In Tsarst Russia, Survival Puzzles You! -- a Darkest Hour WW1 "AAR" AAR

[Martok]

Aw.  A pity you've already hit the Law of Diminishing Returns on improving your industrial output.  So much potential for ridiculous awesomeness there...  :P 

[JasonPratt]

It isn't even diminishing returns, it's a straight up supply bottleneck!

But it's both realistic and fair: resources aren't unlimited and can only be pulled out of the ground so quickly.

Where I did hit a law of diminishing returns recently was on research. As a nation increases its number of factories, research costs more for the same result; and now I've reached the point where it doesn't cost more but produces less result.

Oh well. Now it's time to start putting all that accrued IC into Doing Things. :) I'll keep an eye on my material production limits and when they tick up every once in a while (whether due to research or trade agreements, which I'm also working on), I'll set up a few more factories. Meanwhile, it's time to start upgrading divisions, adding HQs, fixing infrastructure (lots of that still to do), maybe looking into a better navy and/or a real air force.

[JasonPratt]

After canceling all my factories, and adjusting my production sliders to use excess "reinforcement" assignments to more easily account for excess IC (effectively turning off excess IC), I learned over a period from Oct 9 to Oct 14 that I had about 17 factories more than I could really use right now.

Next up: canceling trade agreements which are exporting energy and/or rares; and canceling trade agreements which are importing energy and/or rares for money: I ought to be trading supplies for energy and/or rares instead, since it's easier for factories to make supplies than to make extra money per day. I think. I can make one supply for four or five cents equivalent profit in consumer goods (which is the only way to directly make money with IC). Since supplies rarely sell for less than 10 cents and more often from 16 to 36 cents (sometimes more), I should probably be selling supplies for cash every month and using that to buy materials, or rather just skipping straight to using supplies directly to buy materials -- which I might end up having to do -- but that still costs me 28 silver per transaction just to do it (or the equivalent in supplies if I'm making the other guy 'pay' for it). So I should trade supplies directly per day by contract, for energy and rares, which costs me nothing in overhead fees.

Once I set up as much of that as possible, I'll be able to figure out how much IC I can put back into production somewhere. It probably won't be a lot, but one rare and four energy can run two factories and that's two IC put back plus efficiency bonuses either way (in using materials and in generating IC).

It seems weird by the way that I can (if i want to, depending on how much tech I've researched for it) turn energy into oil but not vice versa. Right this moment I have so much oil that I'm losing more than I'm producing to overstock.

[Martok]

It seems weird by the way that I can (if i want to, depending on how much tech I've researched for it) turn energy into oil but not vice versa. Right this moment I have so much oil that I'm losing more than I'm producing to overstock.

That is indeed strange.  ??? 

[besilarius]

Wasn't that the explanation for the holodeck in Next Generation.

[JasonPratt]

Heh, I have learned from long experience not to try to explain the holodecks. ;)

I guess it's just as well I can't convert oil to energy, since I'm going to want that oil for vehicles eventually. If I got into the habit of using it for energy now, to run factories, that would hamper me later.

[JasonPratt]

And that only took forever... After setting all my current infrastructure projects to maximum (because if I'm doing them anyway I might as well, everything to maximum infrastructure is a goal eventually), I canceled all the improper trades, and then after waiting 9 days for the diplomatics to clear I started setting up trade deals for energy and rares for supplies. Around the time I had gotten to Guangxi in my nation list, I realized I might as well be doing metals, too; but as it happens by the time I got to the end of the list, metals weren't my constraint so there was no point going back (yet) to pick up the spares I had missed. Energy at the end of the trading was my constraint, but I was able to fuel another 107 factories with the energy surplus, so I promptly queued up 107-21 factories (since I already had those 21 factories in play, or 17 rather with bonuses... I hope that math works out in my favor...)

Not all of them can build at once, but as they finish next year others will be instantly ready to go, so I only lack another two or three years to be caught up. During that time, some of those trade agreements will cancel no doubt, but I'll just have to keep an eye on them and rework them as I go. In effect I ended up paying an extra 50ish supplies year (or less rather) to run another 107 factories (plus bonuses) a year and that's a great deal which will only keep getting better as my related research slowly techs up over time.

Meanwhile a ton of my cavalry brigades and divisions upgraded to early or pre-WW1 status this month, plus the Polish mountain infantry divisions though they're still not quite caught up to modern standards either. That'll be another few more years' delay, but I'm a bit better than I was and that's progress. Though once the final factories kick in gear, I should probably look more closely into more efficiently spreading firepower with supply, so I can put those factories to work on something other than supplying them. Mountain infantry doesn't need much supply, but cav does -- but might still be supply-cost-effective for their relative offense and defense, compared to other things. My impression generally is that no brigades are supply-cost-effective compared to divisions, but that currently includes factoring in build time and manpower, the latter of which isn't a big issue for Russia and the former of which probably isn't a problem. So I should create a new set of calcs to factor those back out for comparing my build options. At any rate, I do still need more Army HQs for efficient operations.


(I would post updated maps, but the corps haven't moved around anywhere since the last screenshots. There are a lot fewer Germans on the border and that's about it, maybe a few more Hungarians.)


Edited to add: oh and I ought to go back and nix some of my metal and rare trade deals, since I don't need the extra materials if I don't have the energy to use them, and that'll unload my supply requirements somewhat which will put those IC toward making more factories in the (currently) final factory list.

[JasonPratt]

Well, after a month of doing other things (including the Vietnam '65 absolute newbie AAR), I returned to messing with Russia again for several hours last night. I kept notes, sort of, but I'm working from memory here at the office on lunch break.

I think I was at Nov 1923 the last time I loaded up, having just hit the resource wall for making new factories. After some calculations and a new set of trade agreements I figured I could afford to add another 85ish factories or so before running into a negative resource flow again. Those wouldn't arrive until Dec 1924 -- which led to an amusing bit of panic when halfway through that month a game-year later I hear this horrifying BUZZZZZ and I think "oh crap oh crap oh crap I broke the game somehow" -- but it was an asston of factories getting ready to ping as finished.

So most of 1924 was spent just chilling out watching the map as my last factories cooked up. Germany is still a festering backwater after their non-war, which has led to them complaining to no one (or maybe to the scattered Communist rebel divisions, or the newly independent Free City of Danzig??) that the reparation schedule of the Treaty of Versaille (or however the French spell it) is ruinous. Austria continues to park stacks of, apparently, three or four divisions per territory on my border, and (apparently) added a few that year. I'll be very curious how the game's scripts interpret Austria in about ten years, since it's waaaaay ahead of "Germany" right now.

My research has caught up so far that I only needed a few 1924 techs to be fully up to date, and I opted to delay some of those to work on future tech instead from the late 20s and even 1930. (I ended the night somewhere in the middle of 1925, so that's still the situation: future techs take a LOT longer to research.)

One or two of those hours was spent fixing a problem I detected in my calculations for relative efficiency once supply is accounted; and then studying the relative efficiencies once I factor back out manpower (which is something the Russians aren't going to lack for a very long time -- on the contrary they should probably consider manpower a value multiplier since it provides, in effect, hitpoints for a division!) and construction time (which while I'm at peace for the foreseeable future shouldn't be a big deal). As usual, Garrison and Militia troops still have the best numbers, even (actually especially) without brigades; but on the balance I came to the conclusion that I had planned wrongly to convert my troops over to a 2 to 1 mix of cav and elite-infantry; because cavalry is just too supply-heavy. I can put the industrial capacity for making their supplies to work elsewhere, such as making much fewer supplies for more elite infantry.

I didn't disband any cav divisions -- they still pack a top-rated punch when combined with either artillery or (for early blitzkrieg power) armored cars -- but I did collect back up and disband all those cavalry brigades I had built some time back; and I hunted around to find any infantry I had assigned to mutate into cavalry and assigned them to go to light/mountain infantry instead.

While I was at it, once the final factories dropped into place I went ahead and made sure to assign all my infantry (except a couple on police patrol, which I kept assigned to change into cavalry which are better at that sort of thing) are scheduled to upgrade to elite infantry. This is even more important because:

1.) at least 3/4 of my infantry divisions are currently at 1897 kit and training (!!  :o !!) So even the relatively few Austrian divisions on the border might be able to overwhelm them;

and

2.) quite a few of those aren't even 'real' divisions, but are only jumped up brigades! i.e., they're half-strength divisions (which the game even calls "brigades" in Russian)

Both those states of affairs should be promptly fixed. While I can't quite yet upgrade all my divisions at once, I only need a little over 240 days to convert regular infantry to elite infantry, even when starting so far back in tech -- and my elite infantry tech is a little ahead of the contemporary curve, so they'll be quite bossy once they ranger up.

Most of my cavalry meanwhile has been updated to at least early War (1914) standards, and some are up to 1918 or even 1921. My tech there is actually 1928 (if I recall correctly? -- or presently will be, as I've kept someone researching them constantly). So as they cowboy up, they'll be VERY boss.

This leads to the question of what, if anything, I'll do with my troops once they upgrade. Most likely I'll just keep upgrading them, staying ahead of future Germany problems, while I finally start doing what even many small nations have been doing for a decade or more: devoting money and supplies each month to training my generals. Wars are ruinously expensive, and Russia is large enough that I don't feel much impulse to go take Afghanistan or Mongolia yet, much less pick a fight with one of the Europeans.

Anyway, that's where I currently am (so far as I recall from memory) as of mid-1925 in the game now. :)