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

[JasonPratt]

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.

[MetalDog]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[MetalDog]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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).

[JasonPratt]

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.

[Martok]

Score! 

[JasonPratt]

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)

[OJsDad]

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. 

[JasonPratt]

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).

[besilarius]

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.

[JasonPratt]

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.)

[JasonPratt]

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.)

[JasonPratt]

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.