What prompts gearing up for war to occur for the allies?

[vcgetdown]

Inn the last 10 games or so I've played the allies never had these events occur, leaving them all with large negative IC penalties. I played a game as USA, I'd have japan invading me when I'm still completely dove and isolationist because I never got any events firing to move me towards hawk/intervention. Once I'm at war I get a -20% wartime penalty as USA? During the entire lead up I had the full 80% peacetime penalty, so it appears to me that my gearing up for war events are not firing ever for the allies (pretty much every game, I've checked the UK, france, and USA, and never have I seen them with an industrial efficiency above 100% (usually UK has something like 130/140 once poland is invaded, when it should be somewhere around 160/140 once the war begins, right?)
How do I make sure these events fire? Is this a bug?

edit: I always assumed it was supposed to automatically fire after events like austria being annexed happened. I'm just curious if I'm doing something wrong causing these not to fire.

 

[General01]

They are meant to be triggered by events like Aunschluss, remilitarization of the Rhineland, etc. Humm...
The american one seems to increase your peacetime IC: From the vanilla full DH:


action = {
ai_chance = 95
name = 32a
command = { type = domestic which = defense_lobby value = 1 }
command = { type = domestic which = interventionism value = 1 }
command = { type = peacetime_ic_mod value = 10 }
command = { type = manpowerpool value = 100 }
}

So does France: This one's triggered by the re-militarization.

#########################################################################
# France gears up for war
#########################################################################
event = {
id = 2002001
random = no
country = FRA
persistent = yes

name = EVT_51_NAME
desc = EVT_51_DESC
style = 2
picture = "news_paper"

# Triggered by German events
trigger = {
NOT = {
war = { country = GER country = FRA }
}
}

action_a = {
name = "ACTION_NAME_OK"
command = { type = domestic which = defense_lobby value = 1 }
command = { type = peacetime_ic_mod value = 10 }
command = { type = manpowerpool value = 15 }
command = { trigger = { event = 2003011 ai = yes } type = ai which = "switch/low_construction_factor.ai" }
}

The US gets more from Destroyers for Bases as well,

event = {
id = 2049021
random = no
country = USA

name = EVT_30_NAME
desc = EVT_30_DESC
style = 2
picture = "news_paper"

action = {
ai_chance = 100
name = EVT_30_ACTA
command = { type = manpowerpool value = 5 } # manpower recovered
command = { type = escort_pool which = USA value = -50 }
command = { type = relation which = ENG value = 30 }
command = { type = dissent value = 6 }
command = { type = domestic which = defense_lobby value = 1 }
command = { type = domestic which = interventionism value = 1 }
command = { type = peacetime_ic_mod value = 10 }
command = { type = trigger which = 2001024 }
}
action = {
ai_chance = 0
name = EVT_30_ACTB
command = { type = relation which = ENG value = -40 }
command = { type = dissent value = 3 }
}
}

They also get it for the Arsenal of Democracy, gibraltar, suez, and China falling, and the Japanese oil embargo, all of which is beyond your control. You SHOULD just get the events when Germany acts up, so you may be suffering a bug if you're not.
That wartime penalty seems odd as well. Most countries get a 10% bonus...

EDIT: There seem to be no events to raise US wartime IC either. It would seem perfectly fair to just edit their wartime IC mod in the savegame, if it's just an out-and-out bug. Or perhaps it's meant to simulate the US not mobilizing their economy as much as they could have?

 

[vcgetdown]

Thanks for the response, for how straight forward those events are, I'm fairly convinced it's a bug now. Everything in my game is historical, I always try to do it historically, so it is looking to be a bug for sure? I don't remember all the allies having the -20% wartime IC modifier, what could cause this bug? As for my latest USA games, the only decisions that it gave me the option to do was the pictman act (which I did do, that is the correct option, right?) As well as demanding compensation from demand. I then made the ultimatum(which was the only thing that adjusted my sliders) and went to war, and while at war my IC was only around 500 thanks to that -20% modifier. I had this same modifier during my last game as france (did it historically, waiting until germany invaded poland)
I was using the 1.02b patch, so I figured I'd reinstall, this time only using the 1.01 patch, and the problem persists. The only issue regarding that, is that the launcher still thinks it's 1.02b, but in game it shows 1.01, maybe something weird with steam?

 

[unmerged(238359)]

That wartime IC reduction was probably put in place to nerf the US. Balancing the US has always been hard since the lend-lease events really do a poor job reflecting how the US served as the arsenal of democracy. Historically, the US never actually mobilized as heavily as other nations like the UK or Germany in proportion to its population. While these other nations had industrial output plateau later in the war, and then shrink due to pulling manpower off of industrial jobs (this is probably simulated by the IC reduction at higher levels of mobilization), the US never had that happen. The US kept it's focus on industrial production, and sacrificed having a large army. They had the famous "90 division gamble" where they only fielded 90 divisions and simply kept funneling reinforcements into these units (in game terms, this probably wouldn't be quite so small, since American divisions were larger then German ones, and in actual practice, most German divisions were drastically under-strength by 1941 and would stay that way until the war's end.). They had to devote manpower to the large air force and navy as well, but overall, industrial output was the key. The US produced hundreds of thousands of tank, trucks, half-tracks, armored cars, and other vehicles for export to our allies, like the British, Free forces from France and Poland, Canada, Australia, China, Brazil, the list goes on. The amount of artillery, small arms, combat aircraft, merchant ships, and ammunition goes without saying. Heck, we provided over 9,000 combat aircraft and 16,000 armored vehicles to the Soviets alone! In game terms, the US should get the full IC, but not full mobilization, and to a fair degree rely on giving equipment to other nations, or being granted expeditionary forces by other nations that were equipped and trained by the US, like the Brazilian Expeditionary Force and the Chinese X Force in India. Basically put; Large Navy, Large Air Force, Large Army, Industrial output - pick three. In fact, having the US able to choose at the start of the war whether or not to go with the historic 90 division army, or the larger, 220 division army and other options that had been proposed might be a good idea. Of course, doing so will grant some IC reduction due to lower manpower in factories, though some could be granted back via events to represent the US's ability and willingness to train woman and youth into being able to work factories early in the war, and to simulate the far less manpower intensive factories in America.

 

[General01]

I can certainly see why they'd have the 20% penalty for the US for balance reasons, but as you say, Jerseyan Exile, the player should get something of a choice in how he's going to run HIS US - either through country-specific events or a generally more powerful mobilization model (As with HoI3's laws: Separate human and economic mobilization onto different sliders). If the 20% is meant to represent lend-lease going to allies, then the player should at least be told why, if not given the option to cancel it.

 

[unmerged(238359)]

Sadly, the lend lease events simply take away about 10-20 IC from you and plop them down in the UK and China (excluding the soviet option which reduces your TC by 100). No other nations actually get equipment via lend lease, especially ones that really need it like Free France and China.

 

[vcgetdown]

So the -20% IC penalty for US can make sense, but the UK and france both get the same penalty in my game?

 

[General01]

So they do. There is a 20% penalty to wartime IC for everyone in the WW1 scenario, but a 1915 production tech - Mass Production - which increases wartime IC by 10%. If you load a 1936 game, with that tech already researched, your wartime penalty is STILL 20% for most countries, rather then the 10% it should be. Looks like Germany alone has a bonus to Wartime IC: The USSR actually has a 25% penalty, again with Mass Production researched.
Looks like it's for game-balance reasons :/

 

[MannheimCouncil]

I haven't had any of the US gearing up events either (playing 1.01.1). If China does badly enough you can push through the Selective Service Act (if you're lucky), but Germany's aggression does nothing, the Sinking of the Panay does nothing even if the Japanese refuse to pay (it increases Japanese aggression, but that's it) and in the two games I played "The American People Don't Care about the Nanjing Massacre" fired. To be fair it seems pretty much a 50/50 chance judging from my games with other nations. I think there was one event that lowered my Isolationism by one (Destroyers for Bases maybe), but that was it.

I don't say it should be easy for the US to get more manpower and better IC usage, but getting a little something by 1941 would be realistic, especially since US war production steadily increased during that time. If China had been nearly occupied it would have had even greater incentive to do so. On the other hand Japan often declares war before the Fall of France, which brings the US on full war footage in 1940.

 

[vcgetdown]

Actually, guys, I figured the solution to my problem. I own the game on Steam, and I tried uninstalling, deleting everything, reinstalling a bunch with no luck. This morning, however, I installed the retail version, patched it, and suddenly... everything is normal again. As the US, I get the option to support the allies by selling destroyers and the following chain, which brought me down to a -40% peacetime modifier. I ran through a game as the US at least 5 times with my steam version, and every single time by the time Japan invaded I was still sitting at 80% penalty. I never got the opportunity to supply the allies by giving them destroyers, either(which is where that 40% peacetime modifier change came from, I believe) Also, with my new install, once war began, that -20% wartime penalty was gone altogether(edit: My apologies, I played it through to the next day and the -20% wartime appeared, my mistake)! It appears that either something extremely weird happened, or my steam install was just not doing it right.

Also, now my USA is at max Hawk which I remembered was standard, but with my steam version I was sitting at nearly max dove, the one slider move towards hawk was from the ultimatum to japan.

I should mention, that I was mistaken in that the USA does not get gearing up for war like the other allies, but they get decisions to lower the peacetime IC penalty that I simply never got the chance to do until this last try.

Thanks for all the replies, guys, and sorry for not being nearly as clear with what I meant as I could have been, had I know the way the US gets it's peacetime penalty lowers (not through gearing up for war, but through destroyers for bases and the subsequent decisions)

 

[vcgetdown]

One of the things that was noticeably different, as the UK they get the first gearing up for war almost immediately, but with my steam version that never happened and I played as them and france many times, but with this new install it happened in a month every time

 

[MannheimCouncil]

Well, Steam may be sucky, but resorting to piracy and talking about it on the forums of the publisher isn't the greatest idea either. To make this a bit more useful for others: What version and checksum does your Steam version show. My gamersgate version is 1.01.1 and XMMZ respectively.

On the gameplay level I still think the US should get small reductions of the peacetime penalty even for German warmongering and the Japanese should think twice before attacking the US in 1940.

 

[vcgetdown]

I own two legal copies of the game, I figure it depends on Paradox if they think that me downloading their software that I paid for is not included with the EULA/TOS, if they don't like that, they can remove these posts referring to it or close this topic. And besides, it's for people with the steam version, anybody who has the steam version obviously owns the game, so it's not like my message would convince people to pirate. Regardless, it fixed my issues, and I figured I'd let other steam users know in case they are having the same issue.

 

[MartinBG]

The latest available patch from Steam or any other distributor is 1.01
1.01.1 and 1.02.b1 are unofficial patches, compatible with Steam/Impulse etc. distributions too.
There few steps to ensure correct installation over Steam version:
1. Remove any mods from your game (or better uninstall and re-download/install the game from Steam)
2. Copy the game folder to another location like C:\Games\Darkest Hour
3. Apply the patch over that new folder
4. Play the game from there

 

[froglegs]

The main problem that I see with the current DH gearing system is that it for instance gives Japana carrier speed production boost because thay are at war with China, which has no navy to speak of, versus USA who is not at war. I never seem to be able as the US to produce the historic battleship fleet on historic time either. Even at war the US cannot build the aircraft carriers as quickly as they did historically. And I am the person back in 2008 who told Fernando that his WIF mod produced ships too quickly as well as ground troops.