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

[JasonPratt]

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!

[JasonPratt]

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!

[MetalDog]

What year does it go through, Jason?

[JasonPratt]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[MetalDog]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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

[JasonPratt]

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.

[jomni]

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

[JasonPratt]

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)

[MetalDog]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[MetalDog]

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