EODAIP - an AI focused Darkest Hour Mod

[giang trung 123]

I played the Soviet Union and captured Manchukuo from the Japanese and released them as allies instead of keeping them like puppets. Then they declared war on China and dragged me and Japan into the war and magically. Someday Japan will make a successful alliance with Germany and now we are all on the fascist side against the whole world!

 

[Sheien]

Fascinating, I'll try to figure out what causes this

 

[Amberle]

Seeing ai Italy naval invading Malta when we have naval supremacy is just so amazing. It's a first for me.

Playing Romania - balanced. Vichy joined axis, the rest seemed to be happening historical. Soviets vs Germany seems great, with Germany pushing slightly. Italy quickly conquered Egypt by themselves but its stalling out just outside of Ethiopia. Japan is having a nice stalemate with China. The ai seems so more capable of doing stuff by themself, I'm having so much fun and 1942 just started and Iran just got carved up and joined the allies opening up a new front. Norway is a battleground back and forth. Finland is out of the war, seems to happen quickly in all games I play, probably very hard to "fix".

I love playing medium to slightly bigger nations, and complement the majors. And this mod is fantastic in that regard.

 

[Sheien]

I love playing medium to slightly bigger nations, and complement the majors. And this mod is fantastic in that regard.

That's also my favourite way to play - I find it hard to wrap my head around massive fronts, but on the other hand trying to play CZE and air-invade Britain as a German ally is tons of fun

Glad you're enjoying EODAIP! I hope to continue making more of those "cool" moments, like Italy being capable enough to capture Malta

My personal experience with the Finnish front is this: I can make it a stalemate, but if Germany masses forces there, Soviets will take huge losses very quickly. There is a script that's trying to work around this via passivity resets, but it's one of the ancient vanilla EOD or vanilla DH scripts that has 20 conditions stacked on top of each other that I always feel to lazy to untangle... I'm still recovering after rewriting British navy scripts

 

[Sheien]

Here's this week's haul:

Fixed bugs:

• The 1940 slowdown should be gone

Known bugs:

• Random Coastal Forts continue to appear in provinces without coasts all over the world
• GER may generate a trade deal with its day/hour saved as -52/-51 - Those are values of Jungle terrain maluses, leading me to believe this is some insane overflow happening somewhere in script. I haven’t seen this before 1.5.2, but it doesn’t seem to crash or cause any immediately obvious issues…
• ENG and USA, in their infinite wisdom, may attempt to garrison 0 value Pacific islands all throughout the war, and suicide tens of thousands of men and ships into the Japanese navy by doing this. I’ve fixed some of the worst offenders (by ignoring them in the garrison settings), but this is still possible with provinces that aren’t easily ignorable (Hong Kong, provinces with bases)

Content:

• (SWE) Summer Government events do not trigger if political_left is already at 6 or below
• (JAP, GER, USA, ENG, ITA, CHI) Majors should now be better at recognizing their priorities during large military ops
• (JAP, GER, USA, ENG, SOV, ITA, JAP, CHI, FRA) Some countries have had their front behaviors altered to be more distinct from each other
• (Axis) RKs and Axis minors should be more likely to leave a small amount of units in their capitals, to prevent a single Allied motorized division from taking out half the Axis
• (GER) Change the triggerdate for Barbarossa so that it’s less likely to happen before snow melts
• (USA) Naval_Attack script now more all-or-nothing on Japanese invasion, allows for assisting allies in ITA and DDay
• (USA, ENG, GER) Follow-up improvements to invasions, now that I’ve finally figured out most of the actual invasion logic (Note that this may not be super obvious because AIs also got better at using fleets to defend against invasions )
• (USA) Sherman Tanks army customization event now happens slightly earlier on average
• (USA) Added some alternative conditions for US to join allies
• (USA) Rework DDay script conditions to cover more logical cases
• (USA) Made US smarter at switching strategies
• (USA) The Grey Dawn event now only partially triggers against AI GER, and it’s harder to trigger overall (10% of a region lost instead of 1%) - mainly so that it doesn’t make US AI impotent after just a single GER division lands and dies immediately
• (USA) Tweak script to focus more on Infantry/Land Doctrine research, properly support Rangers production, use Rangers as filler to leverage front coverage
• (ENG, USA) Now more passive against RSI if attacking Italy
• (ENG, USA) Now reset passivity on fronts if DDay set to begin
• (GER) GER_US script now forcefully sets some front/garrison behaviors so that they’re not inherited from war vs. SOV
• (JAP) Tweak Japanese production and Carrier bonus so that JAP is more likely to go head-to-head after US improvements, increase required convoy production
• (ENG) Follow-up on naval script changes to improve target selection
• (SPA, SPR) Reworked Spanish Civil War front to be slower, tweaked tactics of each side to be vaguely reminiscent of what could be actual strategies. (I tried to get the front to follow the historical dynamic towards Catalonia but the AI prefers Grenada instead…) Tweaked passivity and added a special case when progress is unexpectedly quick
• (SPA, SPR) Added a new script that forces both sides to quickly resolve the war if it’s dragging on into late 1939
• (SPA, SPR) Gave Spanish AIs a slight economical boost temporarily (Removed after either side wins) so that they don’t struggle with spending everything on Supplies, and can actually attempt to follow their script
• (SOV) Buffed Armor/Aircraft options in 1943 L-L Shipment
• (MAN) Manchukuo should no longer be able to declare war
• (CHC) Communist China less likely to randomly declare war against GER
• (CHC) Reworked Communist China fronts, added some expectations of eventual war vs CHI - I would also love to rework their trigger scripting but it’s so old and weird…
• (GER) Now more likely to release SLO when taking over CZE
• (ITA) Buffed Pariani, Cavagnari and Mussolini Minister Traits to compensate smarter Allies
• (ITA) Italian Army Reorganization (the decision that sets max Infantry strength to 70%) now also decreases Infantry buildtime by 15%
• (AI production) Light Armor now transmutes to Cavalry instead of Mechanized (If LA is disabled there is typically no way it will be able to transmute to Mech instead!)
• (AI production) Cavalry now transmutes to Infantry instead of Motorized (similar reason to above)
• (Resources) Increased Land unit fuel (oil) consumption by 10% of current value while in combat
• (Country) Changed U55 color to White from DarkBlue so that it’s less confusing on French State - USA fronts
• (Combat) Tweaked some combat & positioning values to make Naval Battles less destructive on average (hoping to get rid of cases where AIs annihilate eachother’s navies in only a few months), make Air vs Navy more balanced (more punishing for Air) & make Strategic Bombing slightly stronger
• (Difficulty) Made edge difficulties more give bigger maluses/bonuses. Made SOV get slight bonuses on Very Strong Axis/Allies (SOV can end up as an enemy of both Allies and Axis + early on richer SOV is beneficial for Axis but a stronger SOV later also helps Allies… So it’s kind of split this way where the bonuses SOV gets are offset by the difficulty modifiers for whatever is the strong side.)
  I hope difficulties should completely “work as advertised” now, but I may continue to develop them with event support still (for instance, make AI bonuses from events scale to difficulty)

I will probably temporarily slow down for realsies now, since I can't imagine that my Patreon supporters that are in it only for the StarCraft content are happy with how much attention I've been giving to DH

But I feel that we're in a much better place gameplay, difficulty, and variety-wise now, so it should be fine to take a break. If any major issues are pointed out I'll still fix them, of course =)

 

[My left foot itches]

Here's this week's haul:

I will probably temporarily slow down for realsies now, since I can't imagine that my Patreon supporters that are in it only for the StarCraft content are happy with how much attention I've been giving to DH

But I feel that we're in a much better place gameplay, difficulty, and variety-wise now, so it should be fine to take a break. If any major issues are pointed out I'll still fix them, of course =)

I think we are happy here with any DH mods being uploaded/updated
I'm wondering, how you managed to fix slowdown?

 

[Sheien]

I think we are happy here with any DH mods being uploaded/updated
I'm wondering, how you managed to fix slowdown?

Seems to be that I've changed some invasions from redirect = nearest to redirect = home or priority

 

[Amberle]

First I need to finish up my current campaign, but I cannot wait to start a new one on this update. Thank you so much again!!!

There is always a few spots the ai loves to naval invade, Corsica seems to be a particular favorite for the British in every dh game. But you know what? I did NOT have to retake it myself, Vichy France did it all by themselves. No idea if the ai changes are responsible but it feels so good not having to babysit everything.

 

[Amberle]

So I ran a Spain campaign helping Italy win Africa and closing down the mediterranean. It all went very well and we got the British on the run. I saw nothing out of the ordinary happening except California going leninist(Funny when you the of the current day) and declared independence in 1933.

But as soon as Barbarossa happened Romania and Bulgaria fell right away and the Germans have been pushed a bit back. The soviets have the same if not slightly more ic than Germany. I don't think I can do much, maybe reload a previous save and reinforce Romania.

I loaded up a savegame from 1938 and the Germans did way better and did advanced a bit. Still they had over 50 ic less than the Soviets at the start of the war. No idea if thats normal or something that changed in the last patch. Either way I'm happy, a stronger Soviet is a good thing for me.

 

[Sheien]

I saw nothing out of the ordinary happening except California going leninist(Funny when you the of the current day) and declared independence in 1933.

That is quite extraordinary... I've never seen this and I wouldn't think that it could've happened in the mod at all. It must've been due to rebels, right?

But as soon as Barbarossa happened Romania and Bulgaria fell right away and the Germans have been pushed a bit back.

I've noticed this too, on my end I've already tweaked passivity and Soviet scripting to make this less likely - since the AI doesn't recognize some fronts until they're at war it's "unfair" in a way for Germany to have less border provinces vs SOV than SOV has vs Axis, especially if it results in loss of Ploesti...

But yeah - overall, it turns out that SOV actually producing units before the war starts makes them pretty menacing.

I was wondering actually if SOV is not just outright too scary. They don't have the "Let's event-generate 100 mil divisions!" events they normally had in gameplay.txt to help the AI cope with being bad, but when I tried playing as GER the Barbarossa felt overwhelming. I think for the AI it necessitates a GER scripting update, where in the event of a successful Sealion they should not go after US but focus on SOV instead.

 

[Amberle]

If you change the soviets it in the future, can you tell me how to keep it as it now? Yes I could save this version, but then I wont get the other fixes in newer versions.

I think I'll run an Italy game next, and send a sizeable army to the east to support Germany and see how that works out.

 

[Altruist]

If you change the soviets it in the future, can you tell me how to keep it as it now? Yes I could save this version, but then I wont get the other fixes in newer versions.

Or making it a player-choice in the game at the beginning? Perhaps an event-kind question "Hard or very hard Barbarossa?" which then sets a flag defining which settings/events for SU are used?

 

[Sheien]

I'll think about it. I could also link separate scripts to a flag set by the existing Barbarossa difficulty event - the only issue being, as always, that it's more work

 

[Sheien]

After what is I think at least 4 years (counting time before the mod went public), I've finally figured out how to make the AI use paratroopers. I'm really excited for this, so I will probably upload a really small update that just adds this functionality exclusively and not much else.

 

[Sheien]

Not that small of a patch ultimately - it took way longer than I'd like to implement Paratroopers for everyone, and... they're not really used all that often still. The AI gets stuck trying to use them after some time, but I just can't figure out if there's any way to unstuck it at this point. Changing the range parameter for airgroups has some effect, but setting it to a number much higher than 10 also seems to make AI never use airdrops...

Well, in any case, here's the update -

Known bugs:

• SPA may generate a trade deal with its day/hour saved as -52/-51 (It’s not from any events, seemingly)
• Game slows down if you reload multiple times without restarting the executable

Content:

• (ENG, USA) Allow Southern Italy invasions during D-Day if still not captured
• (GER) GER now goes against SOV if Sealion succeeds, instead of letting SOV build up
• (Divisions) WW2-Era Paratroopers are now cheaper by 2 IC and weaker by ~2 Soft and Hard attack, WW2-Era Transport Planes are now 10% cheaper and slightly slower
• (GER, USA, SOV, ENG) Some AIs will now attempt to drop Paratroopers to compliment their naval invasions
• (GER) Edit some invasion targets to allow for airlifts in situations where we would expect historical paratroopers
• (GER) Rework Air AI select logic completely, add new AI config to Battle of Poland. In particular the Blitz should now be a higher priority for the AI, and CAS planes during Battle of Poland should not try to fly over FRA as often
• (GER) Plan Z and Renounce Naval Agreements are no longer random chance for AI (could cause the AI to never invade NOR if it was really unlucky)
• (GER) AI Second Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement now guarantees SOV some time to build up rather than being completely void. Also only taken by AI when it does not have a large army advantage over SOV now.
• (GER) AI GER should be better at understanding its priorities against SOV (Kursk,, Leningrad and Moscow for 1941 - Stalingrad and Baku for 1942+)
• (GER puppets) German War Allies with med-high IC now have more custom scripts (currently only really working for GER-Puppet FRA, - need to work more on ENG, SCO, Burgundy)
• (SCA) Added basic support for distinct AI SCA & better power base (requires Quisling as HoG+releasing SCO via event for now)
• (ENG) Properly implement Gurkha training for ENG instead of relying only on the tech event
• (ENG) No longer waste training % on trying to train rangers
• (ENG, USA) Revise tech to make sure the AI supports Paratroopers
• (JAP) Pearl Harbour triggers no longer check for lost_vp (It could cause the event to never fire if Jap annexed and then lost territory of Chinese Warlords), check lost_national instead
• (ENG, SOV) Added some extra requirements to the Military Conference events
• (GER, SOV) Tweaked “Luftwaffe hits Soviet Airfields” to make it more reasonable with the advantage SOV can get via not being in a war all the while GER is losing planes to ENG
• (FIN) Less likely to trigger Moscow Armistice if FIN is making strategic gains
• (CHI) Japanese peace proposal now forces CHI to leave alliance instead of sometimes accidentally ending WW2 early
• (SPA) SPA and SPR now try to better follow historical fronts (don't expect precise accuracy though)
• (AI) Reconfigured air AI
• (AI, script) Some minor allies that can be expected to maintain a Naval presence now no longer can use Invasion_Shutoff
• (AI, script) Some countries that expect a war now no longer use Reinforcement_Boost_Down and are forced to Reinforce earlier
• (Minors) Various minors now research Mining/Oil Refining to make them more valuable for trade/to take out as an economic threat if they provide for the opposing alliance. Some countries now research synthetic oil. Some more countries properly build up their IC early into the game. Fixed some illogical tech ignores on minors that wanted certain types of units.
• (Ministers) Changed “The Iron Knight” minister trait to focus on bad production more, no longer nerf Fighter stats. “The Brown Eminence” now restored and used again for GER HoG, edit to make it less debilitating for army.
• (CFG) Changed text on EOD intro events
• (Add_on, CFG, sfx) Added some global “newspaper” events that play a music track for nations that don’t have their own “music events”. This interrupts playlists so if it's not liked I'll just make it toggleable.
• (Misc) Slightly nerfed province AA hit chance because it made AI too scared of sending units on bombing missions

 

[Amberle]

I've ran 3 games since last time and I haven't really got any issues to report. I've yet to be able to conquer the British Isle after helping taking down the Soviet Union. Love it!

And now for at least 3 more games, thanks for the update!

 

[Vajizz]

Thank you very much, really excited to try this mod for the first time (after a long time player of The Grand Campaign) but I do not see a link to the update from Thursday's post or the original post having been updated to download it? Anyway thank you again and look forward to playing this mod soon!

 

[Inquerion]

Thank you very much, really excited to try this mod for the first time (after a long time player of The Grand Campaign) but I do not see a link to the update from Thursday's post or the original post having been updated to download it? Anyway thank you again and look forward to playing this mod soon!

I seems that Sheien forgot to update first page, because MEGA link shows that the mod was updated on 14.12.2022. So feel free to download EODAIP now.

 

[Sheien]

Yep, I forgot to update the date yet again Should be alright now.

 

[Sheien]

I wasted some 100 hours on this, but GER AI now consistently uses Paratroopers in my runs. Well, as consistently as I could hope xD Today was the first time I saw it airlift over the UK.
I had to edit all air marshall files to keep Naval Bombers and Fighters out of Airlift groups, change desired ratios of all possible groups, remove and re-add transport planes via events to get them unstuck and force AI to train paratroopers and transport planes in very specific orders that avoided them getting stuck forever.
It was a very painful process and I fully expect it to randomly break before I can even upload anything.