what is your first impression about DH?

[superflo]

-hate the new decisions things: this isnt EU3 or based on EU3 engine, it looks like you guys wanted to deliver feature that most of Paradox people got used to from latest games. Those decisions are imo too confusing (takes a while to figure out you can actually see the conditions, and even then i suppose many people will still find them confusing).

Don't agree, I love the decision system. Agree with your other points though, especially mobilization and combat system.

Does anyone agree with me that intelligence needs to be balanced? Despite my current counter espionage level at 85%, every few months a successfull spy mission against me makes my dissent rise or delays my production, even from small countries like Czechoslovakia.

 

[MartinBG]

Does anyone agree with me that intelligence needs to be balanced? Despite my current counter espionage level at 85%, every few months a successfull spy mission against me makes my dissent rise or delays my production, even from small countries like Czechoslovakia.

Please report your findings in the tech support forum. IIRC there is a report about intelligence mission success chances there already, but we'll need more reports in order to tweak those chances properly.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Biggest issue i found with dissent was when i lost my entire fleet as Germany (4 shbbs and 2 bbs + 20 smaller ships), im not 100% sure, but i think it caused my dissent to jump to like 9 If it wasnt ships, then it was prolly spies or whatever.

 

[Bodhisattvas]

Just wanted to say that I'm realy amazed by the speed of the game. Well, I haven't played beyond 1940 so far (want to wait for the patch...so patch plese ), but I played one game until 1918. I have a ~4 years old laptop. HoI2 was very slow in later years and mods like TRP nearly unplayable for me. The game loads in less then 5 seconds, I'm able to play 4 years in no-time.

Incredible work, hope this speed stays in WW2.

 

[jju_57]

I was also under the impression it would be a WWI to Cold War game, which truly disappointed me. Guess I have to wait for a mod to fix this in a few months (it will happen).

I'm trying to decide if I should buy or not. This comment threw me. So what happens if you pick a starting date just before WW1? Does it end on some other date? Can you play a country from 1910(?) till say 1955 or later?

 

[walrus]

I'm trying to decide if I should buy or not. This comment threw me. So what happens if you pick a starting date just before WW1? Does it end on some other date? Can you play a country from 1910(?) till say 1955 or later?

There are only two scenarios in DH Full - 1914 and 1936. 1914 ends by default in 1920 I believe, but can go to 1942 by selecting an option in the menu before starting the game, or editing a value in a text file to theoretically end on any date. The 1936 scenario events won't trigger in this case, however.

But the desire for one long scenario, and especially interbellum events will probably mean there will be a mod out there for it soon enough, as well as more official scenarios coming in later patches.

 

[Fernando Torres]

Iron Cross works as an expansion for Darkest Hour.
So technically you can play IC on top of DH (with IC map).

 

[unmerged(199617)]

I know that but whats the point of buying DH then? Im not trying to complain so much and I hope you guys are taking this the wrong way. I really appreciate all the effort and time the dh team has put it but I truly dont like the game and Im not happy with it. I have played and purchased every hoi game ever made as well as just about every mod around and this is just not very good.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Its interesting how you dislike DH but praise Iron Cross, and some people prefer AOD instead. For me, its quite opposite: I didnt like AOD because it tried to deliver too much, it kinda did, there were many new features irrc, but overall it was not a well balanced game: sure you could do new stuff with your armies, but on the other hand AI was not able to use them; sure you had new production options, but again it felt just like another bonus for human, only giving you additional advantage, AI was never capable of competing with this. And on top of all that, there was a major game slow down which was the biggest reason i only played in on my brother's PC and never purchased it myself. It basically felt almost like HoI3, it had potential, but essentially it was too slow (i admit not as bad as HoI3). IC on the other hand (praised by a lot of people) i never really liked: it was too drastic change over HoI2, i never liked tech tree without historic years, and again i wasnt impressed by how AI was handling all that.

Now, DH is way better, IMHO than both: as a vanilla game, sure it might be a little rough: i certainly dont like the new combat system (not sure why they didnt just go along with vanilla system but whatever), im not impressed with decisions, and i really miss events, BUT, those changes in vanilla DH are not DESIGN changes, they are simply a different approach - one that i personally dont like, but im sure there will be people who will. What it makes it really shine, is that game is basically developed and packed so that its moding heaven. First of all we have that nice mod system (thats new?); it has a lot of documentation explaining how to mod stuff; its misc file contains so far the most exported modifiers, only by changing 5 of those you can basically make entire new game... When i think about it, the speed upgrade over all previous version of HoI2 and all indy incarnations, alone is worth 10$. Misc file with all exported stuff is worth 10$. Wait a month, i guarantee there will be over 20 mods, this is priceless as it will give hundreds and hundreds of hours of game play. Most of the things that you stated as bad, can easily be replaced - as i am doing right now - getting rid of mobilization and some other stuff, and porting old style events etc.

 

[unmerged(199617)]

ya Iron Cross is really just a production version of MOD33 its made by the same team and is just a little shinier. I really like mod 33 so thats prolly why. the speed upgrade is nice but im on a pretty decent pc so i never really had any problems with speed anyway. thanks for doing what you are though and i look forward to the changes

 

[guczy]

ya Iron Cross is really just a production version of MOD33 its made by the same team and is just a little shinier. I really like mod 33 so thats prolly why. the speed upgrade is nice but im on a pretty decent pc so i never really had any problems with speed anyway. thanks for doing what you are though and i look forward to the changes

Mod34, not Mod33

 

[superflo]

I don't see the reason why I should pay 500 money to keep Blomberg in the office, that's just stupid. I will remove this line from the event files.

 

[azedalis]

Its interesting how you dislike DH but praise Iron Cross, and some people prefer AOD instead. For me, its quite opposite: I didnt like AOD because it tried to deliver too much, it kinda did, there were many new features irrc, but overall it was not a well balanced game: sure you could do new stuff with your armies, but on the other hand AI was not able to use them; sure you had new production options, but again it felt just like another bonus for human, only giving you additional advantage, AI was never capable of competing with this. And on top of all that, there was a major game slow down which was the biggest reason i only played in on my brother's PC and never purchased it myself. It basically felt almost like HoI3, it had potential, but essentially it was too slow (i admit not as bad as HoI3). IC on the other hand (praised by a lot of people) i never really liked: it was too drastic change over HoI2, i never liked tech tree without historic years, and again i wasnt impressed by how AI was handling all that.

Now, DH is way better, IMHO than both: as a vanilla game, sure it might be a little rough: i certainly dont like the new combat system (not sure why they didnt just go along with vanilla system but whatever), im not impressed with decisions, and i really miss events, BUT, those changes in vanilla DH are not DESIGN changes, they are simply a different approach - one that i personally dont like, but im sure there will be people who will. What it makes it really shine, is that game is basically developed and packed so that its moding heaven. First of all we have that nice mod system (thats new?); it has a lot of documentation explaining how to mod stuff; its misc file contains so far the most exported modifiers, only by changing 5 of those you can basically make entire new game... When i think about it, the speed upgrade over all previous version of HoI2 and all indy incarnations, alone is worth 10$. Misc file with all exported stuff is worth 10$. Wait a month, i guarantee there will be over 20 mods, this is priceless as it will give hundreds and hundreds of hours of game play. Most of the things that you stated as bad, can easily be replaced - as i am doing right now - getting rid of mobilization and some other stuff, and porting old style events etc.

I agree whole heartedly about this. I like some of the ideas of Iron Cross and some of AoD. My idea is this and I know it will not come into being. Is to continue to evolve DH where it can do what it does now, but can support features that most people want from AoD if not all. As you say, it was designed by the fans for the fans. The more options and modible feature you can add to DH the better. Let the Modders decide what features they want to use. Every moddible feature of DH doesn not need to be incorperated in the DH scenerios. I know you planned features and the needs of you scenerios will come first. For me the DH scenerios and the changes to the production times are not to my liking. Its too hard to predict loses of capital ships 4-5 years in advanced and this will just encourage multiple saving of the game so if something goes terribly wrong you don't lose everything. Sometimes luck is not with you and you lose a battle that you should have easily won. And the results is something so very out of place it is not recoverable...like what if USA lost all its carriers at midway and Japan lost none? Could have happened and that would end it basically for USA...or atleast prolong the war for several years.
I am not asking DH to infringe on AODs code. I know they will not copy it directly, but simular ideas can be designed to perform the same basic functions and I know that DH would make the code the functions of the code be moddible like they have done for most of the code in DH. People have asked for code like more stats on overall deaths and units lost. One Mod I would love to see come to DH is C.O.R.E. But for now they are developing for AoD and unless there is a reason for them to switch, like a more moddible base game that has all the features they want then I assume they will not switch.
As for now I plan to play and wait for Mods like TRP and such and see what they do with this wonderful base game. I do like alot of the ideas for the game and the new map looks good. but a few things turns me off like the extended tech tree that is quite boring. With so much techs availiable it would be great to see the mods just have a tech tree designed for each scenerio instead of 1 big one with little imagination. It also take awhile to get use to the tech tree and units since the base numbers are different since unit models start at 1914 or whatever. They night have made units perfectly porpotunately as the previous games, but I am not sure when you factor in modifiers and such. But I need to play it more to figure it out.

 

[vitality]

I am not asking DH to infringe on AODs code.

Do you work for Microsoft?

Seriously though, there is no reason for the 2 teams not to cooperate on these things. They work for the same publisher, on the same engine, essentially on two versions of the same game. Why in gods name would they not share code with eachother?

 

[DanubianCossak]

So that they would make you love 25% of 4 different games, all of which you have to pay 10$ or more, instead of buying one with all Capitalism my friend

 

[walrus]

Do you work for Microsoft?

Seriously though, there is no reason for the 2 teams not to cooperate on these things. They work for the same publisher, on the same engine, essentially on two versions of the same game. Why in gods name would they not share code with eachother?

In real life, when dealing with creative types (as the people behind both AoD and DH certainly are), you will find that co-operation is much easier said than done
Clearly either there was no will to co-operate, or the things we like about AoD were left out of DH as design decisions, albeit maybe illadvised ones....

And there was close co-operation (or so we're told) between DH and IC, in order to make sure Iron Cross would work from Day 1 of the DH release. Paradox probably should really have cracked some heads though and got things done properly

 

[azedalis]

Do you work for Microsoft?

Seriously though, there is no reason for the 2 teams not to cooperate on these things. They work for the same publisher, on the same engine, essentially on two versions of the same game. Why in gods name would they not share code with eachother?

No, I don't work at all. I just know that code is copyrighted, and unless AoD's designers allows them to use the code they can't out right copy it, and it is not like DHs team will buy the code rights, so I see no real reason why the teams would co-operate with each other. It benefits neither actually, atleast finacially. I also miss things like a display of game speed setting when the game is not paused. I was hoping DH would be end all of a game base for HOI2 games. But AoD has a few things above what DH has or DH cant match as of 1.01. So Yes, I feel spoiled with having both and IC but feeling I like some of each design and the combo of what I want can't be modded into any HOI2 game base that is out right now.

I would even pay another $10 for a DH and AoD combined game base where differences are just selected by game switches. I want the best of all worlds.

 

[unmerged(63886)]

I really wish that I had the time & passion to take advantage of the modding advantages in DH. Just imagine how many good mods there have been since HOI2 was released 2005 and how good they've been with all the possibilites that are now introduced. But I'm really glad to see TRP, Kaiserreich and the Fallout mod for DH. I think they will be great, especially since I got such low-end computer that barely can handle TRP & Kaiserreich under Armageddon.

Great work,

Dan

 

[5Geldpakete]

@ topic

I have a good first impression of the game. Especially the map looks great.

I like the game, but there are some dubious things for me:

1. I have problems with the decisions. The requirements to get the events run aren't clear for a "normal" gamer.
2. Extreme long buildtimes. Just if the sliders are in perfect position, the soldiers all have a white long beard when ready for fighting.

 

[Searry]

The game is damn hard. We just lost 2 Central Power games with my friend only because of massive dissent hits all the time.