resistance to be encircled and eliminated.

 

[InfArmMot]

Recently I saw an individual change to one of the mods I like to play, where he upped the research slot to potential 10 for majors. I thought it sounded absurd at first, but maybe in fact it's not such a bad idea when I think about it.

Which mod?

 

[Crispin]

All in one mod.

 

[Dinglehoff]

Finland refuses to join the war, apparently because Germany isn't being run by an AI. When I took a peek at the Soviets to see how far off my intelligence estimates really are, Finland joined immediately. I don't like how that was implimented.

 

[Dinglehoff]

With the Soviets defeated, I'm given the option to create successor state puppets in the east.
I chose that and these bizarre little states are created, and I see that they have claims on more occupied territory that would make sense for them to have.

Do they not get that territory normally or are they supposed to get it and I screwed it up, by claiming all the east diplomatically myself before the peace?
The reason I claimed them manually is that in DH light Hungary would get all of it instead.

Is there a way to correct this besides reverting to a much earlier save to replay the event, or by doing annoying diplomatic deals with these puppets over months?