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

[JasonPratt]

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Last year for the anniversary of WW1's kickoff, I intended to play and simultaneously AAR/compare as many WW1 games as I could feasibly get hold of. Sadly I got kind of disgruntled, though not before I wrote a pretty good narrative AAR for Ethiopia while learning to play Hearts of Iron 2: Darkest Hour (currently linked in my sig but in case that ever changes, here at Grogheads.)

After that, instead of going on to "Season Two" of that (which I still want to return to someday, once I test whether I can port my save successfully into a mod-fusion of the WW1 and WW2 campaigns), I started the Russian campaign in DH.

And then a few game-months later, started it again.

And then decided maybe I should give up the project. Trying to survive as Russia in World War One is hard, y'all! -- even in Darkest Hour where I have more options potentially than in some other WW1 games! (Note that this is before Making History released their well-regarded Great War game, which officially launches a little later this month, but which features a similar worldwide scale.) Just how much crushing existential hopelessness was I willing to bear across five or six other ga--ooh, I could try a Blood Bowl campaign, hm, been meaning to do that for a while...


A few days ago, however, the topic of which WW1 game has the best naval system came up in another thread, and thus also Darkest Hour again. On checking the World War One Gold rules, I found it had much more detail than I remembered (being a monster board game adaptation), but I still think DH beats it in several ways. None of which matters to Russia, because their navy is rubbish and unlikely to get better in time to matter.

But anyway. That reminded me I wanted to chew over the puzzle of surviving WW1 as Russia in Darkest Hour. Which reminded me that I had been thinking of doing an advisory AAR thread where I sought opinions from Grogs about how to proceed (strategically, operationally, tactically, etc.)


So. I may fiddle around with this for a while, as I wait for my new mouse to arrive Monday: my ancient mouse from, gosh, ten years ago now? Back on a WinXp machine -- died yesterday, and the little Microsoft mouse I'm using is so tiny it's driving me nuts. Hard to play anything with it, but I (mostly) don't need it to type. :)

This won't be a narrative AAR, but I'll post screenies to help get an idea of what's going on.

I'll have to start posting information tomorrow, though, as I have some other things to do tonight.

[JasonPratt]

Okay, before we get going I need to poll for some options.

1.) Should I even try to play Russia? One of the Chinese factions instead? Republic of Mexico? One of the South American countries? (African countries are inextricably linked to colonials, aside from Ethiopia which I've already played. And which needs some light haxing to make work feasibly. ;) )

2.) This morning I'm downloading (and hopefully installing) the option to play "AAR", which is short for "Arms, Armistices, and Revolutions", the most recent version 3 by the way, which works hard to tie together the WW1 and WW2 campaigns into a Grand Campaign. The upside is obvious; the downside is that vanilla WW1 is naturally more stable. The author is still fixing bugs, but this is still one of the most popular and fully developed mods. Note that even vanilla WW1 can go into 1970 with some light textfile modding, but specific events stop triggering, and we'd have to turn on the anyone-declares-war button eventually.


I'll have to make decisions on this soon. I won't wait for some kind of full poll (70 views of my opening post by this morning!) but if anyone wants to opine I'll give a chance. Meanwhile I'll start talking about issues facing Russia in vanilla WW1.

[MetalDog]

The problem I find in playing games where I am responsible for a large territory is the myriad of little things that don't get the attention they deserve.  Especially if you are at war.  I micro focus on what I am currently doing and lose the big picture.  So, in that respect, Russia would be fun to play, but might not get as good a steersman at the helm as if I was playing Austria or France.  Even Britain, with its far flung colonies, is too much to stay on top of for me.

Having said all that, the troubles Russia faces throughout WWI would present a challenge, which, if successfully navigated, would result in deep satisfaction.  Especially if you can hold on to everything the Soviets claimed and bring it along into WWII and beyond.

[JasonPratt]

^^ In this case, DH has good news and bad news.

The good news is that Russia is in such terrible shape that there isn't much to pay attention to (proportionate to its size)!

The bad news is that I have no idea yet how the game treats the Russian player when the Revolution comes calling. Does it regard this as  a loss condition, or does it migrate the player into one of the factions (and if so does the player get a choice of faction)?

Oh, and Russia is in such terrible shape that there isn't much to pay attention to (proportionate to its size). ;)

[JasonPratt]

Okay, the first significant obvious difference between Russia in the vanilla WW1 campaign, and Russia in the (current version of the) "AAR" campaign, is that it looks like the mod designer stripped the few divisions scattered across south-central and far-eastern Russia, and put them on or near the western border.

I don't know how historically accurate either version is: on one hand by the time the game starts, Russia in real life had been frantically moving troops westward in a truly massive organizational achievement (and nightmare); on the other hand, I can't believe they would just denude their borders with China and Japan, especially after their adventures in Manchuria earlier in the century.

I do understand the basic thrust of the modder's thinking, though: Russia is supposed to have the largest land army in the world at the start of WW1, but in vanilla DH they don't.  It isn't even close. (They're also supposed to have the 2nd largest air force in the world, and that's such a joke in vanilla DH it loops back around into being teeth-gnashing rather than funny. This is not something the modder has fixed yet; but maybe by "air force" that was supposed to be recon planes.)

This would go a long way toward explaining why, even though playing a strongly defensive game in vanilla DH, I still ended up being swarmed by endless all-powerful hordes of Huns (by which I mean Germans, as the Autrian-Hungarian troops, while also significantly numerous, weren't strong enough to be an offensive threat). In "AAR", not only has everything east of the Urals been stripped (of its paltry few divisions), but I'm starting out with 28 divisions in Siauliai (the far northern county of our German border, where the assault on Tannenburg was launched historically) and 51 divisions in Kiev, plus the various scattered handfuls in Poland and along the front generally.

Sooo... yeah, in this version of the game the Russian player isn't in such deep crap out of the gate.

Another crucial difference is that in vanilla DH I start out with 22% dissent, whereas in "AAR" I have an average of 5%. That's a huge difference, not least because it allows me to tell my Slavic brothers in Serbia they can just toss right off rather than committing us to a war. Or alternately, I have a real possibility of coming to their aid now. Russian offensive power may not be technically strong but quantity is its own quality.

[JasonPratt]

I'm about at the point where I want to post some initial screenshots; but my mouse is terrible so I'll probably wait until tomorrow afternoon to do that (assuming the new mouse works okay).

I do think I'll go with the Grand Campaign mod rather than try to play Russia on the vanilla 1914 game. (As an aside, there are two flavors of vanilla DH here, "Full" and "Light"; with "Light" being a lot of the data from "Full" imported into the HOI2 Armageddon engine from which Darkest Hour was developed, thus allowing mods from Arma to be used with DH data. "Light" doesn't have a WW1 campaign; the full DH engine is needed for that.)

Sadly, my recent research into how "AAR" works indicates I probably won't be able to try something I was hoping later: porting my Ethiopian campaign save into the "AAR" mod so that I can transition through the interwar years into a WW2 script and beyond. I've made too many modifications myself to the Ethiopian campaign, in-game and out-of-game (mainly to help with their research projects), for the splicing to come out anything other than unworkable gibberish. So when-if-ever I go back for Season Two, it'll be without any scripted events; but craziness is guaranteed if I turn on permission for any nation to declare war, so that'll be something anyway. (I think I'm up to 1922 or 1923, and the war in Europe has never ended; whether those triggers even can work now, I don't know.) Nor am I going to restart Ethiopia from scratch in "AAR" -- well, I could, but not to continue that story, and recreating the protocols for adjusting Ethiopian research would be a nightmare.

Russia, though, I'll get to, once I've studied it enough to get a handle on the new start material, and made some relevant snapshots.


Meanwhile, here are some quick snaps of the map.








There's more to the map than this of course -- it's a global scale game like any Europa/Clausewitz engine game set after the medieval period -- I'm just showing what Russia has to deal with theoretically.

As long as I'm playing the game with permissions for anyone to declare war turned off, I probably don't have to worry about being invaded by Mongolia or Afghanistan (you can see a few divisions in bordering territories there in maps 1 and 2.) I might still have to worry about being invaded by China or Japan: that island we share with Japan is just sitting there wide open, with nothing but a small Pacific fleet at Vladisvostok and no troops to protect it. As I said, this seems unrealistic the other way around: however hard Russia was racing to reinforce its German/Hungarian border, it wouldn't leave those areas completely unprotected (I don't think? That didn't historically happen, did it??) But if I can survive long enough to complete strategic movement, I'll be able to ship troops back there if necessary, without waiting a year for them to march over.

Incidentally, I thought the trans-Siberian railroad was supposed to have been a big factor in the Russo-Nipponese war of 1904, but there's no in-game indication such a thing exists. To be fair, "railroads" per se don't exist in the DH game engine anyway; they're subsumed under an infrastructure factor for each territory. But Siberia is uniformly 10% developed: the minimum possible! The railway just doesn't "fit" in the DH engine.

[JasonPratt]

Thank God I have a useable mouse again! (A lower-tier Redragon, without all the extra buttons on their main item, braided cord, gold leads on the USB connection, decent dpi on the laser sensitivity, only about $15.)

Let's consider the easiest things first.

Airpower: we have five airports, and no way to get any new ones (even the smallest possible ones) until sometime next year. Those airports are in Moscow, Petrograd (St. Petersburg) our capital, and the remaining three are in the Caucasus territories near the Turkish border. Why there? No idea -- to avoid irritating Germany maybe. Certainly not to intimidate Turkey: they have, I am not exaggerating, FOURTEEN airbases, no less than seven of which are in range of our three. All our airbases are much (or for Moscow, much much much) too far away to launch missions from if/when we go to war with anyone except a reascendant Finland; and in fact are far too far away to rebase our air force anywhere other than where they are: a couple of experimental tac bomber squad, and a couple of somewhat up-to-date tac bomber squads (one each in Petrograd and Moscow). Theoretically they could be moved by rail once we research strategic movement (which is on our immediate tech-to-do list anyway), but that won't be ready until after we're likely to be at war with the Ottomans anyway.

What I'm saying is that we can ignore airpower. In fact the first thing I'm going to do is turn off their supplies and reinforcements. SAVE GAME! {g}

Next up, the navy. We have a Pacific fleet of two 2nd level destroyer flotillas (destroyers in this game come in groups unlike every other combat ship), and two utterly primitive light cruisers which appear to be primarily sail driven. Might as well leave them in port and turn off supplies.

We have a Black Sea fleet with some up-to-date subs and a mediocre but stiff group of mixed cap ships. They are of no use whatever unless Turkey allows us out of the Black Sea, which they will not even when we aren't at war. Historically, this is a big reason why Turkey and Russia have been perennially at war throughout previous recent centuries, but at the moment we've accepted that we can't project power here, and they've accepted that the Black Sea is our pond. Turn off supplies, and leave them in port. (I can't actually upgrade ships, which is realistic enough: I either decommission them or get them sunk with hands in battle. If I want updated ships I have to build them from scratch, though I can research and attach new tech to ships. We'll get to that soon.)

My Baltic Sea fleet, based in Petrograd, is numerous and relatively punchy, but also rather out of date -- except for my sub groups (here and in the Black Sea) which are state of the art! But I don't have many of those, only two (one here, one there which no I can't sneak through the Istanbul straits with, I've tried). Russian sea tech isn't overly bad: aside from subs we also have battlecruiser designs at least four years ahead of current tech! Unfortunately, some idiot several years ago decided we should be building battleships instead. Fortunately, our battleship designs aren't super-terribly out of date (level 4, circa 1909); and by some magic we've even laid down hulls on a couple of 1913 era level 5 ships! -- despite not having researched that tech yet!! (I can't tell if this is a left-over discrepancy from the AAR modder; I know Russia starts off building a couple of 1913 BBs in vanilla WW1, but I don't recall if they have the tech to do so.)

The good news there is that the first BB-4 super-dreadnought will roll off the docks in November, with others staggering off into 1917. The bad news is that the BB-5s won't be ready until 1917, at which time they'll be obsolescent if not quite obsolete yet. The good news is that they cost only 0.4 industrial capacity to keep building (for a total of only 2.8) and Russia has a lot of IC. The bad news is that we're likely to lose a significant fraction of our IC quickly thanks to Poland being overrun with Germs, but that's another discussion. The other bad news is that IC only affects speed up to a point, so adding more IC won't help speed up that production -- in fact it's impossible to add more IC to production of anything beyond 100% of its IC cost. This however is also a discussion for later.

For all practical purposes anyway, our navy is one big block of ships at Petrograd, only one destroyer group of which even dates to this century, everything else (except a handful of pre-dreadnaughts from the 1890s) dating to the mid-late 1880s. (And some up to date subs.) They will very probably be murdered by anything they attack, but they MIGHT be able to provide some defense for a little while against a German high seas fleet if we give them the best admiral we can find (maybe split into two or more fleets under proper admiral management if necessary) and ship them down to south-western most port(s).




That port at Sialuiai (or however it's spelled, God help me I'm writing an AAR for Russian territories...) is only size 1, too small to base much of the fleet -- the one immediately south is for the city-port of Klaipeda which would be a good territory to jump on if/when we go to war with Germany, but it's also small and not likely to be much use for a while after we seize it, even if we can keep it. The whole fleet can be re-berthed in Liepaja, but that's one sea zone away from where it makes the most sense to patrol. But that isn't bad; I may assign the subs to Sia and the main fleet to Liep but both with orders to patrol Danzig Bay which is going to become a hot spot if we go to war.

In vanilla DH-WW1 I'd be plotting for various central-far-eastern divisions to march around to take up policing positions near factories so as to quiet dissent in those areas and not hamper my industrial capacity; but that isn't an issue in DH-AAR, since I have no nearby divisions and my dissent isn't even a little bad out there yet.

This brings up the issue of dissent and what we can do about it at the moment, which I suppose I'll get to next. Bit of a sinus headache from pseudo-spring tonight... :P

[JasonPratt]

Dissent, uh-huh, what is it good for? Absolutely ruining you.

Dissent is bad enough as a potential game-ending factor for other nations: it directly affects how much industrial capacity can actually be applied to production (including upgrades and personnel reinforcements), and it directly affects how well soldiers fight in a battle. This can create a positive feedback loop in a negative direction (if I may be allowed to get a little more geeky than already may be surmised from writing a rambling discourse on the problems faced in playing a video game): the situation getting worse makes the situation get worse even faster, until the enemy just walks over your nation and imposes order (where/if possible! Naturally this can be done by the player against an opponent, too, though it's usually hard to restore order in an area leading to critical failures for the conquerer, too!)

This is exactly what happened to Russia in real life WW1, and it can easily happen to Russia in the game; but the game adds an extra fatal problem: when the overall dissent reaches a certain percentage (plus maybe a few other triggers), the communists take over most of the country and a civil war begins, which in vanilla Darkest Hour I suspect ends the game for the player since basically you're defending the Imperial system. Whether the game allows or forces the player to pick a side and continue, I don't know yet, but I'm going to assume the worst for safety's sake.

Consequently, keeping dissent low is an (maybe the) absolutely primary goal for Russia in this game.

Unfortunately, in vanilla DH, Russia starts out with a terrifying (and largely historical) 22% national dissent level, and the game engine doesn't provide many ways of quickly improving that.

Fortunately, in "AAR" DH, Russia starts out with a perfectly manageable (but highly ahistorical) 5% national dissent level, and the modder has added more ways to improve that. We can in fact eliminate national dissent right off the bat by paying for a few relatively cheap strategic choices which should also provide benefits down the road.

How this will affect local (or regional or, um, areal??) dissent, I don't know yet; it seems unlikely that the reforms would pacify certain areas (the distinction of which I'll talk about soon), but then the dissent in those areas is what is weighing the national aggregate dissent.

Anyway. Here are the ways dissent increases or decreases:

* By plot triggers. Sometimes a hardcoded event just flat out changes dissent.

* By plot choices. In this case, dissent change can be a result of choosing between plot options provided by the game.

* By strategic decisions. These are optional plot choices offered under certain circumstances -- once certain amounts of time have passed, and/or other conditions met -- accessible under the "decision" menu. These decisions usually have to be paid for in supplies and/or (more often) money, and can affect national dissent. Negatively, one can even (in effect) 'pay' for a change in money or industrial capacity or whatever partially by increasing dissent.

These are the main ways of affecting dissent. To these can be added:

* By policy changes. Once every few years, including at the start of a campaign, the player can tweak one of several "policy" sliders one notch in a particular direction. A few such tweaks can affect national dissent, but the effect isn't much.

* By seizing territory. This (almost?) inevitably results in strong dissent in the territory for a while, even when one might expect otherwise; which in turn affects national dissent. In a large nation like Russia that won't weigh much, but it can add up. The reason we have any dissent at all (especially in vanilla DH) can be laid directly to this factor, since Russia recently seized Poland, Finland, and a strip of Romania, and their dissent levels are still ranging from 4 to 7% per territory. This is particularly problematic because Poland and Finland both contain significant numbers of factories, and dissent in a territory affects factory production for that territory. (Factory and infrastructure effects are also both temporarily ruined by invasion, requiring some time to bring them back up to speed; this effect is independent from dissent in a territory, which further fractionalizes what may already be a fractionalized infrastructure/factory situation.)

* Relatedly, losing a Victory Point tends to add a bit of national dissent automatically, while gaining a Victory Point reduces a bit of dissent. However, certain territories continue to occasionally generate new dissent if they continue lost over time: every few months the game checks if Kieve is still held by Germany (or by anyone other than Russia) and penalizes Russia if so, for example. Whereas seizing enemy Victory Points doesn't generate dissent reduction continually over time like that -- though it can and will continually screw with the enemy's dissent!

* If I recall correctly, this effect also applies to gaining or losing regions (collections of counties) and areas (collections of regions): a one time increase or reduction in dissent, and then an occasional increase in dissent for the loser if the region or area is regarded as a core claim for the nation.

* A nation can significantly reduce national dissent by liberating an area or region, allowing it to become its own nation, operating independently but with new close political ties and general goodwill. The game doesn't always allow this, though; I can't liberate Poland or Finland for example. (Probably because they exist as "Russia" now, instead of as puppet states. But then as puppet states their internal dissent probably wouldn't count as national dissent for the player's nation.)

* Posting divisions in a territory, particularly on police missions (and particularly if the division has a police brigade attached), reduces dissent by imposition. Divisions on police missions also reduce dissent in all bordering territories. Garrison defensive divisions are especially effective at this. (All divisions, and brigades, are rated for their effectiveness at policing, some better, some worse.)

* Espionage. Upgrading the nation's intelligence network can help reduce dissent a little, and some intelligence missions can raise enemy dissent or protect against enemy attacks on dissent.

* Assigning industrial capacity to produce consumer goods, slightly but continuously reduces dissent over time. Sub-levels of production of goods, however, will increase dissent slowly over time.

* I can't recall offhand if any industrial tech research or military doctrine research reduces national dissent, but they might.

* Some ministers can affect dissent pro or con.

There may be some other factors but if so they're so minor I can't remember them.

The easiest way for us to reduce dissent out of the gate, is to spend a little money (though for other options it's a lot of money!) on strategic decisions.

Here is a snapshot of our dissenting territories (almost all, we also have a small one on the Turkish border), along with the currently available strategic decisions we can initiate.





Notice by the way that two territories in Poland show no dissent: the ones with some divisions in them!

Also notice by the way that our capital, Petrograd, sits on the border of a whole national area which could spawn off rebel divisions at almost any time! -- pacifying Finland is a good idea for several reasons.

I'll talk about those strategic decision options next time, since we should make some decisions on them whether or not they affect dissent -- but for that reason, too. (If anyone isn't familiar with the icon-figures at the top of the screen, I'll get to those later, but dissent is third from the right reading 5% with a little guy in a white shirt and upraised arms.)

[JasonPratt]

It occurs to me that in order to best understand the costs and benefits of the initial strategic choice options, as well as PRACTICALLY EVERY OTHER CHOICE WE MIGHT MAKE DOWN THE LINE ;) , I should shift direction first to talk about the key stats of a nation in Darkest Hour.

These figures can be found at the tippy-top of all the game screens; or in other words, any game screen is a tabbed window (sometimes with subwindows) beneath this permanent line.

For ease of reference I'll snip them separately and post them again.





These are not actually the figures Russia starts the campaign with: because of the way the engine works, it takes two or three game days for figures to cycle up properly. These are days which may involve critical actions meanwhile, which can be a problem, such as right now when we're trying to figure out what kind of initial decisions to make! This may even be the reason why the game starts on June 27 instead of a more 'even' date before the historical start of the war (since nothing historical seems to trigger on this day, though perhaps it does for other nations not Russia. Or Ethiopia for that matter. ;) )

Anyway, here is what the figures look like when caught up -- and after three days of 'processing' effects simultaneously, which still goes on of course.





That three-part figure, alllll the way over on the right hand side, with the little factory next to it, is "Industrial Capacity" or IC. Up to a point it affects how fast projects are completed, but mainly it affects how many and/or how strongly different projects can be worked on. IC is generated solely by factories, though that generated number can be modified by other factors like dissent in a territory or technologies (always for the better) or some ministers. The farthest right number is the "base IC", how much would be available in a purely neutral environment. The middle number shows the IC adjusted for all modifiers: tech, ministers, partisan dissent, our social policies (which can be adjusted slightly at the start of the game and then slightly again every few years), and a permanent 20% reduction due to my not noticing that "AAR" campaigns start out on "hard". {eyeroll} I really ought to adjust that. Mental note to restart and resave before I make too many initial choices...

Like most similar Paradox games, DH features a robust tool-tip rollover which often reveals a lot of what's going on under the hood, which is how I learned about the 20% handicap.

The leftward IC number, a green zero right now, shows how many IC we're wasting by not efficiently assigning factories to tasks. Russia's campaign (probably any other nation, too) starts with the assignments balanced in some ways but with extra production of consumer goods which makes our people happy which is why our dissent has dropped by .22 of a percent already, which we'll get to in a minute. I'll talk later about what such sliders we have and what they affect: a lot of DH involves tweaking them on a regular basis!

Anyway, IC is like the amperage of factories, not the voltage, for anyone who appreciates that simile. Each of our battleships under construction requires either 2.4 or 2.9 IC (for the 4th and 5th level ships) for full capacity of construction. If I haven't assigned enough IC to production, then projects at the bottom of the list (I'll get to the list later) will run slower by proportion to how much IC they don't have, or stop altogether. But once full IC is assigned to a project (a semi-automatic process), that's it, that's as fast as the project will go. It doesn't matter if I put every other project on hold and could devote every factory in the world to working on one of those level 5 battleships: it's still going to take a little short of 3 more years to finish building (end of July 1917) -- and that's with 33 percent completion already! This limitation isn't entirely realistic, but it keeps players (or the computer) from lasering out a battleship in half a day by assigning 139 IC to it, which would be much more unrealistic.

How can factories be made to go faster? Good question! -- and not an easy one to answer! Simply building more factories won't do it. Some minister effects can help broadly or for certain types of projects, but not a lot. Some industrial techs can help bump up factory speeds, but not a lot. At least one strategic decision, nominally intended to reduce inflation, essentially trades money for increased IC efficiency, of half a percent. That improvement may not sound like much, and it isn't, but it can be done every month (if I recall correctly), and exponentially it adds up, so it's the fastest way to do so -- if we can get the money! Typically that's through trade, buying or producing low and selling high. But we'll get to that later.

Each factory, to operate at all, requires, each day, two units of energy, one unit of metal, and one-half a unit of rare materials. These are the far-leftward numbers across the top, with little relevant icons. If those drop to zero, production stops. Various territories produce one or more of these materials, plus oil which isn't used in factories but in vehicles. I can't recall offhand if a factory, and/or an infrastructure level, is needed in any such territory first in order to produce its material(s); but I do recall (painfully, from my Ethiopian campaign!) that a minimum 30% infrastructure level is certainly needed in any territory first to build and operate a factory. Materials can also be picked up every day by striking trade deals with other nations, or picked up every month by manual trades with nations. Materials, even the "rare" set, are usually pretty cheap, which also means they aren't usually a good way to earn money in trading.

What is a good way to earn money in trading, whether once a month or in an ongoing trade deal (though usually better "manually" once a month), are supplies. This is a catchall term for anything else produced by a nation other than industrial materials, money, or oil, which isn't used by civilian consumers. Supplies are especially important for military operations, but also for paying for some strategic decisions. At this hour of the game we have 660 units of supplies (actually we have a fraction but on the summary bar it's rounded to the nearest whole number). It's kind-of in the middle, between the oil drop (787 units of oil) and the pound-sterling symbol, which stands for money, presumably in millions of pounds sterling equivalent of silver value.

Money is mostly important in paying for strategic decisions, which can help other stats, or for supplies, whether generic ones or industrial ones. We also pay money every day for our research and our intelligence network.

To the right of that is a soldier shouldering a rifle, and that number represents military manpower capable of being trained or otherwise moved into military units: they aren't at work, and some decisions help turn IC into manpower or vice versa. Every one unit represents a thousand soldiers, so today we have twenty thousand one hundred soldiers we can create new military units with or assign as reinforcements. (To the right of that is the nuclear bomb stock, which is practically impossible to get in WW1, so it can be ignored.)

We've already talked about dissent, currently at 4.88% and falling a little every day (mostly because excess production is going to making consumer goods). Last but not least is the two-number set next to the truck, almost all the way to the right on the bar (with the IC numbers far right). That's transport capacity. One might think (as I keep forgetting myself isn't true) that this has something to do with infrastructure; but it's actually a direct product of industrial capacity: one IC generates one-and-a-half TC, which is then modified by various factors to reach the base TC on the right side of the fraction (in this case 228). The left side of the number shows how much TC is being used by all military ground forces. That number can increase over 100%, but puts TC in the red at which point all military movement for our nation anywhere in the world is hindered.

Generally, by the way, green numbers mean we're increasing those figures every day; red means we're reducing those figures every day. TC is different: like IC it doesn't increase or decrease or stockpile or anything like that. If TC goes red, that means we have a nationwide military traffic jam. It also means they get supplies more slowly, and recover organization more slowly.

I think that covers enough for me to talk about the initial strategic decisions now. But allergy medicine is making me sleepy, so I'll get to that tomorrow...

[JasonPratt]

I've taken the opportunity to start up the Russia "AAR" campaign again, this time making sure aggressiveness is set to normal (I don't want the AI making foolish choices in order to be "aggressive") and that the difficulty is set to normal (because a permanent 20% hit to industrial capacity, maybe some other problems, doesn't give a good idea of the capabilities of the engine. On the other hand, maybe the capabilities are exemplified by the designer thinking "aggressive" and "hard" should be the defaults...?)

So with a new base save at the starting date, salted with a few choices already on which naval and air units to park without reinforcements or updates (but I haven't assigned the Petrograd fleet to rebase yet -- I'll need to break it up into two pieces so it won't overtax an admiral), I've advanced the clock a couple of days to get a clearer 'real' idea of our national stats, and now we're ready to talk about initial strategic decisions: that list of choices over on the left hand side of an earlier screenshot. (Nominally whichever ones I decide on, I'll go back and implement out of the gate at the 'gamestart' save, so I won't have wasted two game days.)

Here's a zoom-in of the list for convenience:



I'll start at the bottom so that I can immediately ignore "music choices" which is simply a handy way of setting which music library to pull from at any time.

ISSUE CURRENCY: This choice shows up immediately any time national funds dip below 300 (if I recall correctly; the description doesn't bother to mention conditions after conditions are actually met) -- and by the way, for my personal convenience since I have only American keyboards, I'll be using the dollar sign not the pound-sterling sigil. That includes Russia's gamestart. Effectively it trades one percent of production speed for $1000 and a 1% reduction in dissent. I'm not a big fan of reducing production speed, and usually there are easier ways to get money. Also, the reverse decision will typically require twice as much cash for half the improvement. Use only if necessary: but out of the gate it's often necessary, if only to have some seed money to work on buying and selling supplies on the world market for profit.

PURGE OF THE ARMY: this gets rid of any generals and admirals with low loyalty, and increases general army morale by 3%, but at a cost of losing their skills and talents and increasing national dissent by 2%. Hard to say whether it's worth it as Russia, but the AI loves to use this on its own nations. (We're in World War I so we don't have to worry about Stalinist purge events yet, hopefully ever.) This option remains around forever until it's used, but it's a one-shot usage (so to speak).

TAXES: this is an "AAR" mod feature (ported in from another mod I think), not in vanilla. It triggers every year annually after using it, I think. As you might expect, it trades IC and dissent for increased income -- or vice versa! -- depending on the level chosen. Or I can choose "game standard", which doesn't seem to have any effects other than nixing the option from the list for a year. Money is relatively easy to get if we have enough to trade feasibly (since like on the stock market each trade costs money, sometimes a significant amount), so I'm inclined to save this as a way to get rid of any extra dissent.

PROLONG TERMS OF SERVICE: this trades IC and dissent and supplies for a manpower increase, at two different levels (two years and three years extension). Unfortunately, the game provides exactly no information (other than hints) as to what the effects will actually be.

INVEST IN PUBLIC HEALTH: this is new to "AAR", and allows us to trade a little of our income rate (one 'dollar' a day) for... well, it isn't clear what. An event 2.74 years later. Probably a good event, at which time the option will be offered again.

MINIMUM WAGE: also new with "AAR", this has a number of effects on daily governmental income (slightly), IC (slightly), dissent (rather more than slightly!), manpower (slightly), and (at the far end either way) our cultural sliders, which in turn can have some pretty far reaching effects. Probably better to save this for helping reduce dissent.

INVEST IN PUBLIC SECURITY: also new with "AAR", this trades a slight decrease in our daily income ($1) for... well, it's vague. Presumably it helps dissent. 1000 days later it'll generate an event, and then come up for option again.

INVEST IN EDUCATION: also new with "AAR", this trades a slight decrease in our daily income ($1) for... another vague effect, probably having to do with research speed. Generates an event 1000 days later when it should come up again as an option.

ENACT PARTIAL MOBILIZATION: this trades supplies and dissent (though how much isn't clear from the description) for a significant jump in military manpower.

I should note here that unless the "AAR" mod changes the event chain a lot, Russia will get a freakish jump in manpower anyway the moment we go to war. Like, around TWENTY THOUSAND compared to only 20 manpower right now. (Keep in mind, 1 mp unit equals around 1000 soldiers plus support.) On the other hand, if we choose to stay out of the war, and manage to avoid it (by refusing to side with Serbia for example), that huge jump won't trigger. But I'm unsure whether it's possible for Russia to stay out of being dragged by scripts into WW1.

I will however mention briefly here something I'll be discussing later: I'm convinced that the only serious chance Russia has of staying "Russia" in vanilla WW1 is by avoiding going to war, even if that costs a big dissent jump for not helping Serbia. But then, in vanilla DH, Russia is terribly undermanned at the start of WW1. If anything, the "AAR" mod jumps off the other side of that horse with something like 100 available divisions! -- not counting any support brigades! (Because I haven't looked into counting them yet. ;) )

Meanwhile, back to discussing initial strategic decisions. A few important ones I'm familiar with from vanilla DH appear to be missing, and I can't tell yet whether that's because there are too many decisions on the list and I need to get rid of them, or because "AAR" eliminates them -- though I hope not!

One trades money every one or two months (I forget which, could be optional how much so) for a slight reduction in overall research time plus maybe some blueprints (which will help reduce specific tech research times); one trades money every two months for a small dissent reduction and a randomly placed factory somewhere in my controlled territory, assuming (which is certainly true for Russia) I have any territory at 30% infrastructure or better -- this is BY FAR the fastest way to get factories, but I don't get to place them strategically; and one trades money every two months (or more depending on the extent of funds committed) to generating a slight dissent reduction and also a 10% improvement in infrastructure in some random territory -- which is again BY FAR the fastest way to grow infrastructure, but which hurts more for being unable to strategically control where the improvements (there can be up to three) will occur.

I used those three decisions religiously as Ethopia, let me tell you! I would certainly use the factory and research decisions regularly as Russia, too... and yeah probably the infrastructure one, but Russia needs so much help there so far spread around that having it show up randomly dilutes its effectiveness a ton. Just to be safe I probably wouldn't use those decisions at all until I've traded Poland for a better defensive posture; no reason to give the Germs more factories and easier roads there!

Anyway, my initial guesses are to devote 3 of my daily income to a combination of Education, Public Security, and Public Health; and maybe issue currency once so I can prepare for trading. Then if the decision rolls uplist from having made room for it, invest in research -- though that takes an absolute amount of money, sometimes a lot, not merely a rate decrease, so I'd probably wait there until I had earned enough on the supplies market.

As for manpower increases, eh... the game (on a different screen I haven't talked about yet) says I need 505.40 mp to bring all my divisions and groups up to speed. If I do go to war, by the way, the game will instantly teleport all the manpower necessary to bring mp up, out of the ginormous pile of mp which will suddenly be available (far in excess of 505). So if I knew for sure I was going to war, I'd just wait and let that magically happen (unless "AAR" changes it??), devoting my industrial capacity elsewhere; but if I'm going to try to avoid war, I'm unsure whether going to war later will properly trigger the massive manpower upgrade and instant reinforcement. If not, I'll need to have been devoting mp to getting my divisions (and some naval groups, since I might as well use them as long as I can) up to full strength asap.

This probably means it's time to talk about the economy screen, where I determine how much IC goes to what general purposes each day. But that'll be a new post.

[JasonPratt]

I know at least some readers must be getting impatient with waiting to get back to the main thread topic: how can Russia survive WW1 in Darkest Hour? So I'm going to try ignoring the economics side for a while to talk about actual military strategy.

Part of that answer is certainly: don't play vanilla DH because Russia starts ahistorically way too underpowered. (Though that could be a different challenge in itself, of course.) Russia should start with the largest land army in the world, and in the "AAR" mod we may have that, since we have over 150 divisions.

That's going to make things easier, or less purely suicidal anyway, but it also makes things more tempting.

I'm at the office, not the house, right now, so I can't load up and take snapshots, but I'll repost these two from way upthread.





That's the big picture of western Russia (where all our divisions are currently parked, more or less), plus a zoom-in to the Germany/Austrian/Romanian borders (with the partisan filter turned on for tracking dissent levels) so you can see the distinct territories or counties better.

(Technically I should call them territories, but it's easier to type 'counties' instead.  )


Now. Ideally I would think the best strategy for Russia is still not to play, because even though we've now (properly) got the largest land army in the world, they're mostly far outdated, some even back to pre-American Civil War era (1850s). And our tech levels generally are pretty bad. And our infrastructure is pretty bad. And we've still got quite a bit of pacifying to do in Finland to keep it from spawning rebel divisions which could march around retaking Finland's factories (which, along with military manpower and some scattered industrial materials, is really the only reason to have any territory in the game at all).

So if we could set up a Russian maginot line, just to deter Hunny adventurism, and find a way to stay out of the war, we'd still be able to spend years upgrading Russia for a late-war entry similar to US dominance. Especially if a few strategic decisions can keep our dissent low (and maybe even remove Finland's dissent altogether automagically without needing to post policing divisions and/or garrisons.)

True, that would give the Central Powers an opportunity to put full power on France (and whichever allies it drags in, hopefully not us if we can avoid it), but that will still take a few years of fighting (because attack vs defense isn't great for anyone right now), allowing us to cowboy and ranger up (I'll explain later why I phrased it that way), at the end of which either France and its allies may have won after all, but even if the Huns win they'll be experienced but exhausted. Allowing us to launch a crushing vengeance on them from their east. In other words, staying neutral (if we can) would allow us a late-war entry similar to historical US dominance, only much better primed to take and hold a ton of European land. (Or if we want, to liberate some nations afterward for allies and less dissent problems.)


That's if we can stay out of the war. But I'm not sure we can; I just don't know if the scripting code will allow us to duck our treaties with France and/or Britain or whoever. With Serbia, yes (I think); with them, I don't know. Also, if the Ottomani join the Central Powers (not entirely a foregone conclusion) they may decide for scripted reasons to start spearing us from the south -- and though I think it's possible through diplomacy to avoid that, I'm not sure. I feel pretty sure the Ottomani won't try anything without support from Germany et al, but the Ottomani might drag us into a war with Germany sooner than we want after all.

So, if we can't stay out of the war, then what?

[JasonPratt]

If we can't stay out of the coming war after all, then Poland becomes the first main issue.

For convenience, here's that zoom-in of our western front again. The pink dissent filter helpfully highlights where Poland is (though keep in mind two division stacks are keeping dissent down in two territories).



Again, ideally Poland would make a great salient for launching ass-kicking superstacks toward Berlin and other CP capitals, which if we take won't necessarily knock them out of the war automatically but which could send them into a positive death spiral. But while quanity does have its own quality, I'm not sure we can pack enough quantity into Poland to overcome our serious detriments (undertech'd troops, fighting with WW1 attack values) versus an early war Germany, much less while still defending our lines on either side of the Polish salient to prevent the CPs from cutting our expeditionary armies off from supply and (once having broken through) generally running rampant in our hinterlands, threatening our own primary and secondary capitals, and sending our own dissent into a positive death spiral.

So if we end up going to war with the Central Powers early, Poland becomes a liability, not an advantage. It stretches our defensive line by about half again, diluting our defensive strength along a line; and while it would allow some mutual support against attacks within the salient, the enemy would be well-advised (and I've seen Germany do it in this game even on vanilla DH) to set up a superstack or two and pince off the bubble. Early in the war, that would be fatal for practically any number of Russian divisions and brigades caught inside the pocket: and in Darkest Hour (even with the "AAR" mod), those divisions and brigades could not be rebuilt within 200 days, and perhaps significantly longer.

Poland could be helpful slowing down a German attack while setting up a defensive line behind Poland (and elsewhere), if necessary: our infrastructure is so relatively bad even here in far western Russian (where it's generally at the best), and we have so many divisions to try to move compared to our transport capacity (which is a function independent of infrastructure), that we won't be able to move everything into place quickly. It seems very probable that we will still be moving divisions (even as corps or armies; more on that soon) out of Sia and Kiev toward the western border, in December!

However, even then we would want to plan carefully for a fighting withdrawal so as to keep any divisions from being caught in a fatal pocket from which they cannot be rescued.

This also somewhat leads to the question of whether there's any point trying to upgrade divisions in Poland or assigning them new brigades. Some upgrades, when along the same path (instead of trying to create different types), don't take long; and neither do some brigade creations. Still "not long" tends to be "maybe as soon as 40 days" for a small upgrade, after which reinforcements and maybe reorganization still could be required; and even the quickest brigade construction (useful for defending Poland anyway) takes around three months.

What we can do, almost immediately (within a couple of weeks), is take brigades from stock (including putting all extant brigades into stock if already deployed) and assign them to any divisions we use for a fighting withdrawal in Poland.


Does that mean it's time to talk about how units are organized in the game? Seems so... ;)

[JasonPratt]

Okay, the basic land unit on the map (i.e. not air or naval, and there are no non-military map units) is the division. But I'll talk about organization starting from smallest to largest.


BRIGADE: this is a sub-map unit; it doesn't move around independently, and to affect the map must be attached to a division. (For air and especially naval units, this slot represents optional technological upgrades.) Because of the way the game engine works, brigades can be teleported around the map almost immediately (with some lag time for putting them into and back out of national stock) regardless of any other considerations, so long as the receiving (and contributing) division is in supply. Brigades are produced on the economy window much like divisions (indeed from a submenu of the division creation menu), and can be produced relatively quickly compared to any division. Brigades come in various flavors, some unique to the brigade structure (like engineers and artillery), some not (like cavalry); the usual way of putting tanks in the field is by attaching them as brigades, though shortly before WW2 (depending on which land doctrines are chosen, and then depending on successful research with pre-requisites) tank divisions become possible. Brigades can be upgraded with new technology (once available) through a special selection on a division's window. Brigades cannot be converted to another type of brigade, nor upgraded into a division. They can be disbanded to recover manpower. Most divisions can have only one brigade attached, some no brigades. Standard infantry divisions can have two attached brigades. Divisions also have limitations as to brigade types depending on the type of division.

Based on an in-depth statistical study I ran while playing as Ethopia and two Russian campaign attempts, by far the most cost-efficient combat-power brigade (and also for time to build, and for spreading manpower, and in pretty much every way) is the standard artillery brigade. A super-heavy arty brigade isn't bad; though an armored car brigade is better than SHarty (and better than the first possible tank brigade). Whether this remains true in "AAR" I don't know yet; I need to spend some time comparing numbers. Arty does naturally slow down a division by one tick, but even a cav division remains pretty speedy with an arty brigade attached -- though in that sense, naturally armored cars work best with cav, even if they don't help quite as much on attack and defense as arty would.

The upshot is that the fastest way to cost-effectively increase our divisions' punch is to build arty and maybe armored car brigades: we can spread a lot more firepower out this way, for the same industrial effort as less and more concentrated firepower (with a lot more manpower cost) much MUCH less quickly in making any division.

[JasonPratt]

DIVISION: this is the basic on-map unit. They take a long time and (variably) lots of manpower to create, but they're the smallest unit that can take and hold ground.

Any general can be assigned to any division, but each division in-game has a 'generic' general by default (as do brigades which cannot be assigned 'character' generals at all), though generals may start the game already assigned to divisions.

Most divisions can have one brigade attached, some none, and standard infantry divs can have two brigs.

The game does track how many of multiple kinds of troops can be found in any division: a standard infantry division for example can have significant numbers of armored cars, horses, tanks, arty and super-arty, even without brigade support, depending on its technology level.

While standard infantry divisions are rather 'soft' on resisting damage compared to light infantry or cavalry (or other specialized divs like armor or marines), they bring substantially the most manpower and so can take actual losses better than other divisions, even if it's harder to hurt other divisions. This also means standard infantry are better at using manpower to create bonuses for having more troops in the battle; but organizing divisions into corps can help offset this.

Based on my aforemention statistical studies (and assuming for now that these hold true in "AAR"), by far the best division (in the early years of WW1 anyway) is a garrison! -- but garrisons cannot move except by 'strategic movement' (once that's researched), and so cannot attack to take territories. After that, cavalry and light infantry divisions are better than militia (though their ability to spread out manpower effectively and cheaply is not to be dismissed) and standard infantries, even accounting for two brigades being possible compared to one each for cav and light/mountain infantry. Naturally cav is faster, too; whereas after a point light infantry gets bonuses for mountain fighting.

This suggests that our upgrade paths should focus first on getting our cav and (few) light infantries up to date; and then on transforming standard infantry divisions into cav or light (which can take most of or more than a year). This also suggests our research should concentrate there and not bother with standard infantry. Not unless we want to try to make a largely-garrison based army work: it doesn't take relatively much time to convert any division to a garrison! (But garrison divisions are a side effect of standard infantry research.) Until we can research (and afford to apply) strategic movement, though, I don't recommend trying for a heavy-garrison army: otherwise we'll only be pushed around by the enemy and be unable to counter-attack for taking or re-taking territory. (A garrison can attack into an adjacent territory, if I recall correctly, but not move there to secure it; and strategic movement requires a secured territory to arrive in.)

Once the proper industrial tech is researched, divisions will start to entrench once they stop for a day or so; but these are definitely NOT World War One trenches. I'm honestly unsure whether the game even HAS that kind of trenching; I was too far away as Ethiopia to tell, and I've never kept going into 1915 as Russia. These are temporary defensive camp setups (put your machine guns here, your arty there), which get instantly torn down the moment a move or attack is assigned.

My guess is that the only way to get WW1-style trenching in this game is to build fortifications, which are of minimal use unless manned by divisions but which are semi-permanent and can be captured by the enemy and used defensively in turn (once brought back up to par after the attack). I think an infinitely high amount of fortifications can be build in a territory, too, just like factories appear to have no upper limit in a single territory. However, it's a legitimate question whether it's feasible for us to try building forts now/yet beyond the few that already exist on our border. My impression is that we're stuck with a decision ten years ago not to do that. ;)

Any division (also any air or sea unit) can be reduced in both manpower and organization, each of which proportionately reduces an ability to attack or defend. Low organization leads to uncontrolled routs. Elite divisions, like cav and mtn infantry (and armored car brigades, by the way) tend to have specially high organization limits; militia by contrast has a base org of 50/100 and cannot normally exceed this. Russia will happen to start with all its divisions organized to their inherent limit (plus or minus any bonuses from generals, terrain, weather, etc.), but not all our divisions are up to full manpower; and divisions naturally disorganize when moving around. This by the way means divisions (and corps and armies made of divisions) are of almost no use coming to the rescue of an attacked territory, or joining in an attack, after a long march. I'm unsure yet whether strategic movement affects initial organization at the arrival point, but I'm guessing it does though not as much as having to march for months (or in Russia even a few years!) to get there.

One upshot to this, is that it's best to organize cavalry divisions into dedicated corps so that they can move around more freely with better organization at the arrival point (CAVALRY TO THE RESCUE! -- OR FOR THE BREAKOUT!) But even then they should only travel a few territories before the action, so many small cav corps are better in this regard than a few large cav corps.

This also implies that headquarters shouldn't be topped up with the maximum number of divisions, since then the arrival of cav to the rescue may hamper HQ bonuses. But we'll get to that later. This early in the (pre)war we don't have many HQ divisions anyway.


Wait, have I been talking about corps a lot? Time to talk about corps I guess. ;)

[JasonPratt]

CORPS are the basic single grouping of divisions. There aren't in fact single army groups per se (so far as I've ever been able to tell), so corps are also the largest single units moving around on the map. Strictly speaking, corps are also the ONLY land units moving around on the map: if you want to move a division by itself, you still have to split it off into its own corps (although you can then rename it whatever you want, to clarify it's just a division.)

A corps is an organizational container, with its own name and general, in which divisions can be put. I think even tribal cultures can, in effect, create corps, but I may be wrong, it may need the "19th century warfare" land doctrine to do that. At any rate, even tribal cultures have 1850 infantry tech. ;)

Corps are created automatically by merging two divisions, after which more divisions can be added.

Corps mainly make things easier for the human player to organize for moving divisions around, assigning manpower and upgrade protocols, and that kind of thing. The computer has a tendency to ignore grouping its divisions into corps, which is why it's more common to see a "superstack" marching around from an AI controlled nation.

Corps do however provide one key benefit: any general assigned to the corps will provide the whole corps with his bonuses (or debuffs as the case might be!) The highest ranking general among divisions in a corps will automatically take that slot, so it's often better to pick one manually. Divisions moving around as a corps tend to stay a little better organized over long distances, too.

(To be honest I'm at work and I don't recall clearly whether divisions can have their own generals; it's possible I'm thinking of seeing multiple corps in a territory, each with its own general's portrait, the highest ranking of whom leads the battle. I'll correct all that later if necessary.)

Generals have limits as to how many divisions they can command at once, the minimum being 3 if I recall correctly. We can promote any general for free, if he has some points of experience, but each promotion reduces his xp by one point. So if we want a 3-div general to be able to command 9 divisions without overstraining, we can promote him twice if he has 2 xp, but then he'll have 0 xp and be less effective as a general for a while.

Corps have their own tacit headquarters, as do divisions (and brigades for that matter), which don't need managing by the player; they aren't on the map. Neither can they support multiple corps, or divisional detachments. To get those and other benefits, we need army HQs, which I'll talk about next.

Suffice to say here that one of the first things I'll need to do is sort various divisions into and out of corps for best effect. Those giant stacks of divisions in Sia and Kiev? -- those should be going in corps, pronto.