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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 (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=9486.msg241456#new).)

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.

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.

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.

^^ 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). ;)

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.

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.

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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.

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).


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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

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.



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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.)

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.

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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.



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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...

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:

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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.

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.

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F911%2FEytYF8.png&hash=e9d8c72a433ab69eccb2e0071e1a1507aa3983f8)

(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F540%2FO0Stom.png&hash=c960cc17c0d725584b6ebdcf4bda33721d175ae5)

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.  :crazy2: )


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?

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).

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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... ;)

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.

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. ;)

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.

ARMY HQ: last, and kind-of least. I said divisions are the smallest unit on the map, but I'm pretty doubtful these are actually full division size, though they do have integral combat capabilities like a militia division (or somewhat better). In vanilla DH I have occasionally seen the AI using army HQs for recon, which is hilariously wrong! -- but to be fair, I only saw that in situations where it hadn't brought up many divisions yet.

HQs need a general for best effect, but I'm fuzzy about how the game treats relative rank in this case; in fact I haven't used HQs much yet, since I couldn't get around to building them as Ethiopia and Russia doesn't start with many.

Basically, HQs provide various organizational, supply, and combat bonuses to corps (and divisions) under their command. I'm not at all clear yet how the game parses this command chain; it doesn't seem possible to create "armies" per se, but in effect that's what's happening: an "army" is a "corps" with an Army HQ attached, but HQs give bonuses to other corps nearby. I think. I'll talk more about that as I get more experience with them I guess.

As I learned to my chagrin while playing Ethiopia, HQ tech is upgraded on various land doctrine technology paths.

Wow that was a short entry.  :D

Ack, away from keyboard much longer than I was expecting today, so no work on Russia today.

It may be several days before my next update: if you've read this far, you know I just got finished talking about sorting divisions into corps and corps into armies (maybe, if I can recall how to do that), and shuffling brigades around and into divisions -- and that doesn't even begin dealing with what to produce first! (Or to stop producing as the case may very well be.)

That was no joke back in vanilla DH for Russia, and now we have significantly more than 150 divisions: I seriously don't know how many yet, because I only know we have more than 150 which need upgrading! -- presumably they aren't all behind our current technical curve, though most must be.

Anyway, next time I check in, I hope the western map will show much smaller "stacks" of divisions. In fact, I probably won't check in again until I can show a plot for moving (or starting to move) corps (and armies) into post-initial positions.

Is there still a check box for prioritizing which divisions get taken care of first?  I know in HOI2, you could go to each division and prioritize it for upgrades.  That would allow you to spend less IC on trying to get ALL of them up to speed at one time.  It may also be a good idea to look in to disbanding some units.  I am fairly certain that the manpower goes back in to the national pool.  At least a fraction of it does. 

Yeah, all the manpower goes back in the pool (whatever was left in the division) once the division (or brigade) disbands.

Manpower isn't really a problem for Russia, though. I have two different ways to mobilize more already; with mobilization research on the way as well; and if we go to war we instantly not only get full manpower topped up everywhere, but we suddenly get no kidding around twenty thousand manpower. Where one, remember, equals about a thousand troops. In other words, we'll have 20 million troops to send wherever we want. The Germans won't be able to kill any divisions for a long, long time, unless they cut divisions off from supply -- thus the question of how best to abandon Poland so we don't leave any divisions trapped there unable to get out of a pocket!

And admittedly the "AAR" mod may change how much we get; but right now I'm not worried about it.


And yes, I can click on a toggle switch for reinforcements or not, in each division or per corps -- obviously it would be easier to do that per corps, once I get the divisions sorted around! But again I'm not worried about manpower.


Upgrades for divisions, though, that's a tougher problem. I'll be toggling a lot of divisions off (in fact I already did so, for reinforcements, too, for all naval and air units, except some reinforcements for the Baltic fleet), in order to concentrate on upgrading a few at a time as quickly as possible while doing other production things, especially making new arty brigades (and some armored car brigades).

So now I've created a new spreadsheet, imported all the new figures into it for starting Russian infantry and arty and armored techs in the "AAR" mod, and run my comparisons.

Keep in mind that I'm necessarily looking at what's most effective right now, because I don't really have figures for what a tech would be later; and even if I did (presumably they're buried in one of the data files for the game, the main one being literally as long as ALL OF ROBERT JORDAN'S WHEEL OF TIME BOOKS PUT TOGETHER so yeah I'm probably not going to search through that thanks) by the time I researched up to that point some other factors might have also improved which could affect the relative efficiency outcomes.

If I was feeling particularly heinous, I would now inflict a screenshot of the spreadsheet at my reader, but I'm feeling merciful so I'll spare you.  O0


(But obviously I'm not going to spare you from my tedious number crunching FLEE YOU FOOLS FLEE NOW BEFORE YOUR REGRET DESPAIRS YOU!! (https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wargamer.com%2Fforums%2Fsmiley%2Fcthulhu_smiley.gif&hash=bfa0024dfc427a6269e1e11190eb480b1a690c8e))


In order to understand my report, it's important to get a handle on what's available for Russia to build; at what tech levels; what the unit stats mean; and how I'm gauging unit effectiveness by the stats.

Russia at the start of the game, a little more than a month before the historical kickoff of WW1, can spend production power (industrial capacity units, IC) and days and manpower building five different kinds of divisions, and four different kinds of combat brigades. (There are also non-combat brigades which help increase some non-combat abilities for divisions, so there's no point gauging their combat effectiveness.)

Those divisions are Infantry-3, Garrison-2, Militia-2, Light-3 (actually abbreviated Mtn-3 because later this becomes Mountain infantry), and Cavalry-3.

(Britain has access to Marines already, but normally nations can't get those until 1922 or thereabouts. Tank brigades haven't been invented yet, much less tank divisions. Motorized, Mechanized, and Airborne Divisions won't show up until much closer to WW2. Ditto Special Forces brigades, which are basically Mtn Infantry.)

Each of those is capable of adding at least one combat brigade (though not all divisions can add the same kind of brigades); and standard infantry divisions can add two brigades of pretty much anything (but not two of the same kind). This increases the possible options for production.

Brigades can also be produced independently, to be attached to existing compatible divisions.

Available combat brigades are: Artillery-1, SuperHeavyArty-1, Cavalry-3, and Armored Car-1.

The -# suffixes indicate the level of technology. Garrison and Militia are researched along with regular Infantry, and occasionally upgrade. The suffix provides a quick reference to relative tech, but in fact some lower suffixes are higher tech than others. Mil-2 is 1897 tech for example (not quite 20th century), but Gar-2 is 1907, which is actually better than Inf-3 at 1903 tech, but Gar-2 is on par with Mtn-3 and Cav-3 for 1907 technology. AC-1 and Arty-1, on the other hand, are 1911 tech. (In this game there are no arty brigades less than 1911 tech, although color descriptions indicate Russia has 1900 arty and 1910 super-arty.)


Each division is rated for attack against hard, soft, and air targets (not any very hard targets right now, but hard attack values kind of suck anyway); vulnerability against defenders, attackers, and air; organization; morale; softness (everything is a 100 percent soft target right now except an armored car brigade and its still 90% soft); how many days it takes to make at top speed (affected by industrial efficiency); how much IC it needs to be produced at top speed; and the manpower which will be deducted to make it. And the supplies (and oil) it will use per day under normal circumstances. (Each division has some other stats, too, but those don't affect combat efficiency in relation to production factors.)

Each brigade is rated somewhat similarly, but in terms of what it adds or subtracts to a division's figures. Sometimes those effects stack, sometimes not: if a brigade (or a set of two for an infantry div) is made along with a division, the brigade(s) won't add to the days made, but will add to the IC and manpower needed.


Attack (in defense against) air, and defense against air, won't really be a significant factor until late in the war if ever, so I'm not counting those in my calcs right now.

Defense values are better the lower they go, since what they rate is vulnerability.

Organization affects how effective a unit is at attack or defense, so higher values are better, and it is in fact possible to be better than 100 per cent organized. Up to that point, a unit is relatively disorganized and this affects its combat effectiveness negatively. In other words a unit at 75% efficiency can only apply 75% of its strength 5 attack against soft targets, whereas its vulnerability on defense or on offense goes up by the same proportion.

Morale may or may not affect attack and defense figures (I'm not sure), but it definitely affects whether the division (and any attached brigade(s)) will rout into another county (or surrender if it cannot retreat).

Morale and Org are somewhat affected by higher unit tech, but usually more affected by other factors (including other techs).

Softness affects how strongly soft attacks will hit against the unit.


Got that so far? Okay.


First I rate combat efficiency, which according to my current efficiency theory means starting by separately summing up hard att, soft att; and def vul, off vul values; and then dividing sum att by sum def (because the higher the def values the worse); then multiplying by the organization percentage; then multiplying by the morale percentage (either one of which being less than 1.00 makes the result worse); then dividing by the soft percentage (which any less than 1.00 is great). Finally I multiply by 100 to give a result somewhere in the range of 1 (to normalize the result so I'm not comparing tiny fractions with each other).

That's basic combat efficiency for a division, which I sometimes call raw power, which I can then adjust based on how adding particular combat brigades affects the raw power. A Inf-3 division for Russia (it might be different for other nations, especially insofar as org and morale are affected) has a rawpow of 1.4132, which naturally any brigade adds to, and any mix of two available combat brigades even moreso. (No brigade, so far, makes any combat stats worse.)

In that sense, Mtn-3 and Cav-3 have the best rawpow values; and they still do even with one brigade added compared to any two brigades added to regular infantry. This isn't so much due to attack values (which are inferior compared to a regular infantry division, and moreso with a brigade mix) as to superior defensive, organizational, and morale values.

One factor I haven't reckoned positively yet by the way is unit size, which can be considered (at least) the hit points to the various armor classes. Unit size is directly proportional to manpower requirements (sort of), so a larger unit has a quality based on its quantity. I haven't figured out how directly the manpower relates to final combat resistance, though; and the game doesn't bother to tell me ahead of time how many troops will be in a brigade or division, much less how many of those troops will have combat strength (horses may or may not reflect combat strength for example). Consequently for want of any clearer way to treat the issue, I regard manpower constraints and manpower contributions to neutralize each other pro and con. But I mention this to register some uncertainty as to whether I'm underestimating divisions (and brigades).

Therefore, the top five division and brigade mixes currently available to Russia so far are, in descending order:

Cav-3 + Cav-3 (4.1098)
Cav-3 + Art-1 (4.0031)
Cav-3 + AC-1 (3.9594)
Mtn-3 + Cav-3 (3.3872)
Mtn-3 + Art-1 (3.1909)

So that's what we ought to be building, and building toward, right?

Ohhh, friend... the darkness of the hour goes deeper than that...  >:D

While those figures can give us an idea what to build and upgrade toward, they don't yet take into account limited industrial capacity and the fact that we need the most efficient troops we can get asap because war is on our doorstep.

Those eliteish divisions take more time to train than regular infantry, and much more than a garrison or militia. We're talking about the difference between 176 days for militia (who have a 10 thousand troop upper limit by the way) and 494 days for light infantry. That's 1.37 game years! (Darkest Hour years are 360 days by the way; all months have 30 days.) We wouldn't see a new light-inf division until Christmas NEXT YEAR! Crikey even a diddly little militia division takes almost half a year to produce.

Which is realistic of course, but gives you an idea how screwed Russia is in vanilla Darkest Hour despite having an approximation of infinite manpower: new divisions just can't be cranked out.

We're also limited in industrial capacity, despite having a very respectable starting IC of 172. Out of that budget, though, we have to keep supplies in production (or buy them) for troops already in the field and maybe soon in combat operations (movement also increases supply usage, and we're dang sure going to be moving lots of troops soon); and also train reinforcements for any short divisions; and also produce consumer supplies; and produce equipment (and training) for any divisional upgrades.

So we don't get all that 172, not even close to it. Maybe around a third or a half if we're lucky.

But a Cav-3 division with a Cav-3 brigade costs 6.3 IC to produce at max speed. Any less assigned, and the production speed drops in proportion -- and it already takes 388 days! (That's like early August NEXT YEAR starting now.)


Taking rawpow (whether for a naked division or with attached brigades), dividing by the fastest days to make, and dividing by IC required to make at top speed (and then multiplying by 1000 to normalize the fraction back to something usefully around 1) gives what I call punchspeed: how fast can rawpower be put into service.


Looked at from that perspective, the top five punchspeediest divs or div and brigade combos are:

Cav-3 + AC-1 (1.7594)
Gar-2             (1.7338) (which has 0 movement)
Cav-3 + Cav-3 (1.6813)
Cav-3 + Art-1 (1.6121)
Cav-3 by itself (1.5441)

Mtn-3 + Cav-3 is still better than any division or div/brig which can actually move (Garrisons can't except by strategic movement, maybe), but its Art-1 brigade though still also a good punchspeed combo can be beaten by infantry + AC, or by inf + cav + AC.


Moreover, before war kicks off Russia is somewhat limited in manpower, and since that's a constraint I could (and on the sheet I do) take the punchspeed and divide by manpower requirements (times a normalizing 10); or divide the rawpower by manpower requirements if I had time to fiddle around but not much manpower to do it with.

(And I could take the punchspreadspeed figure and divide by supplies to get an efficiency at doing all that for upkeep spent per day.)


As it happens, Russia may very well be drawn into the war whether we want it or not -- and if so we may get a ridiculous jump in manpower, so that effectively this constraint can be ignored and all we need to consider is punchspeed.

BUT: as I talked about upthread, in time eonian past (https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wargamer.com%2Fforums%2Fsmiley%2Fdizzy2.gif&hash=99914b413b8d9fb0ad56ddbd30072e8ec13dc4aa), since DH gives Russia an opportunity to avoid supporting Serbia, I plan to take that option and delay entry into the war as long as feasibly possible. If so, even if we spend money (and some tech research) on upping our manpower, we could still have a fairly limited manpower pool to work with; and yet with a world war firing off in Europe (and a Chinese civil war constantly spooling up on our Eastern border, not even counting what Japan might do), we could still be under some time constraints to get effective power on the map.


Looked at like that, in an ideal world war one scenario (where Russia stays out for a significant and substantial time, if not altogether), the top five punchspreadspeed divisions or div/brig combos are:

Cav, without any brigades at all (2.5735)
Cav with AC (1.9549)
Cav with Arty (1.7912)
Cav with Cav (1.6813)
Gar-2 without an arty brigade (they can only get arty as a combat brigade) (1.7338)

Or Militia-2 without arty or cav (for a movable division) (1.7338)
Or Light Infantry without arty or cav (for something not embarrassingly weak and liable to run away ;) ) (0.8937)

After that the best is a plain infantry div with no brigades; and then back to the light infants with cav or arty. Then regular infantry plus armored cars.


So, thinking along that line, we ought to be building Cav divisions and not worrying about brigades, if we're at peace and likely to stay that way for a while yet still want to get our manpower spread out as far as possible as soon as possible in the most effective combat strength possible keeping those factors in account.

Or rather, we ought to be converting what we have into Cav divisions, since that takes less IC and time (if anything, though really about the same if we're cross-converting from other division types) but we'll get some manpower back.


Or,  if we think we're going to be dragged into war sooner rather than later (or at all), we should be upgrading existing divisions into Cav-3 and producing armored car brigades.

And since our IC, though large, is limited, we should start with upgrading any low-level Cav first (since that's quicker than converting a division to Cav), and then once that's done start upgrading any low-level light infantry to Mtn-3; then any militia (lowest levels first if any) to Cav-3; then any regular infantry (lowest levels first) to Cav-3.

Of course any of this might change significantly with tech researches. But the comparisons give us a good idea what to focus our research in, even though we can't be sure infantry (or militia for that matter!) won't catch up being as cost-effective as cav or mtn-inf divisions.

We should research Cavalry (which also gets us improved cav brigades); Armored Cars; Artillery; and Light (soon Mountain) Infantry. Then we can look into tanks and catch up on basic infantry research; and look into researching marines perhaps if we survive into 1922 (or get the prereqs to try a little earlier, though DH punishes early research with tough time penalties.)


Oh, wait. First we should look into how comparatively cost-effective it is to just build brigades at first; because they definitely take less time and IC than full divisions! -- we'd still want to upconvert the huge swarm of divisions we already have (no need to build any new ones for a long time), but adding Cav, Arty, or AC might get more rawpower out on the map more quickly than upgrading divs.

I'll get back with those numbers soon.  :)

Back now.

It's probably impossible to get a real apples to apples comparison between brigades and divisions in how effectively combat power is produced. Brigades don't operate (in this game) apart from divisions, so some of their stats are the same (like fastest days to complete, and IC for full speed production, and manpower, supply/oil, and attack values) while other stats are quite different (defense values, organization, morale, and hard-target effects). The latter group lists as improvements (along with attack values, but they can be treated as a raw stat, too); the former group as raw stats (mostly to do with costs).


This is no small problem, because brigades add fairly small improvements anyway, at rather significant costs; but the improvements are provided in a fashion different than the comparable division stats.

The best I could do in the end was create a sum of the improvements to attack and defense values; multiply that by a sum of the improvements (if any, usually not) in organization, morale, or hardening, expressed as a percentage more than 100 (so for a 2% hardening improvement that contributes 1.02 to the sum for multiplying the sum of the attack and defense improvements); and then divide as usual across the costs (with a little normalization along the way for ease of reference).

Looked at like that, the best brigade production for punchspeed is currently armored cars and then arty (by far, but AC significantly more than arty); then SHArty; then cav at rather lower than sharty.

And those ratios remain constant for punchspeedspread, although if speed isn't a factor only manpower for effectively spreading the raw power increase, SHArty comes first, followed closely by regular Arty, then AC at a distant third, and Cav at a very distant fourth.

But then once continuing supply costs are factored in, the spread goes back to Arty by a more than twice the value for AC, which in turn is almost twice the value of SHArty, which in turn is almost three times the value for Cav. (And supply usage isn't something to sneeze at, as it affects how much IC we can put toward doing other things than keeping our troops in supply!)


What does that mean? Dang if I know.  :uglystupid2: :crazy2: :))

It probably means that in the very short term, as in WE MAY NOT SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO GET DIVS UPSCALED, it's better to create armored car divisions, since they put more competency on the map more quickly even than arty.

But that's only compared with other brigades or making divisions from scratch (sort of, or cross-upgrading). I just don't have proper figures for whether upgrading lower-tech cav (and light infantry) up to date (maybe also some out-of-date brigades for that matter) is a more or less effective use of our time and resources than building armored car brigades.

And even making divisions (with or without brigades already attached) from scratch might well be more time-and-cost-effective at putting military competency on the map than brigades, even though four(ish) more armored car brigades can be produced than cavalry divisions (with brigades) in the same time.


That means I don't really know whether it's better to kit up everyone with an armored car brigade pronto before upgrading their divisions, or upgrading their divisions before producing new brigades for them (which might or might not be AC, could be Cav or Arty depending on our priorities).



....annnnnd now you are insane.

Sorry. When you look too long into the Darkest Hour, etc. (https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wargamer.com%2Fforums%2Fsmiley%2Fcthulhu_smiley.gif&hash=bfa0024dfc427a6269e1e11190eb480b1a690c8e)

So, I spent today doing the following things in preparation for actually starting Russia's campaign.

0.) Copy-pasted all recent entries into my main doc archive, so I wouldn't lose them accidentally.

1.) Before I forgot again to do so, I split the Baltic fleet into two roughly equal groups (because one group was too much for any one admiral to handle), assigned tactical experts to each of them as admirals, named the new one the Empress Baltic Fleet, and rebased both fleets (plus the sub group) near the northern border with Germany. (They haven't started to sail yet, but the courses are plotted.) Saved the game.

2.) Using the army list I went through every corps, turning off resupply and upgrading for each corps, and sending any brigades attached to divisions back to the brigade pool for potential reassignment. Then, with my spirit crushed by the gears of administration, I went off to punch robots for a while. And saved the game.

3.) Seriously considered getting Shandalar to run in DosBox (or the D-Fend shell more specifically); couldn't recall where I had put Shandalar; went back to Darkest Hour.

4.) Searched all corps for any level 3 divisions of any kind. Found exactly none. Searched for any light infantry divisions of any level. Found exactly none. Wept. On the other hand, unlike vanilla DHFull, Russia in the "AAR" mod starts with all cav and infantry divisions at level 2 instead of some still at level 1! And no militia have been added or substituted. So it could be worse. A lot better but also worse.

This simplifies and simultaneously makes more difficult any upgrade strategy. Everything is almost entirely upgraded; so we don't have to waste time cross-upgrading militia or level 1 infantry to light infantry. And everything is almost entirely upgraded, so everything still needs final upgrades equally and we have no up-to-date troops at all.

5.) My most eastern group of corps, the 4th army, will take until early Sept to get anywhere near where the fighting may have already started by then, and will be so pooped they'll have to rest for weeks, and are at only ten percent strength anyway (except for the HQ which is at full strength). I'm somewhat unsure whether my initial strategic decisions (discussed at length some time ago upthread) will eliminate unrest in Finland, where a significant number of our factories are located. So at the moment I'm assigning this corps (without its HQ, which I'm aiming toward the front instead) to march to Teriyaki, just over the border from Petrograd, from which if necessary I can either assign them individually to anti-partisan duty near factory areas in Finland; or after resting and reinforcing them I can march them south to battle if Finland looks unrestless already. Also, this way I can joke about the territory being quite literally called Terijoki for some reason.

6.) Several "Turkistani" divisions are already staging near the probable war zone, but a couple of corps remain behind at the Turkish border (partly shared with Persia, with whom we also share more of a larger border eastward past the Caspian sea). I don't dare move them in case Turkey gets frisky, but on the other hand most of the divisions down there are pretty well full already. I take the two least full infantries and set them on anti-partisan duties at the center of clusters of factory territories (they'll suppress any revolts in their own and adjacent territories); and divide the cavs and remaining infantries into their own homogenous corps for redeploying a little closer to the Turkish border across a four territory front. This will cede a few counties to Turkey if they go to war, including some factories, but makes for a tighter defensive bulwark.


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Oh, and in a burst of inspired experimentation, I learn that I can rebase my air groups beyond their actual flight range somehow; so I send all four squads down to Kutaisi on the Turkish border, in case I need them (since I have no airbases on our western border, and couldn't possibly have any for a year under the best of circumstances.)

Save the game.

7.)  Ditto for a number of small corps in our next most-eastern line, not counting Kiev.


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8.) Ditto again all remain corps except the superstacks.

Note that I'm not reassigning brigades yet, mainly because I'll have to run the clock a few days before they become available to teleport around again. ;) But also partly because I need to have a clear idea what my first defensive strategies and groups will be. With so many divisions kind-of ready to go in "AAR", I'm thinking of trying to keep a Polish corridor open across several rivers. But I'll get to that later.

Also note that I'm not assigning reinforcement or upgrade orders yet either. I'll get to that once I have all the corps resorted around homogenously; meanwhile I'm making sure new corps groups turn off supply/upgrades.


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F673%2FodoDdd.png&hash=cedeb792a6665a91809b3a0dc00569f877520431)

Next up, the superstacks.

Catastrophe.

When I loaded up my initial save this afternoon to work on sorting and assigning initial moves to the two remaining superstacks, I happened by some faint premonition to click on another much smaller stack first...

...to make a horrifying tale shorter, none of my move assignments, corps sortings, or even turning off the upgrade/reinforcements... none of that was saved.

And not because I only imagined doing so. To test I quickly rebased my four tac bomber squadrons again; saved the game; reloaded... and their orders didn't save.

And yet, when I turned off their upgrades/reinforcements last week, and saved that -- that saved. That change is still there.


I don't even know. Experimentally, there's no point in re-administrating several dozen divisions again, not even counting the other half of my divisions, if the game has broken somehow and won't save my orders. Maybe this is an extension of the code-bug that cancels any ongoing fights during a save/reload. I don't know.

I know I'm awfully nauseated at the thought of having wasted all this time and effort for nothing, and at the prospect of trying to get it to working again. sigh.

Man. I don't even...

OH CRAP I FIGURED OUT WHAT HAPPENED!!

I was expecting the game to default to the "AAR_Russia_date" format I had first saved the game in, from which I loaded it; but it doesn't, the game always creates a save title based on the nation and date which the player has to add to in order to distinguish it from other saves of that nation and date.

So all that time I was in fact saving my assignments, but to a save name I didn't load from.

And then in my 'test' I inadvertently overwrote my save game, which until then had in fact been perfectly preserved.

So all those organizational tweaks really are gone now, thanks to my inattention and/or stupidity.



....well, the good news is that I can recreate all that, close enough to never mind, and be assured it really will save. The bad news is that I'll have to spend another several hours doing so, just to catch up again to where I had gotten.

I can't handle that tonight, though. yeesh.  :uglystupid2: :uglystupid2: :crazy2: :crazy2:

Well, it took me a week to find the time and energy to get back to where I was, but I have now reconstructed my previous assignments, with some minor differences in where various things shall be placed.

Now for the two superstacks.

Essentially each superstack has one of two options: I send them marching out to help line defense, or I create assault groups for trying to take the fight to the Germs or the Huns. Each has benefits; so I decide to send out the larger superstack (in Kiev) to bolster line defense, and create assault corps with the smaller superstack in Sia.

Up in Siauliai, I divvy up the 28 divisions between three infantry corps (one with the Army HQ, though I have at least one more HQ on the way in from Petrograd which should be there by early August), and one cav corps. Everyone gets a 3 skill general (we only have one 4 in the pool, though there may be another few elsewhere, it's hard to tell yet, but he's only a Lt.Gen so I promote him up to full General reducing his skill to 3), except for the most understrength infantry corps whom I give a skill 2 Trickster general. The next most understrength InfCorps gets an Offensive Doctrine general; the strongest gets the Army HQ and a Fortress Buster general; and the cav corp gets an engineering general who will act like he has an engineer brigade attached and help his corps get across rivers faster. I'll also assign an engineering brigade (we only have a few) to the Army HQ a few days from now when my brigades arrive in the pool, which should help everyone get across rivers faster (but the cav won't be dependent on staying nearby for that).

Hopefully we won't need this stack of corps for a while, but when-if-ever we do they'll be ready.


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I'm very unsure whether it's better to salt them with our few arty brigades, compared to letting those help with defense elsewhere. But once our few engineering brigs are done helping march far corps in more quickly, I'll send them over, plus cav brigades for the cav corps (since Cav + Cav gives the best raw power and this isn't a production question).

The Kiev superstack I consolidated a little into infantry corps 6 and 7 strong (where the sevens have an HQ, three of which started there), plus a 4 and 3 div cav corps which I ended up sending to the same place so I combined them anyway into a 7 div corps. Once everything kind of arrives in place, or gets close to it, I'll be anchoring the line with infantry corps and keeping my cavs back to help move around for defense. I did send a 7 div infantry corps to Warsaw, as that's the tip of the Polish salient/corridor which I'm willing to try to defend for a little while, so I figured they should be better oomphed, in case I see an opportunity to launch a small superstack counterattack -- though by the same token I've got to be more careful to get them out through the Polish corridor if the CPs seriously hammer Warsaw or rather the counties behind it, as I don't want them trapped without supply and reinforcements.


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F901%2FEIY4ve.png&hash=e89170ef92f13296682526708fa1cfb1f7ac9136)

And that gets me a final initial deployment scheme that looks, overall, like this:


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Next up, I think I should try to shuffle my generals around more effectively. Thoughts on that next time.

And then, realizing I hadn't saved the game since adjusting my Sia superstack, I went back, thought I clicked the menu button for bringing up the save, accidentally clicked the unpause button immediately next to it, didn't realize for a minute what the hell was going on, lost a couple of days on the clock, had to quit and reload and do Kiev all over again.

Jesus wept. This game, you guys...  :buck2:

Okay, fortunately the Trickster and the Fortress Buster generals at the Sia superstack also both already have Offensive Doctrine boosters. All other generals, including at Sia, I have temporarily disassigned from every corps (and saved the game, properly, so I won't have to do that again.)

This will give me a clear full pool of generals to scan through and assign. First, do we have any (more) 4 skill generals?

Yes, one Lt. General who has both Offensive Doctrine and Logistic Wizard skilz. As a LtG however he can only effectively command six divs in a corps; more than that and they suffer various penalties including him not being able to buff them with his skills!

I could simply promote him, but then he'd go down to a skill 3. Since the Sia HQ Army has a general who can command 9 divisions, I add the level 4 LtG to the infantry corps there who needs a general (the Trickster being still in command of the 3rd infantry corps); and I move one of the 7 divs of that corp over to the 8 divs of the Fortress Busting Army HQ, leaving 6 and 9. Nice!

Next, since this guy is a logistics wiz, it makes sense to give him the six most understrength infantries nearby so he can kit them out faster, and shuffle the other divs around accordingly. Done, save.

Next, finding all the level 1 engineer generals and assigning them to the largest and/or farthest out infantry corps. One guy has to be promoted, reducing him to level 0! But they aren't meant to fight, they're just helping infantry get to the dance faster. While I'm at it, though, I find some level 3 engineer generals and assign them to the large infantry stacks heading from the Kiev superstack all the way to Warsaw or elsewhere in the Polish salient; that way if they arrive at a fight I won't be stuck with incomptents and unable to switch them out. Once a few days have clocked off and I can assign my few engineers out of the pool, I'll look into putting level 1 logistic wizards on incoming corps with lots of reinforcement needs.

Save before the next step; and now I'm going to put level 3 logistic wizards on corps with lots of manpower needs near the front -- this may be a moot point if we go to war and Russia gets the instant reinforcement event, but until when/if that happens, they should help. Ideally I'll replace them off with other generals later (probably defensive specialists, maybe some old guard skills whatever that means -- I'm assuming something to do with morale boosts or experience gain boosts.) I don't think we have any cav specialists yet, so I can't shuffle them into place, although we do have at least two panzer specialists!

I still have some corps which need generals when I'm done, but I expect most of them will fold in with other corps as they arrive in place, so at this point I'm done assigning generals for a few game days until I can assign out my engineer brigades and then a few more engineer generals.

Consequently, my initial troop assignments are done for a couple of game days (until the brigades free up).

Next then: assigning tech research.

If the definitions for this game are the same as Hearts of Iron 2 (the one I am most familiar with), then the Old Guard trait is actually a detriment and there are no Generals with the Cav trait.

^^ Thanks, MD! To be safe I'll avoid those generals if I can.

I... feel pretty sure I've seen generals pick up a Cav booster trait, though (in DHFull vanilla), from working with cavalry. Maybe that was new to Darkest Hour, or maybe I'm just misremembering. Cavalry weren't a big deal in HOI2, naturally, due to its WW2 setting. In DHFull vanilla, I remember Cav being researchable up to the early 40s (which I thought was amusing). In the "AAR"mod... up until 1982!?!?

:o Logistics and repair don't get researched that long. (Both to 1965.)

Oh well. That brings us to research, which I'm writing up and will post on soon.  8)

Since we're giant-huge Russia, we get seven tech slots, which may be the maximum available. Tech slots are a factor of Industrial Capacity, and if we don't have more than 7 already with 173 (nominal) IC I doubt we're going to get any more.

Those seven slots will fill up fast, though. In theory we want to research (in no particular order of importance yet):

COMPUTERS -- We're way behind the date on this, and can research at least three levels (maybe 4 depending on how long it takes) before running into the future-tech wall.

Wait, have I talked about the future-tech wall? Each tech has a trigger year (starting Jan 1 of that year) which represents all the other related behind-the-scenes tech developments necessary to even begin researching this tech. Which doesn't count the tech requirements necessary which we ourselves can research. Once those are met, we can start researching tech which is ahead of the curve, but the game will sock us with terrible speed penalties, to represent us having to research all-the-other-behind-the-scene-tech first which society would be normally doing in the fullness of time.

So the future-tech wall isn't impenetrable, but until that actual year rolls around we might be better off assigning one of our research slots working on something else not ahead of the curve.

Computers (starting with the census tabulation machine) help boost our research speed, though -- they may be the only tech that solely helps with that, and certainly they're the most helpful. So computers might be one of the slots worth keeping active all the time to work on future tech.

MANUFACTURING AND/OR AGRICULTURE -- mainly these are helpful for Industrial Capacity in various ways, though the Production track helps IC most. Fortunately we're up to date on that already (at 1910 tech). Unfortunately, the next Production tech is 1930, so any IC boost will come from these two; though sometimes they only improve our effective use of industrial materials (so IC doesn't use so much metal, energy, or rares. Or we make supplies more efficiently, freeing up a little more IC to put to use elsewhere.)

1914 CAVALRY and 1914 MOUNTAIN INFANTRY -- probably in that order, since it takes us less time to upgrade our cav-to-cav than to upgrade our infantry to elite.

MOBILIZATION and 1914 ARMY LOGISTICS -- Moby is more important because it allows a division or corps to strategically redeploy. They can be researched together but need separate research slots; on the other hand, once mobilization is researched there are no further developments per se for it (any improvements being subsumed under logistics).

1914 ARTILLERY (field) -- this includes super-heavy arty, but at the moment we're after the normal kind. The next level, which nominally opens in 1916, helps activate tank research.

1916 ARMORED CARS -- these, light arty, and cav brigades, are our best brigades (so far) for adding punch to divisions; and 1916 opens up tank research, too. Unfortunately, this is still 1914 so any research along this line will be greatly retarded for about a year and a half. Better than nothing, but not necessarily better than other things we could be researching instead at a normal speed.

LAND DOCTRINES -- this is a family of unit buffs which we'll be able to research continuously all through the war since we start out quite behind in them: we're only up to turn of the century warfare! This research is utterly crucial to being able to choose a family of interwar, WW2, and post-WW2 doctrinal buffs. It also provides upgrades to headquarters.

On the other hand, we're about caught up on Naval Doctrines even though there's a few things we could still work on until others unlock. But our navy itself sucks right now: we could easily devote every slot to trying to catch up in naval tech, and until we start building new ships that tech wouldn't mean a hill of beans. Ditto for naval doctrines. In short, it's too late to try to do much here until after the war, or unless we have nothing else to work on for a while -- and even then we'd want to be careful we didn't handicap ourselves by strapping a slot in for a couple of years of research on something, since the game pretends all accrued research on a tech instantly evaporates if you de-assign a slot on it for one moment on one day. :P

That means, not incidentally, if we commit to any seven pieces of research we either have to see it through at the expense of any other opportunities opening up meanwhile, or we have to sacrifice a current research utterly in order to start on a new, more important opportunity. There is no setting something aside and picking it back up later to finish out.

Except for interceptors (1914) and seaplanes (1911 and 1914), our aircraft are up to par, we just don't have many; and our Air Doctrines are even more up to par, missing only Naval Support for now (which adds a few buffs and opens up an option to attack ports.) Since I don't foresee building even many airfields, much less aircraft, for a few years, this is a low priority.

Last but not least are Secret Weapons, but the earliest such project is experimental tanks in 1916, which won't open up until 1916 armored cars and artillery are researched. Amusingly, the "AAR" mod adds (among many other things) Computer Wargames in 2010, called "Hoiception", heh.

There are a few other things we can currently research like hospitals, oil, regular infantry, and anti-aircraft guns, but I've already covered the most important ones for our purposes. Again in no particular order

LAND DOCTRINES
1914 ARTILLERY
1916 ARMORED CARS (but can't do that yet)
MOBILIZATION
1914 LOGISTICS
1914 CAVALRY
1914 MOUNTAIN INFANTRY
MANUFACTURING
1915 AGRICULTURE
COMPUTERS

Not counting ACs (since we can't do those again until 1916 anyway, or not feasibly), or Agri (can't feasibly start for another six months) that leaves eight potential topics for seven slots.

And if we treat mobilization as more important than logistics per se (so we can get strategic redeployment), that gets us our seven slots.

Not every researcher or institute (the game doesn't distinguish between them except for color sake) is specially good at everything, though, so even in that list we may have to make choices about whether to go faster with one research rather than another. That's certainly true for Russia in vanilla DHFull; possible the "AAR" mod adds more researchers, I don't know yet.


But that means it's time to talk about how research is done instead of what is available and ought to be done first.

Let's take 1914 Arty as our example. Any research requires five stages in a particular order; with general research types (often though not always given particular flavor texts) assigned by the game (and/or mod) developers to each stage. Those types might or might not be repeated from stage to stage; a tech could even have five stages of the same type, or four and then a different type for the final stage. 1914 Arty, like all early artillery techs, requires research in artillery (duh), mechanics, munitions, electronics, and training. And if I assigned Igor Sikorsky to it (since he won't be working on aircraft for a while anyway), the page would fill in some color details like this:

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But that's just flavor text, the general categories are what count. And any researcher (or institution) can work on any research; but if they have specializations in a category type then they'll get some speed bonuses when working on that type. So Igor will work faster than he normally would on the arty, mechanics, and electronics stages, but he'll work at normal speed during the munitions and training stages. Then again, he has skill level 7, which is freaking genius (you may have heard of Sikorsky ;) ). I don't think that means he works seven times as fast as a level 1 researcher, but he's certainly faster by some proportion.

On the other hand, you can see little numbers next to the research types in each stage, 2 2 2 2 and 4 in this case. Artillery 2 is harder to work on that artillery 1, but not nearly so much as artillery 12, or training 4 for that matter (other things being equal). As tech projects get more modern, the level of research types required goes up. Unfortunately, unless the "AAR" massively revises this (which would be great though I haven't heard so), the game doesn't track completed research in a category, so if some other tech also requires Arty 2, that's too bad it has to be done all over again. Nor does having completed Arty 2 in any way help complete Arty 3 or Arty 12 or even Arty 1.

Another highly annoying factor which the game keeps completely hidden, is that sometimes (not all the time but sometimes, and increasingly often as techs get more modern) the final research stage will need a completion of 200% not 100% in order to finish. In other words the final stage will go twice as slow as it otherwise would have after accounting for all other factors. This is totally aside from whether, as in this case, the final stage happens to have a category twice as difficult as the previous ones.

On yet ANOTHER hand, we can buy or be given Blueprints for techs (and any tech we complete we get blueprints for which we can sell or trade). Blueprints tend to speed up research twice as quickly as the basic rate, plus or minus other factors. We can also get blueprints semi-randomly by investing national money in research projects (which also helps reduce dissent a bit, by the way). Research projects also give a small permanent speed percentage increase to all research henceforth, even if no blueprint is generated. Research projects are great strategic decisions, and you can dang well expect to see me spending money on them when feasible! :D

Finally, computer research (and maybe a few others in very limited ways) adds a permanent speed bonus to all research whenever completed. It isn't much, but it adds up like compounding interest in a stock account.

Obviously then, assigning someone awesome to COMPUTER research, now and probably forever (despite the tech wall), is the way to go. And we like Arty brigades, so having Sikorsky working on 1914 ARTILLERY right now is a great idea (maybe permanently despite the tech wall).

Sikorsky would be a plausible choice for this, too, but he has a bunch of other specialties which will be useful elsewhere. Who we really want is Havannes Adamain who is a skill level 10 researcher and only specializes in electronics and mechanics.


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As you can see, early computers (we don't even have late 19th century ones yet) are ALL ABOUT MECHANICS (and later electronics and math), though different levels of mechanics at different stages (5 4 4 2 10, so not in increasing difficulty either). It's too bad that, unless the "AAR" mod makes major changes to how research works, no institution or researcher can gain new specializations by working on projects with categories outside their field; nor will they ever level up in any other way. Sik will always be skill 7, never skill 10; and no matter if we have Hav researching computers for the next ninety years, he'll never learn to specialize in math. Similarly, we're assigning the Obukhov Plant to work on our cavalry, because they're a skill 7 institution who specialize in two of the categories (munitions and artillery) instead of the Russian cavalry genius Brusilov (also skill 7 with tons of specialties but only one, cavalry tactics, which applies to 1914 Cav tech) or the Tula Arsenal (which specializes in three of the five categories needed for 1914 Cav but which is only skill 3).

Meanwhile, we have exactly no one who specializes in mountain warfare (and may never get anyone -- sometimes researchers activate over time, though, or deactivate as they die off or the institutions change, and we can pick up new ones if we conquer a nation). And mountain infantry tech research (unlike cav research!) mostly requires mountain infantry tech. Out of the other two techs, general equipment and small unit tactics, we have no one better than Cavalry genius Brusilov.

So to recap so far: our best aircraft guy is working on artillery; our best artillery designer is working on cavalry; and our best cav guy is working on mountain/light infantry.

The Darkest Hour research protocols are weird as hell.

1910 PRODUCTION requires some less straightforward weirdness, meanwhile. The tech stages are:
5 management
5 management
5 manufacturing
6 manufacturing
10 management

Our two best options are Kalinin Polytechnical Institute, which has a basic skill of 9 and specializes in manufacturing (among many other disparate things -- they'll be great later for other purposes), and the Vyatka Factory Design Bureau which has a basic skill of 6 and (among other things) specializes in management.

If we go with Vyatka, their basic speed will be less, but they'll have speed bonuses on three out of five stages. If we go with Kalinin, their basic speed will be more, but they'll have speed bonuses on only two out of the five stages.

Oy.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right representative relationship of research skill and specialization to the tech difficulties used in stages, but even if I'm wrong I think I'm pretty close: a researcher's speed on any stage (not counting the hidden possibility of a 200% requirement on the final stage) can be expressed by dividing their skill by the tech type difficulty; multiplied by 2 for specializations. Then adding up the results. The higher number will be speedier. (This is modified by blueprints, the future tech handicaps, and basic national research speed, but those factors apply in any case regardless.)

So Kalinin, skill 9, special manufacturing =
9/5 management +
9/5 management +
9/5*2 manufacturing +
9/6*2 manufacturing +
9/10 management = 11.1 or 10.65 if the final difficulty triggers.

Vyatka, skill 6, special management =
6/5*2 management
6/5*2 management
6/5 manufacturing
6/6 manufacturing
6/10*2 management = 8.2 or 7.6 final difficulty.

Kalinin it is.

(I did the same calcs for a couple of the previous picks, but just didn't talk about them because the answer was obvious "by eye". By which I mean I didn't do the same calcs for any of them because the answer was obvious "by eye". By which I mean I may have made a mistake on the previous ones, though I doubt it, but if so it can't be very significant. ;) )

There's a similar issue for Mobilization:
Vyatka Factory Design 6.833 -- they only know one relevant skill but it's important.
Nikolai Yudanich 5.97222 -- they know two specials but are a little less skilled.
Zhukovsky Air Force Acadamy 7.667 -- also two specials and as skilled as Vyatka.
Any level 8 researcher 8.9333 -- even with no specials! Might as well put the ace pilot Petr Nesterov on that. ;)

That leaves LAND DOCTRINES for last. Here we can go with either Leading By Orders, or Leading By Task. They both lead to the same chain of doctrinal techs afterward; one gives a morale buff and one gives an organizational buff, each of those important for how long a division (or air or sea group) can stay in a fight before routing, and for how effective they'll fight while in it. Organization, once researched, will affect our combat calcs for the most efficient divisions/brigade combos, but not by a lot. The Organization buff gives more effect than the Morale buff; but the general techs are somewhat different and so one might be researched faster than the other allowing us to get on with catching up on Land Doctrines more quickly and that should probably be our guide since the difference in Org and Morale increase isn't much (6 and 4 percent).

For Leading By Orders, which gives the fastest (probable) speed? A skill 8 math whiz who doesn't have any specials here; a skill 6 academy with two specials; or a skill 5 soldier with three specials (and two repeats for the general or the academy)?

Alexander Mathwizovich skill 8 no specials
8/3 infantry focus
8/3 small unit tactics
8/3 centralized execution (of plans not prisoners ;) )
8/3 centralized execution
8/4 training = 12.667 (or 11.667 if final difficulty)

Zukovsky Air Force Academy, skill 6, two specials (training and centralized execution):
6/3 +
6/3 +
6/3*2 +
6/3*2 +
6/4*2 = 15 (or 13.5 if final difficulty)

Nicky Yudolich, skill 5, three specials (infantry focus, centralized execution, training):
5/3*2 +
5/3 +
5/3*2 +
5/3*2 + (these two were both centralized execution)
5/4*2 = 14.1667 (or 12.916667 if final difficulty)

Zukovsky Air Force it is. If we go with this doctrine.

What about Leading By Task?

3 Infantry Focus
3 Training (which is weird, I would have thought the logic went the other way around: more training for teams to work independently)
3 Decentralized Execution
3 Decentralized Execution
4 Large Unit Tactics (again, weird, I would have expected large and small units switched around, but whatever)

Alexander Mathwizovich, skill 8, no specials:
totals will be the same as the relative tech categories haven't changed difficulties (3 3 3 3 4) and he has no specials to affect the speed, so 12.667 (or 11.667 if final difficulty).

Nikolay Yudenich again, still skill 5 but only 2 specials this time (as he knows centralized not decentralized plan executions):
5/3*2 + (infantry focus)
5/3*2 + (this is the stage for training now)
5/3 +
5/3 +
5/4 (he doesn't know large unit tactics) = 10.13889 (or 9.5139 if final difficulty)

Moscow Military Academy, skill 4 with 3 specials (training, decentralized execution, large unit tactics):
4/3 +
4/3*2 (training) +
4/3*2 (decent ex)+
4/3*2 (decent ex)+
4/4*2 (large unit tacs) = 11.333 (or 10.333 if final difficulty)

So:
Alexander Freidman (hey that's German isn't it!?!) the math whiz, doing Leading By Task at speed 11.667 (at worst)

vs

Zukovsky Air Force Academy, doing Leading By Orders at speed 13.5 (at worst).

Air Force wins. :)

And now my brain hurts. (save game)

But here's our final initial research plots:


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Whew.


ARE WE FINALLY READY TO WAGE WAR???!

No.

And we're trying to avoid war anyway. But we still aren't ready to start the gameclock.

Still on the to-do list:

assign initial production (maybe with some tweaking after the clock starts);
make initial strategic policy decisions (previously somewhat discussed);
do the initial social slider move if any (that'll be quick though).

I can probably do that in one more post. And then we'll be set to really start the game clock.

Okay, (almost) final preparations:

1.) Can we increase our intelligence funding? Not yet, we'll need 450 silver and at the moment we only have 30; also while intelligence funding is important, other things are probably more important (such as for example using our seed money to trade supplies on the world market and make gobs more money -- which can be spent on national projects like another level of intelligence funding.)

1b.) Suffice to say that we don't really have much chance of accomplishing any spycraft against anyone we care about right now anyway.

2.) What about the Ministers? We can replace everyone except the Tsar and the Head of State, but several are already optimal choices. I do take a few which grant bonuses to IC production (paying for that in increased material usage) and to reduction of research time and the production time of anything on land that moves and has big guns (armor and arty, mainly arty right now). I also pull in a Trench War Expert as our Chief of Army, since he adds more reductive bonuses to infantry and arty build times; infantry and arty build effectiveness; and a huge 25% reduction in building land forts (with some decent reduction in building coastal forts, too.) This, if you'll pardon the pun, "reinforces" my belief that land forts == the coming trench system. I also put an Army Air Support proponent as chief of the air force (giving bonuses to the few things we're already working toward in the air, namely tac bombers.)

3.) Now for the cultural sliders.


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Sometimes the sliders change automatically based on things that happen to us; and the sliders can also be changed as a direct result of strategic decisions; but once every... two years IIRC?... we can tick a slider one way or the other directly. Not including the mobi/demobi slider: that one only moves as a result of plot events or strategic decisions.

Demo/Autho: various stages on this slider trigger certain state conditions which affect things like what some strategic decisions cost and/or require for activation. Right now we're a dictatorship. Moving rightward decreases dissent growth per month, even to the point of reducing dissent by an increasing amount per month, but increases partisan activity per month (though not as much as dissent growth decreases). It also decreases the basic one-time dissent hit for a declaration of war, but increases the dissent hit for releasing a puppet state into independence. It also makes the relationship threshold for declaring war against another nation higher (thus easier, i.e. we can be closer to being friends and still declare war). Sliding left a notch reverses these effects in the other direction.

Political Left / Right: mostly this slider affects who's available among the minister pool (which is also affected by date).

Open / Closed Society: sliding rightward reduces dissent growth or even increases decent reduction, including decreasing (or more strongly eliminating) dissent in national provinces. It also reduces researcher costs, and increases the effectiveness (I think, not the cost) of both counterintelligence both domestic and military (though at different rates of effectiveness, moreso for military counterops). But it increases dissent in occupied provinces. Going left reverses the effects.

Free Market / Central Planning: sliding rightward increases available IC, gives a boost to gearing bonuses (the speed bonuses which represent increasing factory efficiency in producing a run of the same thing over and over), reduces tech team costs, and increases resource production. However, it reduces any money earned from consumer goods, and rather significantly increases upgrade cost and upgrade time. Leftward reverses the effects. Currently we're dead center.

Hawk / Dove: going rightward (shouldn't hawks be on the right?) reduces diplomatic costs and money earned from making consumer goods; but it also increases dissent per month. Rightward reverses those effects and also reduces production costs and time.

Intervention / Isolation: oh gosh this slider affects a bunch of things, mostly to do with political and intelligence costs including what it takes to go to war.

Generally, at this time war is more likely to find us whether we want it or not, so making it easier or harder to get us into war is not something we should bother about yet. We need to get our troops up to speed asap, so whatever increases our IC and also our reduces production time and costs will be the way to go.

Unfortunately, the only slider that increases IC also increases upgrade time and speed, and right now we need upgrades more than direction production of new things. A 5% increase in IC would only give us another 8.65 IC, whereas it would sock us with a 10% upgrade cost (and 5% upgrade speed) increase on EVERRRRYYYTTHHINNGGG! -- all 160ish divisions and brigades need upgrading. If we had an up-to-date military or a very small one but a lot of factories, that would make sense. As it is, the net result would be an increase of probably around IC needed for upgrading. Granted, we won't (and can't) be upgrading everything all at once, but we'd be losing the ability to upgrade a few more units more quickly. At best there'd be a tradeoff between IC gained and more IC spent on the same few units upgrading at once, but the upgrade process in itself would be intrinsically slower.

On the other hand, if we slid left on the free market, we'd sacrifice 5% of our IC (which benefits from a 5% bonus right now) for a 10% reduction in upgrade cost and 5% reduction in upgrade speed. But doesn't that also wash out with only a relatively few units upgrading at a time? No, because the intrinsic speed is improved.

Whereas, we can slide the Hawk/Dove toward Hawk and get a 5% bonus to production costs and time. But that might only count if we're trying to build some fortifications which are going to take a while in any case; we don't want many NEW units yet, we want to IMPROVE the ones we have.

On balance then, I judge the best choice to be sliding a tick toward free market, which will at least get us a small bonus to upgrade time (and even to production time) broadly speaking; and maybe also a net bonus to IC we can put toward upgrades. We can modify the sliders directly again toward the end of June 1916.

4.) Strategic Decisions. Remember those?


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I'm going to permanently ignore purging the army (and choosing music).

Investing in anything on that list is important, but we need money to do so and we only have 30 silver right now.

I'm not a big fan of reducing our industrial efficiency by anything even 1%, but we need cash if we're going to buy and trade supplies effectively on the world market. This will also allow us to make investments, as long as I don't let the cash drop below a certain amount from which I can quickly make significant cash again. Eventually I can spend cash reducing inflation and slowly improving our industrial efficiency. (Not kidding when I say this game is mostly a supply trading game!)

So first choice is to print money. Bang we now have 1030 silver, and a little less dissent! We'll need 6000 silver to return that 1% efficiency by the way.

This opens up a new strategic decision, War Games, which can increase the skill of a random number of generals, but costs 800 silver and 300 supplies. It's important but we need that money to make more money so we can afford nice things like this.

Choosing a low minimum wage this year will reduce national dissent again, and still give us one more IC without hampering our income.

Choosing low taxes will reduce our national dissent again (almost to nothing as a result, only 1% remaining), and even increase our IC a tic again, at the cost of only 1 silver a money which we can and will easily recoup.

Now to take the dissent hits. On the theory that we don't really know how long it'll be until we go to war and then get massive instant reinforcements, we need more manpower to fill out our divisions -- not least because I think upgrading a division may involve also simultaneously filling up its reinforcements. We can do that by enacting partial mobilization (which as a dictatorship we can instantly do without needing other qualifiers), or by prolonging service terms. The latter will give us more experienced troops, which considering we're so behind in land doctrines right now we need all the edge we can get, and also plop down a big start in manpower; but it'll hit national dissent for about 6% total. We can start whittling that down as we start investing in national projects (and with a surplus of consumer goods every month), but it'll affect IC until then. On the other hand, our IC was already affected more than that so on the balance we're still ahead! -- plus by September we'll have a number of (exhausted) divisions near Finland we can spread around for police effect near factories, and likely enough we'll have lost Poland anyway ha ha. ;)

Bam: just like that we have 18,630 manpower.

As an experiment, I accidentally click the "Partial Mobilization" button instead ::) and learn that this gives us war mobilization, all land units fully reinforced instantly, and more than 42 thousand manpower beyond that! -- at a cost of adding 20% to national dissent. Yeek! But we could do it if we had to, though it would be better to let a plot trigger do it and maybe avoid the dissent hit.

So, we have 18.6K manpower (where 1.0 mp == roughly 1000 militia equivalent, though less for more elite soldiers who need more logistic support.) What does that really mean? How many do we need for total reinforcement?

That leads us back to the economy screen at last.



5.) Unfortunately the economy screen doesn't tell me what I want to know, but that isn't its fault: I turned off all reinforcement calls, so it doesn't report any needs. I also turned off all upgrades, but the brigades still need upgrading and those can't be toggled on or off exactly (though I can tell any unit to automatically be assigned to upgrade once produced) so they still register.

Here's the econ screen:


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Well, actually that's a subwindow of the econ screen, which looks at convoys and AI economic diplomacy.

My only resource depot at the moment is at Petrograd, our capital -- Darkest Hour is one of those wargames where the capital counts as the main or even only resource distribution point, which makes no sense but whatever. Clearly I can create new depots, but I'm unsure how. My understanding was that factories near resources also served as depots; maybe the fact I haven't started the game clock is giving me wacky data here...? (It certainly is in other regards which I'll talk about in a minute.)

Anyway, I do have a convoy transport fleet which is treated somewhat abstractly by the game; it's usually best to let the computer create convoys, which it has already done from Okha to Magadan (wherever that is, out near Vladisvostok if I recall correctly). But an enemy could assign an on-map fleet (like subs or a battlecruiser) to a sea zone with a suspected convoy line and run anti-convoy duty there. We have 20 destroyers on convoy duty, but I'm unsure what their tech level is. Convoy destroyers are produced separately than on-map destroyers, but at the current tech level for destroyers; but clearly I have the most ancient possible destroyers floating around in other regards so maybe so here, too? No way to tell.

Above that you can see the auto-trader option window, which is temporarily opened (the convoy and depot columns are permanently on this window.) I've already made tweaks: without going into all the details, I've given the computer permission to make trade agreements of anything (including supplies -- though on second thought I'm going to deactivate that as I want to have that control in order to get the best deals) for money, which it is instructed to stockpile as well as import (though since I haven't given it permission to spend money those are the same thing. But just to be safe. ;) ) It can initiate such trades, and accept or reject trade offers of this sort but can only accept deals rated at 100% (don't give the other guy any slack, we don't need money that badly we want the best trades possible.) It cannot send things freely to our allies; and is not allowed to reply to single offers, only to daily ongoing contracts.

This is all because money and supplies are super-important for empowering strategic decisions (and supplies for running the military, even if they're just standing around but moreso on the move and moreso again in a fight), so I want final control over what goes in and out of Russia in order to pick the most lucrative deals. Even little Ethiopia can be capable (as I know from experience) cornering the world market in money and supplies; moreso Russia, if we can stay at peace and out of war.

Okay, now for the main economy screen overall.



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Ignore the stuff on the left for the moment and focus on the upper right block.

Well, first thing to do is uncheck the little box that turns on AI management so I can tweak those sliders myself. The way the engine works (I assume this was true for HOI2 generally not just Darkest Hour), the gameclock has to be running for two game days before the figures accurately slot, so we don't actually have a clear idea yet what needs to be done where.

But we can divide our IC (which is currently around 174, and operating at near neutrally perfect efficiency so not much above or below 174) into the totality represented by those sliders; as I move one slider around, other sliders will move in a zero-sum response unless I lock them down (which I'll normally do for tweaking purposes).

CONSUMER GOODS: there's certain demand in our nation created and adjusted by a dozen various factors, and this is where we set our Industrial Capacity to meeting, exceeding, or, um, notting it. :D Producing less than demand proportionately increases dissent everyday, costing us money also; producing more than demand erodes dissent every day and also generates some spare cash (presumably in taxes). Things like the daily intelligence budget and trade deals are factored in, too. In my experience dissent is most quickly reduced by spending large cash on national projects, so I just work at keeping a balanced net-zero income here: any IC we spend on supplies will come back as much better income one way or another, which we can then spend directly reducing dissent faster with many other benefits.

PRODUCTION: this assigns IC to making whatever I've got in that list to the left; which some genius has decided should be battleships, all of which have been constructing for years already and some of which still can't possibly be completed before the ships are obsolescent already! The IC rates there aren't accurate on that screen until the gameclock has run a few days; it's more like 4.x IC per battleship, not .4 per ship! I'm going to be cancelling most or all of those, maybe not the one which could be finished this autumn. That'll free up the production load and so also free up IC to be spent elsewhere. Assigning more IC than necessary to run everything at full speed is technically impossible and worse than useless even if it's possible; assigning less IC than necessary will result in the last item on the list slowing down, then stopping, then the next item up slowing down then stopping, and so on in proportion as the IC available reduces.

This by the way means I don't have to strictly lose all the work done on those ships, just cut off IC assignments to production and make sure anything else I decide to build is set above the ships I don't want to keep working on. (Otherwise if I cancel the game has to pretend the ships were hit with a Tunguska black hole. ;) )

SUPPLIES: this produces Supplies (duh), which can be sold very efficiently for hard silver and/or used to keep the military going. Ideally I'd have all my IC here, if I had nothing else to produce or upgrade or reinforce or whatever. As it is, I try to stay on a net-zero budget. The lag-time inaccuracy when starting the gameclock from a reload can result in me losing a supply contract if I tweak my supplies down before the game catches up and we don't have enough supplies in stock to meet our contracts.

REINFORCEMENTS: this represents arms, kit, and equipment for training and outfitting new soldiers in a division (not for brigades except as assigned to a division though). Until they're outfitted they can't fight. Strictly speaking, it converts manpower to division power through Industrial Capacity. Divisions (and corps) near the front line should have their reinforcements always turned on in case they need it, but they won't unless they're taking damage.

UPGRADES: this represents turning old divisions (and brigades) into new ones by means of applied Industrial capacity. We'll be using this a lot, and not the production slider much, for a while. If I recall correctly from playing prior campaigns (as Russia and as Ethiopia), upgrading also counts as reinforcing, which can increase time to completion.

This brings up wasted IC: no slider can move up beyond the IC sum of all the sliders, but production, reinforcement, and upgrade sliders, can all technically move beyond what's necessary for 100% speed in the process. But that effort is completely wasted, they can't be made to go faster that way! So those sliders have to be monitored somewhat closely, especially reinforcements day by day, so that IC isn't being wasted but is properly going somewhere helpful (like supplies).

And that, at last, brings us to the final thing to do before we can start the gameclock (though we'll need to make some decisions and adjustments once the clock starts, such as assigning brigades from the pool: I de-assigned them all to reshuffle them around, and it takes a few days for them to go through the teleporter prototcols. ;) )

Namely, I've got to figure out who should be assigned to upgrade and/or to reinforce.

Now for the final pre-clock step: deciding who should be upgraded and/or reinforced.

This turned out to be easier than I was expecting. Logically, I should turn on the reinforcement of every corps (even if it's a single division marching around as a 'corps') that might be on a front line in the next several weeks, whether there already or on the way, whether they're already full or not -- that way I'm not caught with divisions taking losses without reinforcements! Massive manpower is just about our only advantage; there's no reason for us to lose any division unless we're completely outmaneuvered and cut off -- which is why it's important to keep that Polish salient open for a retreat when/if necessary. The fact of the matter is that if/when we go to war with Germany (and Hungary), sooner or later the Huns will march an advanced superstack or two or three up into and around Poland and we won't be able to resist retreating, so we'd better keep a path open. Later I'll issue some planned defense orders so that once organization and morale fall below, say, 50%, the corps will fall back where I want them to instead of in a random direction which could be disastrous.

I'll need to remember to turn on reinforcements for other corps as they get close to the line later, but this way the troops will be slotted most efficiently for the IC spent.

As for upgrades, the obvious answer is to upgrade all the cav divisions close to the line first, since they only need 71(ish) days, and the results will be better than upgrading Inf2 to Inf3.

But Inf-2 only needs 59 days to get to Inf-3, after which they'll have a bit easier time surviving until we can ranger them up which currently would take 225 days. It's possible but unlikely that this time will reduce once we're up to Inf-3, so going this route through Inf-3 will probably take 26% longer to Mtn-3 but they'll have a real upgrade along the way.

If I knew for sure I could stay out of the war until being ready to jump in and save the day (or stay out altogether), I'd go straight for Mtn-3, since after all the direct route will be 26% faster! But I'm fuzzy about being able to stay out for a year (or even for two months really.)

On the other hand I don't want to overload our IC trying to upgrade divs.

In the end, I decide to wait until clock-start to see what our IC load will currently be in reinforcing all nearby divs, and in upgrading all nearby cavs; and then if we have anything significant left over I'll look into upgrading infantry, too.

BOZHE MOI! WE MAY BE READY TO ACTUALLY START THE GAME NOW!!!

...so, off to play Far Cry 3 a little. :D

OMG OGM GOM! The time has come to start the gameclock!

For those who haven't been following along but instead prudently jumped down to this post from the new link in the original post (mental note, add new link...), here's whassup:


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We're Russia, a little more than a month before the historical start of World War One. Russia (thanks to the "AAR" mod, unlike "vanilla" Darkest Hour Full) starts with one of the (perhaps like in history the) largest land armies in the world: 160 divisions, which I've already combined down (and for administrative migration purposes also somewhat split up) into what the game calls 46 "armies" though actually the basic movement "container" of the game is a corps with one or more divisions. (One or more corps only function as an army in range of an Army HQ, of which we have less than a dozen, so definitely not 46 armies in that sense.)

That's some of the good news; we also start closer to Russia's historical strategic movements already complete or near completion: that screenshot above shows all existent corps out to the farthest east. (The map goes farther east than that, all the way around the world, and south to the tips of Africa and South America though not to Antarctica. You can see the minimap at the bottom left.) Most have already moved near where the western front will start stacking up if we go to war. (More on the "if" later.) The blue arrowy lines show all the initial troop movements I've already assigned to complete the reforger.

Russia also starts with more latent manpower (though I had to activate it by instituting a 3-year enlistment) than anyone else, perhaps aside from the Republic of China (or whatever they're calling themselves in late June 1914, I forget. China will be going through a lot of civil wars in the near future.) See that 18K+ number a little to the right of the very top center of the screen? Each one of that number could equal one thousand basic militia troops. As long as we keep our heads together, and our factories properly working to train new troops, we shouldn't ever lose a single division. Which is good because in this game, as in real life, building up one new division takes a lot of time, close to or even more than a year!

To this good news we can add that we have a ton of factories, as befits a current Major Power, though probably not as many as some other powers (like the US). Specifically we have 175 factories (that's the number on the very far upper right), thus a base Industrial Capacity value of 175, although for various reasons right now they're only operating at 169 IC. Fixing that is something we'll have to address as we go along.

We also have a full suite of researcher slots (seven, the game's maximum I think), and a large number of individual or institutional researchers to choose from (the game doesn't distinguish except for color's sake), whom I have already given their initial assignments. More on that soon.

Last but not quite least we have a lot of land to trade for time, should that become necessary. Hopefully it won't come to that, but we have a number of serious problems. Let's go down our list of problems in no particular order, shall we?

A.) Unlike the historical Russia, we don't have the second largest pre-War airforce in the world. We have a pitiable four tactical bomber squads, two of which are only experimental from back when we were developing combat aircraft! We also have no airports anywhere close to the German/Hungarian/Romanian borders, and probably no time to build any. I've already assigned them to our largest (actually only) "cluster" of airbases down near Turkey; assuming the game allows them to legitimately fly down there to rebase since technically the distance is far beyond their ranges from their initial starting points at Moscow and St. Petersburg (Petrograd in the game and hereafter).

B.) Our navy is largely whack out of date, though we have two up-to-date sub packs (and one squad of up-to-date destroyers). Also, we only have three naval groups and the only one capable of doing much of anything is in the Baltic Sea at Petrograd, though I've assigned it (in three flotillas) to rebase as close to the German coast as feasibly possible. Some genius (among Russia historically? -- among the developers?) decided we ought to be building battleships, despite our technical superiority in battlecruisers; all of which are from 25 to 75% complete but all of which will also be obsolete by the time they launch (in some cases as late as 1917, assuming we bother to keep factories working on them, which frankly I'm not going to). Our naval research right now is pretty bad, too, and not likely to get any better any time soon as we have more pressing research problems to get up to date on. In other words, if we go to war we're likely to be blasted to the bottom of the ocean in the first few months by the Kaiser's High Sea Fleet (if Germany lets it loose, which in my previous experiences with Darkest Hour it will).

C.) Our land troops aren't much better off. We do have infantry and cavalry, not relatively useless militia; but we don't have much artillery yet (unhistorically), and our infs and cavs are all equally up-to-out-of-date turn of the century. Specifically they're all Inf-2 and Cav-2, and up to date would be levels 3. Many of those divisions are only partially filled, and many of those partially filled divisions are only the minimum ten percent filled! (In game terms I think that means they're starting as though they've only been recently formed.) Fortunately, most of the full divisions are already at or near the likely war zone, including in Poland; but that brings us to...

D.) Russia picked up Poland and Finland (and some parts of Romania, and one Turkish province) recently, and the locals are still in relatively strong dissent about this, which is even more problematic because a significant number of our factories are in those territories (which I sometimes call "counties" instead). I made a few popular strategic decisions already which had a side effect (or in some cases an intended main effect) of reducing dissent nationwide; but then I also instituted the 3-year enlistment, which instantly ate all our supplies and jumped our dissent back to a national average of 7%.

Poland is also a problem because even with 160 divisions there's no way humanly possible to defend it against the combined strength of Germany and Austria/Hungary, even if/when France (and presumably England) opens up war on their western flank. The GermyHuns can and will march up two or three superstacks and start gobbling even our best defended territories like Pac-Man, not even counting the counties we have to leave undefended in order to pull together respectable speed bumps elsewhere! The best I can do is to create a Polish Salient out to Warsaw, along which our troops can retreat if/when the war starts. (More on the "if" in a minute.) We definitely do not want our divisions there to be cut off, as that's practically the only way the enemy can kill our divisions outright.

Unfortunately, this means if/when we go to war, we're going to be socked with some ongoing dissent penalties for losing Warsaw; but on the other hand, Germany gets to suck up a lot of our dissent problems, too, along the way! :D But they'll also get a significant number of our factories, which they'll be able to use eventually even though not immediately (due to instability after conquering a territory).

E.) We don't have many brigades yet (proportionate to the number of our divisions), which are sub-units that need to be attached to divisions in order to operate on the map. This is something we'll be trying to fix in the early game, but it'll take a while.

F.) Our national infrastructure could be a lot better, even in the relatively industrialized west. This won't be easy or quick to fix.

G.) Among our several substandard techs, we've barely entered the 20th century in land doctrines (though we're oddly pretty well caught up in Naval Doctrines, and even Air Doctrines with some notable exceptions like the Interceptor doctrine.) These doctrines grant very significant stacking bonuses, and also open up new effective tactics for our generals to use in a fight; and you can bet Germany is up to date! We're seriously about five steps off whack here.

H.) Russia starts with a promise to Serbia already made that we'll support them in a war that we aren't anywhere really near ready to fight.

I.) What relative preparedness we've achieved starting with in the west, comes at the cost of denuding our borders back to China (except for a token few divisions in the Caucases near Turkey which you can see at the bottom right of the map itself.) This could prove a problem later: literally any of several large militia armies could march up into our guts and take everything we own as far west as Petrograd -- maybe farther depending on whether we're distracted by war with the GermyHuns by then! Fortunately, Darkest Hour has several speed bumps built in to keep just anyone from effectively declaring war any time, but we'll be in unspeakable trouble if, say, Afghanistan navigates those bumps.


So what are our plans to begin with?

1.) STAY OUT OF WAR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE! This means saying no to Serbia, which will result in a huge dissent hit and possibly some equally problematic diplomatic debuffs, but I see no other way to survive even with our upgraded capabilities in the "AAR" mod. (Vanilla DHFull starts Russia in even worse shape with maybe 50 divisions, or less, some of which are even more out of date and/or only militia, and some of which are scattered back to Vladisvostok near Japan.) It also means saying no to France and England if they try to drag us in. On the other hand, it's possible that if we say no to Serbia we won't be the trigger which historically dragged France and England in to begin with!

2.) UPGRADE AND REINFORCE! -- my stat comparisons indicate that light infantry (of which we have none) and cavalry are the two best divisional types right now, especially cavalry; so I've instituted a plan to get our cavalry updated to Cav-3, and eventually to upgrade our infantry divisions to Mountain Infantry (though I may run them through Inf-3 first just to be safe) as well as some going to Cavalry so we can have more of a 1:1 parity. Ideally, if I can stay out of war altogether (until we're ready), I'd convert everyone to Cavalry and then mix in some armored car and artillery brigades. As it is, I'm better off in the medium run converting some infantry to Cav and some to Mountain Infantry (the next step in Light Infantry) and building cav brigades for them all until I can get something punchier for them. So I'll start producing Cav brigades when I can, and then more shooty brigades (some fast some slow) later. But meanwhile I'm setting our IC to upgrading the Cav divisions closest to the western borders; and to reinforcing both Cav and Inf divisions near the western borders.

I won't be able to assign brigades from my pool until a few days after game start (I took all previously assigned brigades back into the pool already), but when I do I'll add arty to various infantries and cav to cav (since I don't have enough cav divisions around to rely on them for defense or an attacking superstack). Engineers will go to incoming groups eastward (unless I need them sooner to help retreat the Warsaw group over rivers, or to help the superstack up in Sia to start running down the German northeast coast.) I don't recall us having any police brigades, but if so they'll go to a stack I'm sending to Petrograd for policing Finland eventually (and thus recouping our lost IC points there.)

3.) CATCH UP ON RESEARCH! -- which is going to take a long time in any case, so I'm focusing on getting our Cav infantry and our artillery up to date (in the short term); our Mountain/Light Infantry up to date (in the more medium term); our Land Doctrines; some logistic and mobilization techs; some production techs; and perhaps most importantly our research speed techs!

4.) PLAY THE SUPPLY MARKET! -- I'll be doing this behind the scenes once a month, working diplomatically to buy and sell supplies internationally for increasing our cash, allowing us to purchase national projects to increase various efficiencies like research and production speeds; which also will help reduce dissent. Relatedly...

5.) REDUCE DISSENT! -- At the end of the day, World War One Russia survives or dies on internal dissent. We're going to take a huge hit by refusing to help Serbia, so the dissent has to be reduced pronto in various ways which I've already described above.

Annnnd, that's it.

Gameclock on.

The reason this campaign starts on June 27 (all months in DH last 30 days by the way, meaning the year is only 360 days long), is probably so that the game has a couple of days to synch everything together. This is an issue that affects any start after a reload, too, by the way, one side effect being that any attacking forces simply quit (with a loss chalked up for their general) on a clock start after a game load!

Anyway, I'm pleased and relieved to report that our bomber groups only took a day (really?) to fly down to the Turkish border and rebase, and more importantly did so without crashing.

I'm also pleased to report that despite the huge number of divisions currently on march, our Transport Capacity hasn't been overwhelmed (yet) and still has a significant amount of leeway at 231 out of 281. Had we overtaxed it (or if we do so later), I'd need to tell some troops somewhere (most likely out east) to stop a while so as to let everyone else move at full speed. (This also I think affects supply rate and thus also reinforcement rates where activated.)

Having paused the game again to take stock a couple of days later (now that the game has synched up its internal processes), I can get an idea of how quickly our researches will go by looking at what has been accomplished in the past two days.


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The quickest (as might be expected from a level 10 researcher working on a project where the stages are all specialties of his) is Census Tabulation, i.e. research speed research. We can expect that to be done around mid-October at worst, maybe sooner; and once done it will help everything else research faster.

Note however that several things like Mobilization, Cav-3, and Mtn-3, are currently going so slow it would take 600 days to finish! It isn't really that bad; none of those techs start on specialties of the researchers, and we may (should) be able to trade for blueprints which will double research speed. Still, we're probably looking at late next spring in the best possible case.

Over to the Econ screen:


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Interestingly, our auto-trader has already picked up a deal from Romania to export energy for a little cash every day; and I'm okay with that! Energy is cheap and easy to get if I need it.

Hilariously, despite my having set production to zero, the battleship project with highest priority is still trickling along! I fix that pronto. (I'm not going to cancel the battleships, since I might need/want two or three of them later and they might auto-upgrade -- they have a checkbox for that which I've checked! But I'm not going to allocate enough IC to production to work on them for a while.)

Since instituting the 3-year enlistment instantly ate all our supplies, I set our factories to supply production (mostly, plus a nominal fulfillment of consumer goods to keep the people happy) for a couple of days while the game synched; so we've got a nice pool to work with. I immediately run that slider back to one tick above net-zero production (since we can produce supplies usually much cheaper than I can buy for resell on the market, so I might as well produce a little although I want most of our IC on other things for a long time to come. Still I may occasionally turn off the other sliders and run supplies for a week or two in order to enter the market better.)

Even with "production" turned off, and "consumer goods" and "supplies" net-zeroed (or a tick above rather), we don't have enough functional IC (or even enough base IC I think) to run upgrades and reinforcements at full speed. So, since if we go to war there's at least some chance we'll get instant full reinforcements from the manpower pool, I set the sliders to run upgrades full speed (on most of our cav divisions, the ones farthest west); and the leftover IC will go toward slowly reinforcing the short divisions I marked for reinforcements (i.e. the ones farthest west).

Now to see what I can do buying and selling supplies (and maybe blueprints, where those can't be harmful to us) this month.

JULY 1, 1914
------------

Meh, I should have realized other nations either wouldn't start with much money yet, or they did (and/or printed money) but would spent it pronto on their own strategic decisions; so I might as well wait until August 1 to start market trading.

Once my Baltic Fleets arrived at the port in Liepaja, my supply usage dropped sharply off; so I immediately popped those IC over into reinforcements. We should see more dropoff once divisions begin arriving at nearby destinations for the next several months.

Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on historical schedule at 10:00am June 28, by the way.

JULY 15, 1914
-------------

Traditionally I do my trading at the half-month, so I went out anyway despite the early game to see what deals I could strike. Very little "silver" for sale, but I bought almost 7000 supplies at no more than .10 silver per supply (and often much less, sometimes much much less), largely by offering up blueprints in lieu of cash (though never anything dangerous to nearby possibly hostile nations of course). This is important early-game for another reason: a lot of nations don't yet have "Early Construction" tech and so cannot build factories yet, so the sooner they can research and put that into play the more money or supplies they'll have later for us to trade with! (Though that usually takes a few years to start paying off.) Ditto for early production or agricultural techs, even though not to the same extent.

Many nations we can't trade with at all because they're puppets of someone else (a lot of nations in the Western Hemisphere are puppets of the US or more rarely Great Britain for example); and some didn't want to trade or not at terms I cared for. Once I went through the list, I came back offering an ongoing trade agreement for no less than .20 silver per supply (twice what I paid for, or rather a lot more than twice on average) -- and actually struck up several .33 s/s trades along the way! Including with Germany, rather amusingly! They'll be paying us 100 silver a month for 330 supplies, which I'm sure they'll put to good use. I would do more supply trading for cash (or vice versa) if I could, with them and the Huns both, simply because it helps increase our relative relationships and so makes it harder for them to declare war on us. But until that time we'll take what we can.

July 18, 1914
-------------

Well, here comes our first big hurdle (good thing I saved the game a couple of game-days ago! -- where I can surely find it again! ::) )

Serbia is asking us to support them if they refuse the demands of Austria-Hungary. Historically those demands weren't terrible, and Serbia was unofficially looking for ways to prod the Huns into war (both of which were related to Serbia allowing pan-Slavic terrorist factions to operate in their country not only with impunity but also with members in high levels of government.)

So, sorry Serbia, the Huns have a right to ask you to root out the corruption in your government. Good luck with that, or with saying no to the Powers!

We take a twenty point hit to our relations with Serbia (we'll live) and a ten percent jump on our dissent -- which is far more troublesome as it affects both our IC and the chances of revolutionary corps activating in Finland. But since a lot of Russian troops are arriving on station recently, I'll see about posting some of them to anti-partisan duty in and around factory areas, and try to fix some of that problem.

...wait, what? Did I read that wrong?

WE ACTUALLY LOST TEN PERCENT OF DISSENT!

Effectively we have almost no dissent now! -- the average is so small it doesn't even show up as a centimal fraction on the national dissent meter! We still have a bit, mostly in Finland -- every county there is still in dissent but only at rates like one or two percent -- along with three remaining Polish counties and that Romanian bloc, each at only 1%.

WITH THAT ONE MOVE I MAY HAVE SAVED RUSSIA AND EVEN STOPPED WORLD WAR ONE YOU GUYS!!

(Oh, and Italy had Italian Concerns, which sounds like some kind of female problem, and left their military alliance with the GermyHuns.)

Still July 20. In celebration for almost-certainly stopping WW1 (or at least our involvement in it), I went ahead and chose the strategy decisions to Invest in Education, Public Health, and Public Security. They each only cost 1 silver a day, which I can easily afford, and will probably give only good results. I may have to wait 1000 days to see the results (at which time the opportunity will presumably come up again), but hey!

(These strategies are introduced by the "AAR" mod by the way, not in vanilla DHFull.)

AUGUST 1, 1914
--------------

Here's where we are at the start of the month with less than half a month to go before the historical WW1.


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I've scrolled the map down a bit to show that Persia now has some divisions near our border along the Caucases; also (can't be seen) near our border on the other side of the Caspian Sea which we can't possibly do anything about, but I'm not too worried about Persia invading. We're on relatively good terms with them, and I know an event is coming up soon which will help that. Incidentally, despite having built no less than 14 airports before gamestart, Turkey does not even have Powered Flight Concept researched, much less Unarmed Recon (as I learned half a month ago when negotiating a supply trade with them). So they couldn't possibly have any airplanes yet. Weird.

Afghanistan has even more divisions (generally militia, I think) along our border, but I just can't care about that right now. If we get through this crisis and Europe settles down (and I research "strategic movement" finally) we may try to do something about them and Mongolia and whoever else is on our southern border acting unstably. If the Afghans manage to try something we may be screwed, but they probably won't be able to.

In the main theater, as you can see most of our troops have finished marching into place, though several nearby stacks still need throughout the month and into September to finish moving. It certainly helps that, thanks to practically no dissent, our Transport Capacity has jumped to 306 (as a factor of our effective IC), less of which we're using than before because a lot of corps are finished moving!

Also worth noting, the various production bonuses we picked up for choosing ministers and a few other things, now juice our IC beyond 100%! -- to 184 out of 175!! We can't actually produce things faster, but we can spread it out more.

Oddly, and a bit unsettlingly, Austria-Hungary is posting a lot of divisions on our border, even though Germany seems to have packed theirs up for who knows where (probably France?) I'm less worried about them, since they're almost as rubbish as we are, but still.

The redness of the "manpower" figure only means we're drawing it off faster than we're replacing it, which duh of course we are, we're reinforcing all the western divisions that need it (at about 30% speed). That's only {checking} 1.45 manpower a day. The computer says we need a little over 305 manpower to finish topping off all our divisions. Out of 18-thousand-plus. No worries there.

Forging onward!

SEPT 1, 1914
------------

Who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize? Tsar Iason Yvenivich!

Continental War has not broken out. In fact, as far as I can tell no war anywhere has broken out yet! -- not even the Chinese or Mexican Civil Wars!


(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F800x600q90%2F537%2F4Jvrm1.png&hash=eacbdeacb8607a5d617122ef8cbdd5ed83a66333)

The German border remains quiet, though the Hunny border still shows a lot of unsettling divisions. I don't think Austria has even tried to take Serbia yet! My wife's dad, the almighty combat wizard and mountain-slayer King Nicholas of Montenegro, can thank me for that, yo! (Or maybe not since he's likely to get bored now; but he can just spend peaceful days sitting on his front porch talking to the neighbors, too, and inviting them to his grill.)

There still isn't quite enough activity this early in the game for most nations to have significant extra money sitting around and/or a serious need for supplies -- ironically, our best large-batch customer so far has been the Aussy-Huns! -- but I've got several ongoing trade agreements getting 3x (or on average actually much better) return on my supplies in silver, even though that's necessarily slow going, and I've earned enough to invest in national research once already though I haven't seen the results yet and won't for a few more weeks.

SEPT 15, 1914
-------------

On Sept 3, our Cav divisions started to complete their upgrading, woo!

Amusingly, Germany failed in a smear campaign against our government on Sept 7. This just happened to be the same day I assigned our Baltic sub group on a sneak exercise down the coast to see if I could get a better idea what was going on in the relevant Germy territories.

While finally getting around to assigning the brigades (no hurry so far, because no war so far!), I discovered that despite not having the tech for it Russia does in fact have Art-2 brigades. But I still have to finish researching Art-2 and then Art-3 before I can do better than that. Well, don't look a gift cannon in the mouth, I guess... ;)

Since a lot of my Cavs are finishing upgrading this month, freeing up tons of Industrial Capacity, I've chosen the infantry divisions in Warsaw to start training for our first Mtn-3 Corps. This will take 225 days (though training them to Cav-3 would take 255, so...)

Relatedly, since Cav-3 is my all-around best option right now for brigades, I decided to set up 10 running Cav-3 brigade lines, which will pump out 10 such brigades at a time in slightly faster runs each time. As our research progresses this could and probably will change; but not likely any time soon.

I also need to put out an engineer brigade for every Army HQ, so I set that up, too (though we already have some assigned and some generals get the Engineer ability already.)

Beyond that, I figure some Hero Projects (a few decades early) are in order; thus I put production to work on the three counties nearest to Moscow to the east (north or south) which have no factories but at least 30% infrastructure (so factories can already be built there), slating them to build up their infrastructure to 100% and ten factories in a row (3 at a time one per county).

All that... well, it eats up the IC which would go toward my battleships, but we shouldn't be building those now anyway. It also eats up all my IC going to reinforcements, but if war is declared we'll probably get instant reinforcements anyway. It also eats up quite a bit of my IC going to upgrades, so I'm now running only 60% speed (which as far as I can tell translates into upgrading only 60% of my currently assigned 19 divisions and brigades at a time.) But as my various Cavalries finish up (I'm also upgrading my two experimental tac-bomber groups near Turkey because why not, pfft), their IC will free up. And once the engineer brigades finish later this year, so will theirs. But we clearly still need more factories, and without being able to pay for instant 60 day factories until the world economy gets booming better (for some reason this game doesn't simulate the stock crash or anything like that) I'm stuck building them 400 days at a time though more quickly as they go. I'd like to get to the point where I'm finishing 12 factories a year or once a month on average (at least), but I'm a lonnngg way away from that yet.

Oh, and on Sept 13 Mexico (despite its serious partisan problems) did eliminate the Zapatista faction; so apparently the Mexican Civil war is going on already. Maybe I should have realized that simply from the existence of the Villaistas and Zapatistas at all.

But still no World War as of Sept 15, yet. Crossing fingers...

OCT 1, 1914
-----------

Still no war, woo! The only big news for this update is that we finished our first research into research speed, which along with investing in national research has increased our overall research speed by 3.515%. We also invested almost 130 silver into trying to positively influence the US, since we could really use some trade with them and so far they aren't willing; the result was hardly much but that's better than nothing. If I had a lot more money every month (already) I'd do the same for Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, most of whom (except Germany) I have a much better chance of positively influencing, and all of whom might be military opponents someday.

JAN 1, 1915
-----------

Except in Mexico, peace still reigns throughout the world. The Republic of China even seems to be working along a path that will avoid civil war there for a while. We're up to date now on researching research speed, and with our occasional national investments we should be currently researching at 9.823% above nominal speed. The next research speed tech unlocks in 1928 but I'm going ahead and slating research for it already so we can be as ahead of that curve as possible (which will help us be ahead of some other curves, though the national research grants I'll be launching each month will help a lot more.)

Though I could be saving up money to pop out random factories somewhere every 60 days, I've decided research speed is somewhat more important; but meanwhile as our Cavs get up to date, and the Engineering brigades were completed for the Army HQs (on Christmas Day, btw), I've been able to repurpose ICs to more Hero Projects north, south, and east of Moscow; we now have a total of six counties which should have 10 factories each well before the mid-20s.

I kind of doubt I'll be able to do better than that on factory and infrastructure planning for a while, because I do need to keep some ICs free to upgrade batches of infantry once the cavs are completed. That's probably going to take a long time, but since we're at peace it isn't a huge problem. (Though I should look into putting some freed-up ICs into fortresses on my defensive lines, just in case, since we get a 25% bonus to making them.)

Hopefully we've passed the triggers for a world war, and have entered a new era of growth and peace for the whole world. Somewhat idealistically (and capitalistically) we've even started selling military blueprints to Norway, Sweden, and Persia, though not to any other potential hostiles on our borders. Even Serbia has apparently made its peace with Hungary, and is beginning to prosper with the technology we've sold them. For many nations we have even effectively donated Early Construction Tech so that they can start building factories twice as quickly, though by the nature of the case we couldn't possibly see returns on that for a decade or more.

Aside from a trivial number of malcontents in Finland and a few Polish and ex-Romanian territories (not even enough to affect our IC score), our nation is at 0 dissent. Considering that Russia, as the largest nation on Earth, also holds more VPs than anyone, we're even effectively "winning" the game just by being at peace!

I doubt I'll need to update again for a year; may 1915 be the start of one hundred years of prosperity for all the Russian people and for everyone in the world!

Wow!  The czars may be about to usher in a new era of human history!  Who knew?  :D 

About halfway through 1915, nothing shooty yet.

1915 STATE OF THE EMPIRE
------------------------

Early in 1915 we were able through shrewd trading of supplies and industrial materials, to earn enough money (3000 silver plus another 2500 to keep working with) to start recovering the lost IC efficiency when we printed some seed money back in late June last year. This led to national dissent which affected our IC negatively of course, but regular monthly investments in national research soon helped offset that. Taxes and Minimum Wage stayed the same in late June.

We caught up on our artillery in late January, which led to some adjustments in our combat efficiency calcs (and also allowed us to make Arty-2 which we somehow already had brigades of). I should perhaps mention here that Arty-2 is not appreciably stronger in any way than Arty-1 -- nor does it provide Sharty-2! Still, advances in organization generally, and in IC efficiency for the Arty specifically, called for a reassessment at this time. (After much recalcing, though, the spreads remained where they were, with only a very trivial shift in punchspeedspread. The spreads shifted more with upgrades to Mtn-4 and Cav-4, but not so as to change our production strategy.)

In February we also finished Scientific Management (1915 Production) which helped our IC efficiency. By mid-march we finished Mtn-4 infantry, bringing our tech up to date on that (though our upgrades weren't anywhere near completed). With Cav-4 tech finishing less than a month later, and with the next levels either way only officially unlocking in 1916, I seriously debated assigning one of those slots to 1914 standard infantry (since after all the only way to be sure of technical superiority is to compare apples to apples; maybe standard infantry passes one of the others eventually). But then I figured I would be better off going farther in two kinds (maybe later more kinds) of elite infantry with my effort, than in keeping up parity on standard infantry. Better to go ahead and finish 1916 Mtn and Cav early in 1916 and then put those two slots to use on other 1916 techs (like arty and armored cars).

Then a few weeks later I changed my mind. ::)

The cheerfully frustrating thing about Darkest Hour research is that even major powers don't have the capability to keep up to date on everything at once, requiring hard choices to be made. Constant investment in research speed should offset this eventually, decades down the line: if it only takes me half the time to research two techs, I can keep up on both feasibly with one research slot!

Anyway, Cav-3 finished on March 30, as did our Strong Point land doctrine; I promptly assigned the Mass Charge doctrine as the next in line. At that time I realized that I ought to be spending time catching up on techs elsewhere than slowly creeping up on techs I wouldn't feasibly be able to achieve until their year of release anyway. Consequently, I cancelled Cav-4 (which hadn't started yet) and Mtn-4 and even the next computer stage (since I would be vastly speeding up tech speed many times before that next 6% increase would finish); and set up 1914 Logistics, 1914 Great War Field Hospital, and Blood transfusions. I also realized I was being short-sighted about the infantry; even if elite infantry is always better (a possibly wrong notion), I would still need basic infantry research up to 1936 in order to start making Motorized and eventually Mechanized infantry divisions. So I resolved not to put off standard infantry research indefinitely. As soon as Mobilization finished research I put a good research team on that job.

(Oddly, though Mobilization supposedly unlocked the Strategic Redeployment mission, none of my divisions, naval, or air groups showed that mission in their option lists. I have no idea how to do this, but {checking around} okay I send a 'corps', even if it's only one division but that's the container that moves around the map, by ctr-right clicking and then selecting strategic redeployment. Takes 2 TC per division and only takes a few days, possibly depending on the infrastructure in the regions between here and there. Cannot adjust the corps on route. Arrives totally disorganized, so not good for prepping an immediate fight. I practice by shuffling the Terijaki police divisions around Finland and a few other remaining small dissent areas with factories.)

1915 Agriculture (i.e. Early Mechanization) finished in late June, so I put one of our skill 7 chemists working on Early Rudimentary Oil Refining (which helps in converting mere Energy to Oil if I want, and will be important later for a mechanized army.) In Late July we finished Mass Charge and went on immediately to the next Land Doctrine, Static Defense. In early August we finished Mass Production, which thus caught up all our "IC" techs until 1922. In lieu of anything else more pertinent to assign (which could be feasibly started this year), I put the Central Research Institute of Shipbuilding Tech to work on 1913 Battleships. On Oct 5 we finished the Great War Hospital System, and from this point on I decided to take a jump on any 1916 techs coming up (since the only other options really were naval and air, not something I plan to use much anytime soon.) Since Cav are still better (both on raw power and in punchspeed) than anything else available, I chose Cav-5 to start early on. Amusingly, the best person available to work on 1916 Cavalry was my skill 10 computer expert! A few weeks later, early blood transfusion tech being finished, the Kalinin Polytechnical Institute for rocketry, mathematics, chemistry, and electronics, promptly went to work on 1916 Mountain Infantry. (It's too bad the game doesn't have code for seeing what kind of Marvel Comics supersoldier would result from this assignment. ;) ) The Obukhov Plant, which specializes in artillery (nominally) finished up-teching to 1914 Infantry on Nov 28; so with 1916 Arty about to unlock I put its skill 7 (and three relevant specializations) to work on that project a little early. Alexi Brusilov finished researching Static Defense on Dec 1, and transitioned straight into working on the last 1914 Land Doctrine, Counterattack. Once Logistics finished in early Dec, Igor Sikorsky hopped into the all-important 1916 Armored Car research: the path to opening up and developing tanks.

Around mid-August, I decided that since we were already running 17.16% faster on research than nominal (we ended the year at 19.515% faster, up from 9.8% at the start of 1915), perhaps we should save up money to 6000 silver in order to buy a 0.5% industrial efficiency boost (through Money Devaluation) along with a simultaneous substantial investment in National Research (to help offset the immediate 3% hit to dissent, also affecting IC) and then accrue enough for another two National Researches in a row before going the full 6000 meal again. Though this would slow down our research speed accrual significantly, it would slowly grind up our production speed (I think) a couple of times a year. Consequently, we took a Devaluation on Oct 1, boosting our speed back to nominal from when we printed money at the end of June 1914. Any production speed hereafter will be a net gain.

We started our 9th Central Russian Hero Project in late Feb. That might have been a bit too much to chew; we had to reduce our upgrade rate to around 20%, once all the Cav units everywhere began trying to upgrade to Cav-4 (and those selected infantry units in Warsaw to Mtn-4.)

The Republic of China lost its Republican Allies in January, and claimed the Mandate of Heaven as Imperial China. The Republic's satellites rebelled and became their own nations (much to our profit). In early February, the Constitutionalistas took a big lead in the Mexican Civil War by annexing the Republic of Mexico; only Pancho Villa's people remained as an opponent, and rather weakly so at that. Still, later that month Villa declared war on their former allies. By May 5, the Constitutionals, as expected, had defeated their treacherous compadres, emerging as the winner of the civil war. On October 30, the new Great Chinese Emperor died, and so the National Protection League (which had previously conquered the GuangXi Clique or whoever they were called, and which had taken about half of Imperial China per se) made peace with the new Beijing Government on conditions that the new status quo would be maintained and all troops could freely march home. China is now divided between the NPA, the new Beijing government (both about equal in size but Beijing has a lot more dissent problems), and the San Ma Clique to the west which is only a little smaller. A very modern Three Kingdoms situation. ;)

That lasted until Nov 7, when (at about the time our first infrastructure projects were finishing around Moscow) the Gangxi Clique broke away from the NPA again, and the Yunnan Clique broke away from the Gangxi! -- with the NPA remnants, along China's southeastern coast, now called the Constitutional Protection Movement. A day later, the Manchuko people declared independence from Beiyang, but then instantly (as the Zhili Clique) entered into an alliance with them as Beiyang's puppet state (which was probably just as well considering the Zhili only held five territories smack in the heart of Beiyang.) By Dec 9, the CPM had created a military alliance with both the Gangxi and Yunnan Cliques. Yet the civil war didn't really start up again; Beijing ended its partial mobilization and sent its soldiers back to work.

Throughout the year, Germany kept attempting intelligence operations against us and failing, up to and including attempting to fund partisans in Warsaw! (Also Central Finland, and Lithuania.) In light of this we spent around 450 silver to upgrade our intelligence network (already pretty decent) on June 18, with plans to do so again early in 1916 once we earn enough money to start another round of IC/Research kicking. Germany's behaviors are puzzling: they have moderately good relations with us and no belligerence, unlike the Huns. But the Huns aren't who keep trying spy plots against us! -- nor does this game seem able to model the concept of a nation asking an ally to run spy plots against a hostile.

At any rate, we should hear the knees of all Europe cracking when they hit the floor every night and every morning, thanking God that we, Russia, had enough sense not to trigger a catastrophic continental or even world-wide war! Now that the Mexican and Chinese Civil wars have ended, may 1916 be even more peaceful and prosperous for all nations!

1916 STATE OF THE EMPIRE (aka boringest After Action Report Ever  :P ::) )
------------------------

Research speed increase this year: 19.515% to 29.406%

By late February, I had not only picked up enough silver trading supplies to start another round of IC/Research improvement, but also to increase our intelligence network again. We started another cycle again (plus another spycraft increase) on July 1, just after the 2-year anniversary of gamestart; and then we got so far ahead on our money by Nov 1 that I not only started a third time but seriously considered doing two monetary devaluations -- but if I did, then I'd be stuck for several months with more than 2% dissent which would be offsetting any gain, whereas by February I'd be able to easily start another cycle without that penalty. (The extra .5% boost to production speed would only be worth it to get early, if I could get rid of the extra dissent that early, too; but I'm nowhere near being able to do that yet.)

Techs researched (with a few notes):

1913 Battleships (BB-5):  when we finished researching this on Jan 20 (allowing us to actually build some of the battleships we were already building in our queue!), I decided to put our cav brigades and other BBs on hold temporarily to see if the BB-4 which was (relatively) nearly done would properly upgrade to the new tech. I'd still be able to upgrade our troops at almost 50% speed (nicely up from down near 20%. By mid-April as the first BB-4 rolled off drydock, I learned the answer: no, it doesn't upgrade to BB-5, just like it can't upgrade after being afloat either. This puzzled me: why did the option to check the box for auto-upgrading even existed for naval units? Eventually I realized this must be for the "attachment" techs which could be produced at the same time as a ship (or a flotilla of destroyers), rather like brigades for a corps; those could be upgraded if tech'd up in research during production. Anyway, this sadly confirmed that by the time my BB-5s were afloat (not even counting my other BB-4s), they'd be radically out of date. So I assigned the new one to balance out one of my fleet, and with a heavy heart canceled the others, wasting all that accrued effort and time.

Very Early (1914) Oil Refining

1916 Mountain Infantry: couldn't see any improvements at all! Maybe it's to speed and suppression, two attributes I don't track?

1916 Cavalry (Cav-5): added some major punch to any upgrades.

1916 Armored Car (AC-2): unlocked the possibility of getting experimental tanks early. Meanwhile I figured I ought to put Sikorski back to working on airplanes instead of armored cars for a while. (And maybe just keep him dedicated on that constantly.) Much to my pleased surprise, not a month after finishing AC-2 research, a secret project triggered allowing not only research on experimental tanks but also on heavy tanks! (Though experimental tanks had to be researched first.)

Land Doctrine "Counterattack": I took our one cavalry tactics guy off Land Doctrines, substituting the generally less skilled Nikolay Yulenich who however has much better specialties for land doctrine work. We now had a choice of paths to take, though still at only 1915 tech, and under the circumstances I took the more defensive path, shutting off the more offensive path.

Land Doctrine "Defense In Depth"


1916 Arty (Arty-3): Once our Obukhov artillery plant finished 1916 Arty near the end of April, I promptly put them on building the 1916 experimental tank; with a general plan to keep them on arty or tanks henceforth.

Experimental tanks

1916 Engineer Brigades: we already had engineers for all Army HQs; but eventually I wished to create enough HQs for all stacks to have one, and I would want to give them all E-brigs, and the ones I had ought to be up to date, so...

1916 Infantry: I started 1918 Infantry immediately on finishing 1916, since I would need that for 1918 Mountain Infantry anyway.

1916 Tactical Bombers

1914 Interceptors

1916 Logistics (not-supply): there are two logistic techs in 1916; this one affects Transport capacity and a few other things.

1916 Supply Logistics: this freed up some IC to go elsewhere in production (like making new Hero Projects!)

Land Doctrine Offensive Attrition: causes more attrition to units offending us. :D



At the end of the year I'm still researching:

? 1918 Infantry
? 1915 Interceptors
? Early Heavy Tanks
? 1918 Cav: Once the 1916 Engineer Brigade was researched, I decided I might as well start going after 1918 Cav; and so set our resident skill 7 cav tactics guy on this (maybe permanently).
? 1908 Basic Torpedoes: there are actually earlier torpedoes than this, which we already have! But I figured the Central Research Institute of Shipbuilding should be tasked with a relatively permanent research slot in bringing our naval tech up to date, and this was the earliest (thus quickest) thing available.
? 1920 Production (Facilities Design): With most of our slots now assigned more-or-less permanently to various upcoming techs, and with the final logistical (supply) tech of 1916 finished in early Nov, I put our finest research center and our finest mechanical genius (skills 9 and 10 respectively) on a rotating project to research advanced production bonuses early, starting here.
? Land Doctrine Separate Armed Forces: as Offensive Attrition finished on Nov 26, I put Freidman, our greatest (and German) mathematician, to work on separating the armed forces.

On Jan 2, our first fully elite infantry corps, the 1st Polish, completed its upgrading (to Mtn-4, not Mtn-5 which won't be available for another two months). I chose another nearby infantry corps, in Lublin, across from stacks of Hungarians who had been daringly placed along the border for years, to be the next upgrade. In honor of this I've also set up production of their own HQ (with Eng-brigade) so they'll be a complete 9-div corps. (Unless HQs don't count toward the General 9-div limit, which they may not; should test this... Rats, they do. Oh well.)

In early March, a daring idea occurred to me. What if, in this new era of (probable?) peace, we stopped trying to build anything but infrastructure and factories? No upgrades, no reinforcements, no new ships or brigades; not cancelled, just put on hold by denying production assignments from Industrial Capacity. A quick calculation showed we could be gaining 19 factories a year (actually 20 once my battleship test finished in mid-April), or with our bonuses more like 24 IC! Those numbers would compound every year, until every Russian territory from that island we share with the Japanese, to the farthest west of Poland; from the Caucasuian border in the south, to Siberia and the height of Finland; all were at 100% infrastructure, and all producing a factory a year, or with gearing bonuses even faster than that.

How does 354 new factories a year, plus IC bonuses, sound?

(Like this: BRRRRRRRTTTT!!! :D )

I proceeded. HERO PROJECT MAXIMALIASKI!

I did however resolve not to create new Hero Projects until at the highest dissent point of the Research/IC speed cycle; so that I wouldn't be suddenly socked for missing IC at the dissent jump. Extra IC could go to generating supplies, which would broaden my profit on the supply market every month (assuming I kept closer track of my costs there, which I also instituted a spreadsheet plan for).

This might be a good point to mention that like a nit I completely forgot to track how many IC we gained over the year. It had to be, let's see, I had at least 24 effective IC gain at the 2% dissent (more at 1% and 0 dissent of course), because each Hero Project costs 6 IC in assignment (until the infrastructure is complete, then 5 IC assigned afterward as factories continue building in the county). And I know I created AT LEAST four. So, let's see, 184 IC for 201 effective IC (at 2% dissent) by year's end; equals x IC for 24 effective... that's 24 x 184 / 201 = 22 IC (the 201 is fractionally rounded, the 184 and actual factories made must be whole integers; that's why I'm rounding up to 22.)

At least 22 + another 3 factories completed at the last minute on Dec 30, equals at least 25 factories. Maybe more, but it couldn't be much more: I only have 22 counties with any factory projects at all yet, and production of factories hasn't geared up enough yet to produce them faster than nominal (which takes a little longer than a year).

It now occurs to me that, while infrastructure is great, I don't really need more than 30% to make as many factories as I want (even if that hampers production a bit which I'm not sure it does -- I really don't know that infrastructure helps IC at all.)

Consequently, while I shouldn't cancel any of my infrastructure projects, I ought to put them on the back burner until I get a factory queue going in every territory -- except that for a while I should spend IC on infrastructure in territories that aren't up to 30% (or is 40%?) yet, so I can start putting factories there.

Germany and some of the Scandanavian countries seemed to be mobilizing a bit (or in Germany's case a bit more) in spring; more worrisome, though not to us personally, was Spain rigging corrupt elections on April 11 so that the Conservative Party would win. Franz Josef, the Austrian-Hungarian Emperor, died in late November, but this didn't trigger a war.

On Sept 3, we received a permanent (?) strategic decision option to go to war with the Ottoman Empire. Supposedly they're now isolated politically, but in reality they have good relations with us (and no belligerence); and their independence has been guaranteed by Italy, meaning Italy might declare war on us and then anyone they're allied to etc. RUSSIA TAKES THE LEAD IN WORLD PEACE BY REFUSING TO GO TO WAR WITH HER NEIGHBOR!

Despite the quiet sabre rattling (and Germany continuing to hilariously fail at their constant spying against us), the world ended the year at peace, with all civil wars resolved.

Russia gears up its factors and tractors for a brand new year of peace and prosperity for us and for all the world!

What year does it go through, Jason?

Currently the AAR mod goes through 1991 (from mid-1914); though there are techs going as far as 2010.

(Including a tech called "Hoiception", for inventing the Darkest Hour game.  8) )

The mod developer's next phase is to try to create another version which goes as far but starts back in 1900.

Oh, I should add that it takes a bit of finagling to run Darkest Hour on Win 8.1. And I've forgotten what I did to make it work. Though I'm pretty sure I kept notes somewhere. It wasn't difficult.

The "AAR" mod can be dl'd from the Paradox forums. Installation wasn't hard, just making sure to extract or move the folder into the proper folder. Running the game after that will bring up a new photo set (or two of them rather) with a "Grand Campaign" title, and selecting single player will go to the menu for loading previous games, or starting a new campaign (or operation). The "AAR" combined campaign will be at the top of the list, but all the other starts will still be there including the normal Great War, and WW2 starts in various places including 1932 and 1938 (or 36, I forget at the moment). Normally the Great War campaign ends in 1920 I think, though even that campaign can be tweaked with game start options to go as far as '28 (and with a little text file tweaking, at least as far as 1970) -- but the scripts end by 1920.

Basically the mod dev fused the Great War and the 32 campaign (AI scripts and events), but he also added extra techs, more strategic decisions, more scripts.


Just to make confusion complete, there are also two other ways to play DH out of the box: with HOI2:Armadoomsday rules (minimal updates), and with a Light version of the special DH modifications. Any Great War campaign will be using DH Full, though.

I played a LOT of HOI2 and what you are describing brings me back to the day.  Making the hard decisions.  Trading off Production for Supplies.  Managing Tech Teams for maximum use.  Did all those things and more.

If you haven't played DH yet, you should pick it up on a sale. (Or even not on a sale.) It's the definitive HOI2 experience now, especially with the "AAR" mod having been developed this far.

Intermedium
-----------

Ok, I have a bit of a long-term strategy problem to work out.

According to my calculations and projections, if I keep reinvesting all new Hero Projects (each producing an extra IC a year, roughly, plus a 9.6774% efficiency factor) into making new Hero Projects, I'll need until sometime in 1930 before I've put new factory projects in all Russian territories.

Maybe sooner by a couple of years; on one hand I'll have to divert IC to building up infrastructure in some territories during the last three years so that I can start building factories there. But by then the diversion of even 20 IC or so won't be significant (an infrastructure project only needs 1 IC per year, and several places won't need more than one year, or two, so I'll be getting those IC back into the budget again as I go on.)

On the other hand, we'll be getting around three (though small) speed bonuses a year -- I'm still not entirely sure it's a real speed bonus or only an increase in IC effectiveness, but for this purpose the distinction doesn't matter -- and two or three moderate IC efficiency bonuses from production research (some of which doesn't actually affect IC efficiency unfortunately, only how effectively industrial materials are used for each IC). Plus maybe another supply bonus or two, not sure, which translates back into more IC freed up for putting into factories making IC. (I've already accounted for the current multiplication factor; at the moment we're producing 204 IC with 186 factories, and I'm conservatively assuming that stays constant but actually it'll improve over time, though not hugely. I've also assumed a 2% dissent rate which I'll try not to exceed; extra IC at the 1% and 0 levels goes to making supplies for trading on the market for silver to speed up research and production.) Oh, and as the factories get experienced at producing factories they'll pick up a gearing bonus, slowly, which can be very significant for making factories faster but it'll take a while.

So it should be a few years sooner than late 1930, but I can't guess it would be earlier than 1925.

Keeping in mind, it's currently March 1917. That's almost 10 more years with NOTHING done to upgrade our troops. Or to build new troops or planes (or ships for that matter, which will constantly go farther out of date in any case since they can't be upgraded).

Is that wise? Is that responsible? In the best case scenario, since certainly research will continue, even if I finish HPing up in 1925, I'll need several years to get all the Cav and the Arty and the Engineers and the HQs and the few Mountain Infantries back up to date, not even counting all the other Infantries stuck at turn of the century technology which ought to be converted to Cav or to Mtn, or possibly to whatever's available by then; certainly by late 1930 we should have motorized infantry, and by the early 20s we should have Marines.

Experimenting with the idea of dedicating 5 IC to my upgrade budget every time I dedicate 5 IC to a new territory for ongoing factory production, and assuming my calculations are correct, we should be able to produce a current upgrade load at 100% speed by sometime in early 1927 (maybe a year or so earlier with further IC bonuses); which ultimately, assuming I put all IC back into IC reinvestment from then on, would only add around another 4 years at most, to 1934, before the Hero Project is running at 100% full speed (365 new IC a year). Again, should be somewhat sooner (on the balance) due to bonuses accruing meanwhile.

Is an extra four years worth keeping our land and air forces more up to date in tech? I think so, sure.

1917 Year End State of the Empire
---------------------------------

Research speed increased from 29.406% to 40.8%

Production speed increased from 1.51% to 3%

IC started at 184 base, ended at 205 base. (I decided to wait a couple of years before devoting some IC back to upgrades on a regular basis.)

While I had been thinking of only using IC henceforth on territories under 40% infrastructure (I think the limit of operation is 33%? But three levels of infra only gets to 30%, naturally), I decided I could wait to start doing that once all territories 40% and over were making factories. So that freed up a little more IC to invest in ICs with.


1917 started with the Bejing government declaring bankruptcy on Jan 1, after being unable to pay the 1913 gold loan intended for China's reorganization. That was back when it was the Republic of China; since then it has declared itself an Empire; and then went back after a civil war to... whatever it currently is. But no fighting broke out this time.

On April 30, our choice to invest 1 silver a day a thousand days ago came to fruition, sort of: we uncovered and put down a web of corruption and trafficking, recovering 1000 silver. So... it's a wash? But we didn't lose any money on the balance? If I told it to stop now, we'd pick up our 1000 silver back plus 1 silver a day; and then of course start again. Was there a dissent bonus we could have also picked up but didn't because we happened to be at 0 dissent that moment? No idea. It kind of looks like a wash for no benefit right now. Still, I'll give the mod developer the benefit of the doubt and keep going.

The investment in education was better, increasing our research speed by 0.5% for the $1000 invested. That's comparable to an extra month of limited research over the past few years. It wouldn't be worth it if I wasn't already able to invest in national research every month (or almost), but since I'm at my limit on that this seems like a good investment. I continue.

The investment in public health helped my trickleback modifier a little (getting troops back on the field faster after a battle, and I'm honestly not sure I care about that. I can put that $1000 silver to better use elsewhere. Cancel.

On June 30 (shortly after continuing with our lenient and popular taxes and minimum wage), our investment in public security paid off more obviously, with a 3% reduction in dissent, after I had foolishly started another cycle backward by going with national research first and then monetary reduction earlier in the month (leaving me with a 3% instead of 2% dissent).

Research completed this year:

1908 Basic Torpedo

Separated Armed Forces (Land Doctrine)

Heavy Tank Landship Prototype

Seaplane Carrier

Interceptor 1915

1912 Light Cruiser

1912 Early Seaplane

1918 Infantry Div

Forward Control (Land Doctrine)

1918 Cav Division

1915 Ocean-going Submarine

1914 Early Great War Seaplane

1917 Mid-Greatwar Tank

1916 Converted Light Carrier

Improved Great War Hospital System

Since things are pretty boring right now, I skipped over reporting on 1918. 1919 is turning out a little more interesting, though.

Despite my gallant refusal to drag Europe into a screaming slaughter a few years ago, thus providing even Germany and Austria-Hungary with several years of uninterrupted peace to manage their affairs like humane kings, Germany entered the Weimar state of anarchy and disruption early in March 1919. There must be some kind of civil war going on in there beyond where my fog of war can see.

If I were the Hungarian Empire, which is doing reasonably well at the moment (no dissent anywhere I can click on), I'd be seriously thinking about taking all of Germany for its own good. Heck, even as Russia I spent a good 30 minutes seriously considering whether I should route all my production back over to upgrading my troops for a year and then seizing at least the rest of Poland from Germany. I'm only three counties away from Berlin as it is! -- or four if I went through Potsdam, which would avoid assaulting Berlin across a river.

In the end I decided to leave burning Germany alone; I still have a long way to go in my Hero Project project, and considering my suspicions that a Finnish rebellion will break out eventually I'm not fond of borrowing trouble from Germany. If some goofball pulls Germany's ass out of its own self-destruction (for which they don't even have a world war as excuse about) and decides in the late 30s he wants to mess with me, he'll be in for a rude surprise.

I havent followed all your posts but did the Bolshevik Revolution take place? Or you did something to avoid it?

So far, no Bolsheviks. Population is happy aside from a slight 3% bump in dissent whenever I take 3000 silver out of the market in order to stimulate factories to work harder. Quickly offset by three months of National Research.

The Germans over the past year had gotten really good or really lucky at their constant attempts to espionage me (despite me keeping up with my espionage investments twice a year), their smear campaigns being the worst since that added another three percent of dissent for me to get rid of. But they've gone back to failing I noticed last night.

Come to think of it, while I haven't triggered any Bolshies, the Weimar chaos triggered a Bavarian Communist uprising last night after my post. I haven't for a few years seen any German divisions on my border (or anywhere; in this game since I have no military alliances with anyone I'm stuck with seeing what's going on across my borders). Hearing about that, I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to see some Commie German rebel divisions soon. They could be trouble.


The game is slow going right now because though I have a fairly simple plan that I could be finished with in two or three real days if I chose to, I feel like I ought to be milking the international supply market for silver every month as much as possible in order to maximize my research speed (and occasionally uptweak my production speed). And that can take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes a month, twelve times a year (or even more often since I can go back every nine days to milk again). This also reduces the cash supply of the other Majors which limits how far they can advance with strategic decisions compared to us.

So there is no doubt that's the wise and correct thing to do. But it's so tedious I started seriously thinking last night about giving up on my research/production uptick cycles and just letting the Hero Project project run straight.

In case you missed that, that's where I'm using factories to make more factories, allowing me to make more factories exponentially more often.  O0 By sometime in the mid 20s I should have enough to allow me to upgrade my troops as much as I want while I continue that plan into the early 30s. By then I'll have slotted (and in some cases nearly completed) 30 factories for construction in every Russian territory, meaning I'll be adding more than 365 industrial capacity every year. For context, the US has the most IC on the board right now, I think, at 365, though for some obscure social reasons their effective IC is terrible, around 130. Russia started this year with 233 IC, effectively 267 in practice thanks to nice bonuses I've been setting up. By 1932 or 33, I'll be adding much more than that (maybe twice as much more, effectively) to my industrial capacity EVERY YEAR.

That won't help my production speed exactly, but I'll be able to create and sustain a ridiculous number of projects at a time while also keeping all my troops fully upgraded, supplied, and reinforced at all times.

Sigh... but right now I'm in late spring 1919...  :P

But hey, I'm also not at war!

Clearly for this game, the steps to winning World War One decisively are:

Step 1.) Don't fight WW1.

Step 2.) Profit.  8)

Unless I am missing the sarcasm, the U.S. and possibly the other Majors, are below IC max due to the fact that they are not at war.  The game mechanic has them, 'ramp up to war,' once it has started.  I know that France and the UK are bound by that, too.  Not sure Germany or Austria are though.

Oh? That's odd; no I didn't mean any sarcasm by it, I was legitimately confused by why their IC effectiveness was so pitiful.

I know that's how it worked in HOI2.  I just assume it's the same for this.

For what it's worth, just clicking around the majors and near-majors, the US is the only one with such a drastically low effective Industrial Capacity. And they've added 37 factories in the past couple of years. (Now up to 402. But only using 114.)

Everyone else is either above their IC or not far below it. Germany is the only one significantly below their IC, and they have a great excuse of revolting peasants (ba-dump-tish) averaging around 20% dissent. And even they aren't anywhere near as below their baseline IC as the US -- which has no dissent anywhere I checked.

So, yeah, a plot explanation seems to be right. :) That way their massive IC potential can be unlocked when-if-ever they go to war, but until then they cruise along.

IIrc, the UK and France start stepping up mobilization after several events, including each of Hitler's provocations before Poland.  Going over the Polish border triggers the final step.  For the U.S., I don't remember the event chain, but, they similarly step up.  I believe Pearl Harbor is the last step in theirs.

Yeah, no one has actually mobilized yet (I think). I mean among the majors and semi-majors. There have been occasional recruitment drives. (China and other civil war hotspots have mobilized, but they ended mobilization a while ago.)

Going to war mobilizes a nation immediately, and immediately fills out all existent divisions; but mobilizing earlier allows some time to train up new divisions. There are levels of mobilizing, too; the first is partial mobilization. And there are decisions which can significantly affect manpower like recruitment drives and extending enlistment to two or three years. I took the latter which grants experience bonuses. It only brings in something like 10% of what can be brought with partial mobilization, but for Russia that was still like 1400 manpower. :) And I've added mp naturally since then (back in summer of 1914).

Mobilization doesn't affect IC, though, except maybe a little negatively. None of the majors or semi-majors have any clear IC hobbling right now except for the US. (And Germany due to huge dissent.) But there must be events coming which if/when triggered will dissolve their IC debuffs.

No doubt still far down the road. I'm only in summer 1919.

Sorry, Jason.  I used mobilize as a synonym for the doling out of IC in parts due to events.  I didn't mean it to relate to manpower.

I just started 1923. Hitler joined the WAP party (or whatever it was called) a little after I wrote that previous post (summer 1919), but otherwise I haven't heard from him yet. Wilhelm abdicated, there were two republics in Germany for a while (maybe still are), at least one civil war maybe two. One of the Republics posted a double-handful of divisions on my border one year, but they had all marched off somewhere else or been disbanded within a year. All or almost all of Germany's colonies in Africa have rebelled, some going to war some not. In late '22, France allied with one of the colonies at war with Germany, which I thought might trigger a domino late-Great-War after all, but the two majors instantly made a white peace. Ireland has seceded from Great Britain (and Northern Ireland from Ireland and back to Britain).

My research speed is so high now, 87.2% above nominal, that the game has decided to only give me a boost of .06% instead of 1% for investing substantially in national research; so I don't do that anymore except when Germany succeeds in annoying me with a smear campaign and I need to knock off a little dissent.

There have been two bank bankruptcies so far, and a bank run, which is weird because our economy seems to be great -- possibly I'm triggering them by accident by having less silver in my account than I should. By far the most annoying thing about them is that they knocked a total of 4% off my IC efficiency, which over many years I had scrimped and fought to get up over 6%; but fortunately a strategy decision called "Unconventional Monetary Practices" activated and I was able to get all but half-a-percent of it back pretty cheaply (3500 silver, but I originally estimated it would take 36,000 silver to repair it.)

Aside from Sweden and Germany, who keep launching espionage plots against me (and mostly failing), my border neighbors have been quiet. I'm now at espionage level 20, and can't go any higher (though maybe later that cap will unlock?)

For the next 6ish years, I'm going to start devoting half my new IC to upgrades -- I feel like I've already been pushing my luck. I could wait another two years and still be up to 220 IC for upgrades at about the same time, with my target Hero Project Completion finishing a year sooner; but I don't think a year will make all that much difference for that purpose, whereas I might be glad later I started upgrading at least a few units this soon. Come to think of it, I need an extra year anyway because I have a ton of territories that need upgrading for a year or three before I can build factories on them.

After spending several hours thoroughly updating my comparative unit stats to current tech (or in case of Cavalry rather more than current), it looks like I should be updating units to a 2:1 mix of cav and light infantry respectively, with all the mountain infants getting artillery and the cav units getting half and half arty and armored cars. Cav brigades just aren't punchy enough to compete anymore (even at Cav-8). Consequently, I have cancelled my long-standing production order for more Cav brigades, though I won't start ordering more brigades for probably the next ten years or so (by which time no doubt the brigade list will have drastically updated).

Wow. No sooner had I started the gameclock again, to begin 1923, than The Treaty of Versailles triggered for no clear reason (must have accidentally met its conditions despite France and Germany never having been at war); and Russia picked up most of the rest of Poland. Including several factories and airports!

The Free City of Danzig just declared its independence from Germany, too.

Score! 

And then I hit a problem I really should have been expecting but somehow had completely neglected:

I'm using too many industrial materials.

Up until the past few years, we produced such a radical overabundance of everything (especially metal) that I simply used a lot of it as a cash substitute. I forgot that with every new factory, my needs for energy, metal, and special materials, went up by .5, 1, and 2 units per day.

And yes, I realize just how mindblindingly stupid that sounds. But it's true: I just pretended we had infinite resources to work with.

Suddenly I looked up and my special materials were going to zero. And energy materials will be crashing eventually, too; I'm well into my emergency reserves (though for Russia that's still a lot, almost 30 thousand units. Metal is no problem, I'm still generating a surplus there.)

I need to check the rules now to see if building more factories in a territory with resources helps increase the resource haul; and/or does infrastructure do that. I've been trying to focus on that in the past year, rather than my more strategic-defensive plan of building a core of Hero Projects extending out around Moscow where I can better defend them in case of war.

Otherwise, I've already reached my practical limit to how many factories I can have running at once. Fortunately if I cancel factory productions at this point, I won't be losing any gearing bonuses yet (I'm not entirely sure factories get gearing bonuses anyway for producing more factories). Then I can find my counties with the most resources and focus on building them up.

Meanwhile, until I can gear down (which will take around a year of gametime), I'll have to buy special materials and maybe energy from other countries, through ongoing trade and occasional bulk purchases.


(And I sucked up a head cold a couple of nights ago; my eyes are bubbling so hard right now I can't see straight...  :P)

I haven't played HIO2, but I am playing 3, and I wondered if you were going to have an issue with resources.

I do wish there was an expansion for 3 like there is for 2 which goes back to the start of WWI.

I'm surprised that Germany is falling apart.  I wonder if it's scripted and not checking to see if they are at war.  If I remember, Germany was very strong economically, so that should not have been an issue for them to implode. 

They were definitely very strong economically. Still are except for the waves of dissent.

I suspect the various plot triggers weren't scripted with an eye to checking whether the country had even been, or was still at, war. A couple of the early ones had titles suggesting situations which would be morale-busting failures during war but shouldn't have been if at peace.

It's also possible that those triggers fired off because Germany was technically at war, with one or two of its rebelling African colonies, and the plot triggers weren't subtle or detailed enough to distinguish minor colony wars with the tail end of a global conflagration.

That being said, even without some possible/probable plot mis-triggers, I can kind of see how Germany went down the pipes after all. The colonies start to rebel; Josef dies with no clear successor at a time when there is agitation for some kind of modern non-monarchical state; suddenly it's like a small replay of the Russian civil wars of that period (which I'm avoiding so far), with plot triggers setting up conditions for more plot triggers even though the starting conditions (a decently strong German monarchy at peace) are radically different.

Curiously, the Austrian Empire is in great shape. They may have even picked up a few new counties themselves during the recent German troubles.



I've been far too sick with a head cold to get back to it the past few days, but I've spared some mental ergs trying to figure out where to go from here. I'm far short of where I (over-idealistically) wanted to reach, but in principle my plan has succeeded: hulk up the Russian industrial potential to its limit as efficiently fast as possible, then use that. I just didn't account for my industrial materials being the hard limit so quickly.

Even then I may still be able to continue, if more slowly, if I'm able to increase production of industrial material areas -- I haven't gotten around to checking whether/how that's possible (aside from some production and agriculture techs which improve material efficiency by a few percent points every few years.) I just have to make sure my factory base doesn't grow faster than my ability to feed materials to the factories. I dropped A LOT of factories in counties with defensive strategic concentration but no materials. And once factories exist, they run full blast at something so long as they have industrial materials to work with (and assuming local dissent or other local factors aren't hampering them).

Another factor I hadn't anticipated, but should have, was that my supply situation was under-representative due to many of my divisions being under-enforced, even as low as 10% strength (just enough to have cohesive existence as a division per se). When I started shifting IC over to upgrading, I realized I could go ahead and spend a little time reinforcing everyone near a front -- but then my supply usage ballooned out, naturally. So I was having to assign IC to that instead of to ugrades or reinforcements (or to making more factories, or to improving infrastructure in 30% areas so I could start making factories there).

This plays out rather unexpectedly, but makes an interesting narrative.
Since the Romanovs are still in power, have you thought of improving the Trans-Siberian communications?  A little payback for 1904 might give those hotheads something to froth about.

Oh, yes, that's on the list of things to do! ;) Maybe sooner now than later.

The way this game engine works, the Trans-Siberian railway doesn't 'exist' per se; it's subsumed somewhere in the infrastructure ratings for each territory, which are far from consistent in that half of Russia. Certainly they could stand a lot more improvement.

At the moment, since the East is quiet I'm leaving my divisions on guard in the West. The Japanese started posting a few divisions over in their Chinese mainland territories a year or two ago, but they aren't even posturing anywhere problematically near my borders. Except for a token force on Ohta, that island we half share. I'm kind of willing to let them have it if they want it; it doesn't provide me anything yet, and I don't even have it in supply (meaning I can't improve the infrastructure or create factories there anyway) because I haven't yet figured out how to do that -- the AI helper set up a convoy there, I think, but for some reason that doesn't count as keeping it in supply. It's something I'll have to look into later, but being such a giant landmass I'm not really worried about being a colonial power. If I absolutely have to have more colonies, I'll just expand south and take Afghanistan and Mongolia.

(In vanilla Darkest Hour Full, Russia actually does start with several divisions out near Vladisvostok and on the northern Chinese border; but we also start with drastically fewer divisions than we ought to have a month before WW1 when Russia was historically supposed to already have the world's largest standing army. The "AAR" mod fixes that, but also starts with all divisions moved westward, about half of them concentrated in two superstacks and the others scattered around the Western Front area, plus a few in the Caucases. I don't know how much that's leaping off the horse on the other side -- I can't believe Russia would just leave no one to guard the back door at all -- but for force concentration purposes it's a little more historical.)

Speaking of payback for 1904, my Eastern fleet is pitiable beyond belief for a major power, and getting more out of date every year; so there isn't going to be any retaliation on the Japanese in any case for a while. And ideally speaking, if I can avoid that I will. The best revenge would be being able to kick their asses if I wanted to and them knowing it.  >:D

(Well, from a theological perspective -- something not topically foreign to the situation here, since Russian Orthodoxy is supposed to be the rightful heir of Rome via Constantinople -- the best revenge is to make honorable peace and reconciliation with one's enemies. :) Kicking all their asses is optional, and can only be just if that's the goal being aimed for afterward. The Father gives all judgment to the Son, even eonian judgment, so that all may be coming to positively and truly honor the Father and the Son, etc.)

All right, got back to DH tonight, and after researching the rules it seems that nothing other than some occasional small tech bonuses (and maybe some minister bonuses) can increase the amount of industrial materials taken out of territories every day. Those tech increases, as I know, can't happen often; and switching to a new appropriate minister, even if possible (which isn't always true) and feasible (ditto, compared to other bonus priorities), naturally only provides that ongoing bonus once, not an increasing bonus.

The supplies could be traded for with trade agreements or one-off purchases, but that means using supplies or money (or metal since I still have a huge production surplus there), and I'm not real fond of the idea of constantly milking the money/supply situation even more than I already am -- in fact I recently accepted I might as well slow down on that now!

This is unwelcome news, but at least it clarifies how and what I ought to be planning with my industrial capacity going forward: there isn't any point increasing it so quickly any more, since I can't even use it in material areas to increase my flow of materials.

Effectively that means I should cancel all further factory-making projects; even where I've already started making them, since I'm already running at such a dangerous deficit I'm going to have to either spend personal time buying up rare materials and energy on occasion (it isn't likely I can keep up the flow properly with trade) or else over-assign IC to something like reinforcements so that the production will effectively quit and thus quit sucking materials. A related alternate plan is to over-assign IC to the production queue, which means canceling enough projects in the queue that I even can over-assign IC to it!

As annoying as this is, it does simplify my options somewhat: I don't have to do some kind of meticulous study on where I should be building factories for a while in order to improve my material production; which also means I can keep my new factories clustered in the heart of the motherland more strategically safe instead of putting factories dangerously near where enemies might be tempted to walk over the border.

I just have to stop using so much IC, period, and start figuring out what to spend my IC on if not on increasing my IC -- which after all was the end goal of the Hero Project anyway. We just reached it a lot sooner and with much less result than I was anticipating; but we did achieve the basic goal, which was to bootstrap Russia up to its best possible industrial strength as quickly as possible.

Now, once I put on the brakes, I can figure out what to do with it.

More on that to come.  :coolsmiley:

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 

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.

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.

Quote from: JasonPratt on March 18, 2015, 06:28:31 PM
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.  ??? 

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

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.

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.

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 :buck2: !!) 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. :)