If they seemed to group for Norway then that's as far as I can take it, the rest is in the hands of God and Paradox's hardcoded invasion AI. I heard that it was improved a little in Arsenal of Democracy but I don't think Darkest Hour has those improvements
Edit: For what it's worth, they seem to invade on my end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah I got an invasion in the same place a little while after I posted lmao. Too bad I had a corps of NAVs and mountaineers guarding the port. I never noticed it before, but it seems that NAVs rather cruelly prioritize hitting transport fleets, since they ignored the fleet doing shore bombardment. Would it be possible to spawn AI troops attacking Narvik and Trondheim say 3-4 weeks after it declares war to give it more of a sense of urgency? Also the event that creates a puppet denmark (I declared war manually since norway in the axis disables weserubung) gives it a national socialist government, but talks about how Hitler wanted it to be a model protectorate which superficially kept its democratic government and independence. I've played another mod, maybe TRP, which made it a puppet but it kept its government.
Lots of general feedback since I just did Sealion and this is my first EOD game. First, it was surprisingly easy to win naval superiority in the channel because the AI only used fleets of ~10 ships at most. I was able to sink a couple of BBs, a BC and a CV with 6 upranged BCs and asw DDs without any serious casualties. I feel like Germany can build up too strong of a surface fleet compared to irl because of how the Anglo-German Naval Treaty is implemented, it simply disables the building of BBs and CVs until the Czech issue is dealt with. The issue is compounded by the Plan Z event that fires after you renounce the treaty which can give you a ton of capital ships ready by 1940. There is an event in events/Reichs Expansion Pack/NS Germany/Kriegsmarine.txt that tries to model the tonnage limits of the treaty, but I don't think it works ingame. It might be better to have an event deciding the structure of the kriegsmarine when you get the event allowing you to build ships other subs. Going plan z could set an AI switch for ENG to build up its surface fleet. Also I know it's a vanilla engine issue, but it's really annoying how CV CAGs are modeled as ultra long range laser cannons that vaporize capital ships in good weather. A nerf to range or damage might be a nice thing. Finally it's cool how the british can use gas if you do Sealion, but weird how you can't respond in kind. Hypothetically if your invasion fails after that event fires, would the global debuffs stick around? Also the US seems to have silently declared war on me after capturing england, but before the collapse of the empire event chain happened. Will I still get the german american cold war peace event in a year or so like vanilla or when I defeat the USSR?
On the topic of czechoslovakia, giving free cores on inner czech lands is weird. Maybe the AI needs the IC but the player doesn't. Likewise to giving cores on the parts of Poland that Germany attempted to colonize precisely because it wasn't German, the Danzig corridor (and maybe Plock since it seems to be a vanilla thing) is enough. Occupation and cores in yugoslavia is also wonky, the event to liberate croatia and serbia for germany fires before the partitioning events are done, so Serbia can end up with provinces that other axis powers should get because they didn't paint the map right. Also I'm not sure that Serbia should be event liberated for free, it was a hotbed of partisans irl, germany had vague designs on the west banat and the italians annexed the southwest into albania and montenegro. It should be treated like an RK imo, with a core on Belgrade and claims elsewhere. Similarly croatia should have claims, not cores, on most of bosnia. About yugoslavia in general, it's annoying how the pro-british coup seems to be railroaded (might be a vanilla thing), I influenced them into becoming national socialist and got them to join the Axis in late 39, then the coup happened immediately and the italians declared war (also on greece a year early) for some reason but the declare war on yugoslavia decision remained visible for me and only served to add 10 belligerence. Considering yugoslavia was pressured into signing the tripartite pact partly because of the failed italian invasion of greece and the strengthening british position in the east Med, it's strange how a coup could happen when in my case Malta was captured and the italians weren't at war with greece.
Other balkan stuff. I know aligning Romania by putting divisions in hungary is vanilla, but it's always been weird that you can bring them into the war so easily when Hitler initially wanted them to stay neutral, so the Ploesti oil fields weren't threatened. As I understand the string of events that lead to Romanian Axis membership, greater Romania was dismantled piecemeal following the second vienna award and the iron guard coup was an attempt to limit the damage, particularly from the USSR, by aligning with Hitler. I don't think it should be possible to align them before the second vienna award and soviet invasion of bessarabia. The puppet state decisions also seem weird, maybe it's good for the GER AI to puppet Romania and Bulgaria to get military control but I don't think it's historically accurate to have fascist changes in government turn them into satellite states. Likewise it's pretty strange to see a puppet national socialist romania get progressively taken apart by hungary, bulgaria and the ussr.
Also kind of related to greece and the balkans, the decision to spawn the afrika korps is pretty silly for the player. You get 3 ARM divisions and 2 MOT with brigade attachments that you probably haven't developed like SPAA plus unit terrain buffs and forts from an event that quickly follows. Having rommel leading the DAK would be cool if you were playing england or an ally, but playing germany I would have preferred to get 5 or 6 transports to support the italians if they needed it (they didn't because they sent most of their army to libya) rather than free divisions. Some other MENA things, when the collapse of the british empire event happens, the sinai, palestine and jordan are annexed to free france while the french mandate for syria becomes independent of vichy (or maybe it flipped to free france then becomes independent and I didn't notice) and signs a peace treaty with the axis (which means it declared war?). I also got the event for the pro-axis coup in Iraq, but it seems to flip back to being a UK puppet immediately and stays in the war after the collapse of the empire, despite annexing kuwait.
Next, game balance wise airpower or at least CAS is very strong now. 3 wings of 1937 stukas with 1938 doctrines can kill over 2k men when ground attacking moving/retreating stacks and ground support seems to wipe the org of attacking stacks in 1-2 days of daylight bombing. I actually prefer it compared to vanilla's vaguely useful and expensive planes but it's a shame that the AI can't really use it well. It's balanced like arsenal of democracy, only there the AI knows how to use airpower or at least it's so strong that it feels like it can. Paratroopers are also very deadly when combined with airpower. I've never felt more like I was doing a proper blitzkrieg than using tanks to smash lines, motorized divisions to exploit and encircle and paratroopers to vertically envelop the rear all combined with microing CAS for ground attack or support.
Last thing lol, does EOD change default message and game log settings? It's pretty annoying how it was hiding the outcome of air battles and convoy sinkings in the game log.
