World in Flames-Gold questions

[parnis]

I just finished a game of Darkest Hour 1.03, using the World in Flames-Gold mod and playing as the United Kingdom in the 1933 scenario. Difficulty was set on Normal, and Aggressiveness on Furious. I have a few questions:

1) The Soviet Union and Germany never went to war, at least not as of early September 1944. Is that a glitch or just a possible outcome of events in WiF-Gold? I should note that in this game, the Germans had conquered France during the autumn of 1939, without serious losses. I saw a notice about the extension of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1941 - does that mean no war ever?

Concerning questions 2 & 3, I should say that Germany's oil reserves always seemed low in this game. I never saw them go as high as 10,000 units, and they were usually more like 6,000-7,000. Is that a sign of a glitch or just something that can happen to the Germans sometimes in WiF-Gold? Are these two things just consequences of the oil shortage, or an alternative German strategy?

2) The Germans never made a real effort to defeat the UK by U-boats. Final intel was that German had about 75 U-boats. I am more used to them having 100-200 by late in the war.

3) The Germans never made a real effort to crush the UK from the air. Their air attacks died out in late 1940, and never resumed on any sustained or powerful basis. That led me to believe they were concentrating on preparing for war with the USSR

4) When I finally got tired of waiting for the Russo-German war and invaded Italy (which did not end well), the Italians surrendered when I took Rome...whereupon the Germans annexed them, and got every Italian province where I did not actually have ground troops. This cost me a dozen air units far behind the lines in Sicily, and meant I would have to reoccupy almost all of Libya! I hate to complain about an excellent mod, but if this is working-as-designed, it is a bad feature. (Oh, also, Rodos became Greek but Kalymnos did not. The UK was in sole occupation of both. That seemed like an odd distinction.)

Thanks for any help or comments. I enjoy this game a lot, but this last play-through was frustrating. It was as if the German AI got bored and decided to quit while it was ahead. Is that an actual strategy for Germany in WiF-Gold?

 

[Blecky]

1) The extension of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact should happen in early 1941 but AFAIK it does not prevent GER from attacking SOV in the same year. Low oil reserves or SOV numerical superiority however can delay a GER attack. In my last game as UK GER attacked in October (!) 1941 and never got any further than two provinces on SOV soil.

2) Noticed the same. After a while they often just sit in their harbors, previous losses are not replaced at the same rate.

3) Preparing for Barbarossa is probably what GER should do if Sealion had failed or was cancelled. It would be interesting if GER would resume its activities towards UK when the attack on SOV is delayed, at least regarding air attacks.

4) The ITA surrender events are broken in this respect. IIRC this is (also) a vanilla problem.

 

[unmerged(49948)]

1.) It happens sometimes, but I wouldn't call it "normal". Because of this I always have a few saved games that go a few years back in my campaign, so if it does happen I can reload and start the fireworks myself. Actually I had to do this in my current SU campaign, I think it was 1940 and the Germans still hadn't invaded Poland, so I had to load as them and get the war rolling that way. Idk about the option they chose for the pact tho. You don't have it so bad, I've had games go into 42-43 where the Germans hadn't even started the war against the allies...

4.) The air units should redeploy to your capital. If I recall you dont get a message about it, but they will just pop up there one day.

-As for the rest I don't want to answer because I never used this mod.

EDIT: Re: #4 I was talking about in general, if the events are broken it may mean they are lost. But keep an eye on your capital and redeployment queue for the next month or two.

 

[parnis]

Thanks, Blecky and Gadz13. I am glad to know these things were not glitches, but just occasional occurrences. Especially, I am glad to know the Italian surrender event is considered broken, since that was very disconcerting. It says a lot for how poorly I play that I had not encountered it recently enough to remember!

The air units did not redeploy to my capital, since London has no airbases. They were not in the Force Pool, in adjacent airbases, or on the list of air units.