Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Muddling Through the Darkest Hour - Learning How to Play the UK

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Muddling Through the Darkest Hour Session 28 - May 1, 1940

March 22, 1940 - Our Fighters got butchered by Milch Mulchers, 8 squadrons against 6. We will take several days recovering. We are starting to renumber German squadrons. Our Intelligence says we are up against :
24 Fighter Squadrons - We are outnumbered 4 to 1. We have identified 8 of them.
31 Bomber Squadrons - We have identified 8 of them.

March 27, 1940 - France had a sudden change of government. The Vichy Regime is in and France joined the Axis.
Just kidding. They are Social Liberal.

March 29, 1940 - We conducted a carrier raid on Wilhelmshaven and found 17 Submarines based there. Except for trashing the Naval base, the Carrier Strike was completely ineffective.

Upgrade Parade:
April 2, 1940 - Medium Armor upgraded. We have 3 Brigades left to upgrade and then the parade will start all over.
April 17, 1940 - Medium Armor upgraded.
April 20, 1940 - Medium Armor upgraded.
April 29, 1940 - We completed our Medium Armor upgrade.

Production:
April 10, 1940 - Norwich 100% Infrastructure. We are trying to get these off the list and replace them with projects that matter.
April 15, 1940 - Exeter 100% Infrastructure.
April 21, 1940 - Plymouth 80% Infrastructure. We have two of these projects remaining and we are replacing these with Destroyers.
April 27, 1940 - Interceptor 4 RAF No 10 Fighter Group

Technology:
40-4 Night Bombing Doctrine completed April 8, 1940
40D Dispersed Fighting Doctrine started April 8, 1940 by Hugh Dowding
40-5 Advanced Scouting Doctrine completed April 23, 1940
40E Rocket Engine started April 23, 1940 by Frank Whittle

Spy v Spy:
March 28, 1940 - USSR tried to delay a tech team. We might be getting better at this game.
April 15, 1940 - Ireland tried to steal a blueprint.
April 17, 1940 - France managed to steal Turbojet Engine from the USSR. We never imagined they were so far ahead.
April 18, 1940 - Germany stole Deck Load Spotting from us. This will help them when they build a carrier fleet.
April 25, 1940 - Italy tried to delay our production again.

April 1, 1940 - We will take a quick inventory of losses to measure how we are doing:
47852 Personnel 547 Fighters 72 Bombers - UK
46041 Personnel 551 Fighters 607 Bombers - France - And we are likely to blame them for losing this war.
222229 Personnel 2000 Fighters 2445 Bombers - Germany

May 1, 1940 - Here is a similar report:
48076 Personnel (+224) 702 Fighters (+155) 72 Bombers - UK
49411 Personnel (+3370) 551 Fighters 607 Bombers - France appears to have been out of the air war for a month
224973 Personnel (+2744) 2355 Fighters (+355) 2961 Bombers (+516) - Germany
So far, it seems doing nothing is the best approach to winning the air war.

We are up against:
April 1, 1940
166 Divisions +9 HQ
26 Fighters +29 Bombers
21 Submarines +26 Transports - This is how they will invade Norway.

May 1, 1940
172 Divisions, 2 Armor, 9 HQ (up 7 from last report)
26 Fighters, 30 Bombers (+1 Bomber)
16 Submarines, 19 Transports - We know they have more than that, because we did not sink anything since the last report.

The map is showing a whole bunch of nothing going on.
1752343065688.png

We should show what is going on in China instead.
1752343115721.png

Is it my imagination or are the Chinese holding up?
 
France's Air Force (or yours) is doing well...just a pity it isn't bigger...but that's very hard difficulty for you....
 
TheExecuter said:
France's Air Force (or yours) is doing well...just a pity it isn't bigger...but that's very hard difficulty for you....
Click to expand...

Um.... Actually I'm playing at regular difficulty. It will get worse with VH. I messed up my opening because I had no idea how to play Darkest Hour and there are changes from HoI2. It is like they gimped the UK so there is not much they can do up the years leading up.

It looks like Manpower has to be increased by campaigns.
Next time I plan to manage my tech better.
For a while, I thought increasing IC was a way to go in peacetime.
More priority should have gone to getting some kind of navy at the start, and air force.
More specifically, interceptors. Every time I look at the numbers, Interceptors appear to be better for winning the air war.

For some reason, they are stalled, but the next Session might bring a surprise!
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Riel Hamard said:
Um.... Actually I'm playing at regular difficulty. It will get worse with VH. I messed up my opening because I had no idea how to play Darkest Hour and there are changes from HoI2. It is like they gimped the UK so there is not much they can do up the years leading up.

It looks like Manpower has to be increased by campaigns.
Next time I plan to manage my tech better.
For a while, I thought increasing IC was a way to go in peacetime.
More priority should have gone to getting some kind of navy at the start, and air force.
More specifically, interceptors. Every time I look at the numbers, Interceptors appear to be better for winning the air war.

For some reason, they are stalled, but the next Session might bring a surprise!
Click to expand...

Ah.

DH navy always takes a long time, so those ships should always be in the queue.

I usually end up building fighters instead of interceptors, but mostly because I like the extra range and I don't want to have to break up my fighters to cover larger areas. In the end though, I don't find that the enemy air force really hurts me too much.
 
Muddling Through the Darkest Hour Session 29

May 4, 1940 - It finally happened. Germany declared war on Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Now we have to figure out how to move our troops around to be a disruption. How we lost the screenshot, we do not know.
May 5, 1940 - We offloaded 14 Divisions into the Netherlands. We have:
14 Divisions in the Netherlands
12 Divisions in Egypt
10 Divisions in Denmark

May 9, 1940 - Arnhem was hard for us to get to without a direct port. We got 9 divisions there just in time. We will see how they do.
May 10, 1940 - We are now 14 Divisions defending against 13 with a river and a land fortification.
May 11, 1940 - Switzerland had their election. They are Social Democrat Costa Rica elected right and they are Social Conservative.
Arnhem is now 25 Divisions attacking our 14. The Germans sure outnumber us.
May 12, 1940 - It is physically difficult to retreat to Amsterdam. This might be worth a mulligan in itself.
May 13, 1940 - USSR annexed Estonia.
May 15, 1940 - Germany annexed Luxemburg.
May 19, 1940 - USSR annexed Latvia. We managed to evacuate our Low Countries Divisions to France. They sit at slightly less than 10 Organization.
May 24, 1940 - The Netherlands appear to be gone from the map. This leaves Belgium and nothing between Belgium and France. We have 18 Divisions in France.
May 27, 1940 - Indeed, the Netherlands no longer exist.
1752353678436.png

We think we got out of the deal:
2 CA2 Heavy Cruisers
1 CL1 Light Cruiser
2 DD1 1 DD3 1 DD5 Destroyers
1 SS1 1 SS2 3 SS3 Submarines
3 TP3 Transports
15 ships total

Production:
May 5, 1940 - Destroyer Division 17 and we finally get to see one of those new Tribal type Destroyers
May 21, 1940 - Interceptor 5 No 207 RAF Fighter Group
May 24, 1940 - Oxford 90% Infrastructure

June 1, 1940 - With the fall of the Netherlands and Belgium not looking much better, it is time for new leadership.
1752355844588.png

I would do well to record just how much the domestic policy changes. We are now Market Liberal, Full Democracy, Fully Hawk Lobby, Full Interventionist.

We made it back to Denmark and can either evacuate or move somewhere else.
1752356075219.png

Just one Division kicked us out of Germany into Denmark? We should counterattack first!

Losses to date appear to be:
85593 Personnel, 874 Fighters, 72 Bombers - UK
210282 Personnel, 652 Fighters, 853 Bombers - France - They are fighting the war for us.
395539 Personnel, 2732 Fighters, 3265 Bombers - Germany

Here is what is left of Belgium:
1752356482343.png

We have 18 Divisions in France we can move to a front line and it will take several weeks. We also have 7 Divisions in Denmark.
 
Did you ever change from Grand Battle Doctrine to something else?

The starting British / French doctrine tree is awful...
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Now that I've finished my Soviet Union game, I'm going to take a look at long term brigade types that are best...

From an army perspective, self propelled artillery was good (better than tanks), while infantry mostly benefitted from artillery brigades. Heavy tanks are good for infantry but hella expensive. If it were me, I'd go artillery and engineers for the speed boost.

Motorized Infantry is fast, but only armored cars or engineer brigades allow it to maintain speed.

Mechanized Infantry is expensive.

Cavalry actually gives good value throughout (it motorizes as time passes), and if you do research into helicopter prerequisites, you can get Air Cavalry, which is the fastest land unit in the game.
 
Looking at the end of the tech tree...I would think the following for future builds:

Fighters -> for pure air-2-air, go Interceptors. The range difference isn't that great. Fighters / Multi-role aircraft are mostly for if you want to use fighters as cheap CAS at times. You may also, if you are using CAGs, need to research some models of multi-role aircraft.

CAS -> just don't. By the end of the tech tree, fighters can do the same role...and TAC does it WAY better.

NAV-B -> best value money can buy

TAC -> this is your armed strike for air to ground. Not really all that great at it.

For the air-force, I would prioritize:
1) Interceptors
2) Naval Bombers - especially if you don't have a strong navy and NEED to be able to fight the Allies or Japan.
3) Escort Fighter technology
4) TAC

------------------------

Navy:
Here is my surprise coming out of my recent 'finally reached the end of the tech tree' run.

Battleships - way too expensive and long to build. Avoid.
Battlecruisers - see battleships
Heavy cruisers - decent value, however...
Light cruisers - cheaper and with more versatility in terms of fleet support. Heavy cruisers only advantage seems to be better shore bombardment (which isn't a big deal) and SLIGHTLY better range.
Destroyers - build the hell out of these. As the tech tree gets further, they become almost as powerful as light cruisers
Aircraft Carriers - both CVLs and CVs are good value IF you are willing to also invest in the airplanes and the doctrines...AND you have sufficient fleet to enable you to overwhelm an enemy land based air. So, basically, build these if you are USA, Britain, or Japan. Or maybe late game Germany or Soviet Union. Otherwise, rely on Naval Bombers and cruisers.
Subs - build lots of the non-heavy subs.

In the past I had been using heavy cruisers as my main capital ship build...but now I am rethinking this and might try a game with light cruisers as my go to build.

-----------------------------

Army:

Infantry - only brigades I would recommend building with infantry is artillery. Everything else can be boosted with just model upgrades

Mobile Units:
Fastest is motorized, but only if you brigade these with either armored cars or engineers. Add tanks to this and they are no faster than cavalry or mechanized infantry.
Motorized: Brigade with engineers.
Mechanized: Too expensive
Cavalry: Brigade with self propelled artillery
Armored divisions: Too expensive - don't build.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
In HoI2 I know Engineers add speed, but I did not see anything written in Darkest Hour.

It must have taken quite a while to get to the end of the tech tree run. I might have tried to cheat my way through it. Setting up specific scenarios might also have been good. Going through your list:

Air - You did not mention Strategic Bombers. ;)
CAS - Advice noted. If I can think of anything, it might be short range planning.

Navy - Your surprise was the Light Cruiser?
I thought in HoI2 CruZerg was a strategy. In DH they turned CA into an escort ship and this leaves all the ships you said were too expensive to be worth building. So that strategy is no longer valid.

Is there a place I can look up the consequences of the decisions I had available before?
 
Riel Hamard said:
Air - You did not mention Strategic Bombers. ;)
Click to expand...

They are expensive and a waste of time. You lose almost as much IC as the enemy just in replacing manpower losses from your planes getting shot down. It's not worth it.

Riel Hamard said:
Navy - Your surprise was the Light Cruiser?
I thought in HoI2 CruZerg was a strategy. In DH they turned CA into an escort ship and this leaves all the ships you said were too expensive to be worth building. So that strategy is no longer valid.

Is there a place I can look up the consequences of the decisions I had available before?
Click to expand...

I always built CAs because of HOI2 background. But in DH, CLs are just slightly less powerful than CAs and more versatile. And if I'm already not going for BCs or BBs...but instead relying on NavBs or the CVs to do ship killing...or just attrition with the Cruiserg / DDs / subs strategy...why not have more ships?

Which decisions are you looking for?

I also played around a little in the 1933 start for Britain...and I chose to disband all the land brigades (cavalry, AA, etc) at start...since I don't want to waste IC upgrading these, and the manpower is better used elsewhere. That got me up to about 60 manpower to start.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Muddling Through the Darkest Hour Session 30 - June 14, 1940 - Fall of Denmark and Belgium

This is another mulligan session. I should break it into shorter segments. So we have a pretty good idea of what is coming shortly. I started by taking an inventory of our forces, then started again breaking the German LW (25 Fighters, 31 Bombers) into groups by commander.

Our BEF will push slowly to the Northeast where the action is. Hindsight says we landed in the wrong spot. The DEF will counterattack and hold as long as they can, then do an island grab. The RAF will try to sneak in opportunities, because that is all they can do. They are currently at 80% strength.

June 2, 1940 - We decided to leave Abenra while we had the chance. We loaded up and moved to Fredrickshaven.
June 3, 1940 - It sure did not take the Germans long to capture.
June 6, 1940 - Denmark stood down. We had the foresight to grab the islands. Looking at a map, these count as islands?
1752418765391.png

For a while, we have Copenhagen, Odense, and Fredrickshaven, along with a couple of air bases and AA guns. On the other side, we managed to smash SGW 101 and claim 30 Bomber kills. Our Fighter Strength is at 700/800.

June 7, 1940 - Come on! 600 casualties from a single air raid? Just get cover and wait until the attack is over. There is no other danger in this island. 6% strength loss from a single air raid seems pretty ridiculous. I might go in and modify these numbers.
June 8, 1940 - Okay fine. They are bringing order to their local areas. We are showing they are now in supply and probably digging in. Our forces are showing 281 strength. 4 Bomber air raid leaves us at 84 strength / 11 organization. We might do well to pluck those troops out of Denmark, because the Germans cannot invade anyway, for some reason.
June 9, 1940 - Belgian Capitulates, but vows to continue the fight from the Congo.
1752420822349.png

Out of this deal, we get:
15 Infantry
2 Cavalry
3 Militia
2 Interceptors
2 Transports

We got a jump on von Greim and 2 Tactical Squadrons, claiming 76 Fighters and 76 Bombers. We all know claims are exaggerated. This implies those squadrons are going in escorted. Besides, Kuhl was there right after with 8 Fighter Squadrons to ruin our day. Fighter strength is now 583/800.

June 10, 1940 - Air Raids
Fredrickshaven - 85 Strength, 15 Organization, 10.5 Dug in
Dieppe - 254 Strength, 15 Organization, 1.5 Dug in
Amiens - They got about 1500 and I still think these numbers are ridiculous. By the end of the war, we will have about 40M from the UK. A 5 year campaign at this rate is about 3.6M.

June 12, 1940 - The other thing I find annoying about air raids is the land commander is not gaining experience.
June 13, 1940 - Fredrickshaven 85 Strength, 18 Organization, 13.5 Dug In. Amiens is just getting hit, for another 1340.
We managed to hit some bomber groups for claimed 88 fighter and 88 bomber kills. It makes no sense how symmetric these numbers are. :D
Then we had a 30 to 21 exchange of Fighters with an 8 on 1 battle.
We were able to waste enough time attacking Dunkirk to evacuate some Belgian troops from Calais.

Now when we look up the statistics so far, we have:
165620 Personnel, 1172 Fighters, 1350 Bombers - UK
119681 Personnel, 1496 Fighters, 1614 Bombers - France
1579199 Personnel, 3745 Fighters, 2218 Bombers - Germany

A lot of these numbers are funny. How did we pass France in casualty count? How did we suddenly lose so many bombers when we have been doing nothing with our Bombers? Our Naval Bomber is in Malta waiting for a war with Italy. Our Tactical Bomber is in Egypt. Our Transport Plane is in UK. How did Germany pass 1M casualties? They were nowhere close at our last report.

Here is a look at the fronts:
1752425759443.png


1752425788114.png

And yes. We need more planes, months ago. We are working on it.
RAF strength is 547/800. They got butchered in the last sortie. Based on the symmetry of fighter and bomber kills, we believe all German bombers are escorted.
Belgian Fighters are recovering and upgrading in UK. This will take us to 10 squadrons.
We are working on 4 Interceptor Squadrons coming in at July 25, July 28, August 30, September 22.

This will bring us to 14 and we will still be heavily outnumbered.

For Denmark, our options might be to pluck our divisions out of there or move AA Brigades. It looks like those take our air attack from 1 to 4. We are wondering if org and digging in will help. Then it will get better with time.

French AI. I think they just march troops back and forth.
 
It's hard for me to tell where you and your allies are fighting using the sprites...this is why I use the counters instead...as I can more easily see where your units are heading / fighting and the enemy as well.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Riel Hamard said:
I like to play with dolls. Here is what the French Front looks like with counters.
View attachment 1333479
Click to expand...

Ah, much clearer.

Why aren't you attacking Laon? That's two tank divisions you can be seriously hurting but you aren't doing so.

You don't actually have to advance to Laon, just make those armored units retreat...

When you have the inferior force, always take advantage of those situations where you can trade better than the enemy.
 
Muddling Through the Darkest Hour Session 31 - July 1, 1940

Actually I saw it as soon as I switched to the counters. The most likely reason is those two armored units showed up while we were disengaging our main force from Dunkirk. We have a bunch of hours to wait before we can attack with force again, 20 plus the number of hours to daylight.

June 15, 1940 - Germany started Operation Weseruebung.
We made contact with 20 U-Boats in Wilhelmshaven. So there are extra U-Boats at large in the Atlantic.
We finally had an air raid report that had not much to say.
June 16, 1940 - And just like that, the game is over. It turns out from Brussels, we can get Transport Planes and Paratroopers into London and that is exactly what happened.
Just kidding. But it is disturbing that we are getting AA reports indicating that we shot down transport planes.
We got an Air Raid Report that says we only lost 165 in Fredrickshaven. So maybe digging in has worked. They are at 87 Strength, 21 Organization, 18 Dug in.
We took the advice in the post above and attacked Leon, putting a hurt on 1 Armor and 2 Motor units.

June 17, 1940 - Germany declared war on Norway for some reason.
1752436668594.png

June 18, 1940 - They really want to blow these guys up! It looks like dug in is a big bonus.
1752437304593.png

June 20, 1940 - USSR claimed Bessarbia from Romania.
June 24, 1940 - While we were claiming small victories, Germany rolled into Calais with their light armor.
June 26, 1940 - Hungary joined the war against us.

Suddenly those air raids I was complaining about are way down. Apparently dig in makes a big difference. I thought we were going to have to bring in AA Brigades.
1752440046060.png

June 29, 1940 - Germans rolled into Troyes and we saw a bunch of air units disappear and we do not know who that was. This was exactly what caused the last mulligan. We have already moved back to UK with our Air Units to recover.

Upgrades:
June 29, 1940 - Motor Division upgraded

Production:
June 15, 1940 - HMS Prince of Wales

Technology:
40-6 Hawker Hurricane Mark 2B completed June 22, 1940
40F Assembly Line Experiment started June 22, 1940 by English Electric Company

Spy v Spy:
June 19, 1940 - Germany tried to delay production..
June 27, 1940 - Italy tried to delay a tech team.
June 30, 1940 - Ireland tried to steal a blueprint.

RIP List:
June 14, 1940 - 7 Convoy Transports were lost in Irminger Basin. German U-Boats are now at large in the Atlantic. In HoI2 the best way to deal with them is to run one convoy at a time, at 23h, to whatever location you want to supply. I have not figured out how to game this system in DH. I also have not figured out how to add escorts to my convoys, which is just as well, because those escorts will also get sunk. When we have free resources, we will have to hunt these Submarines.

June 21, 1940 - 16 Convoys lost Heligoland Bay. Why we are routing that way to get to Copenhagen, we will never know. But we do know we have some Submarines to find. Total is now 29.
June 23, 1940 - Another 16 convoys lost. Total is 45. We have a bunch of Destroyers right there sitting on top of them on ASW duty. How long will it take?
Just like that, we found them.

Sunk Ships:
June 23, 1940 - USBF 6 sunk by DD 17 in Heligoland Bay. We got 6 messed up Destroyer Groups in exchange. However, it was a battle with 20 Submarine Flotillas.

Also as a note - It is hard for me to translate this report. We won. We believe we got an advantage in losses. But it is hard for me to tell from the report what exactly happened.
1752439698058.png

We are going to take a pause right here. We believe we are behind the OTL by a few weeks. Maybe DH was designed with the intention of providing a feel similar to how we saw WW2, until we learn to game the system. From 1933 to 1939, we did not build a single division. We did not build a single aircraft squadron. Then we wonder why we got pushed all over the place when war broke out. What is different so far in this map?

1. AI kind of stinks. Germany has not much navy. They have a single Destroyers, about 20 Submarines, and about that many Transports.
2. AI kind of stinks. Those U-Boats have been not nearly so effective.
3. We captured 3 Islands from Denmark.
4. Norway is still in play.
5. France might make it another couple weeks yet.
6. Italy is not yet in the war.
1752442076162.png
 
Riel Hamard said:
20 plus the number of hours to daylight.
Click to expand...

Why wait for daylight? If you are in combat attacking an enemy force, they are going to respond to your attack. In theory the AI could continue attacking wherever it was going, but often the AI will switch up and change tactics...that takes time. And time making the AI change its mind helps you against a force that is faster than you.

Riel Hamard said:
June 17, 1940 - Germany declared war on Norway for some reason.
Click to expand...

Germany can't get Iron Ore trades from Sweden UNLESS they control the Norwegian coast line...as most Iron Ore historically was railed to Narvik and then sailed to Europe by sea. The game actually prevents German trade with Sweden unless Germany controls certain provinces.

Britain actually wanted to invade Norway itself to preclude Norway from staying neutral or acquiescing to German pressure to protect the Iron Ore trade.

As for the AI sucking...that's DH. The good news is that the German AI likewise sucks. Use that to your advantage.

I'm surprised you were unable to build any units at all. I've gotten to 1934 in the 1933 start and I could build units if I wanted to extend service times to get the manpower to do so. I will most likely start shortly.

I suspect your initial choices on what to build were poor...and you didn't free up manpower from your useless brigades.

You don't want to do recruitment drives, you want to change your service requirements from selective to three year draft. That netted me over 700 manpower in 1934. I've already started on marine divisions, and will start on cavalry or motorized units once my IC build gets me up to speed.
 
Last edited:
TheExecuter said:
I'm surprised you were unable to build any units at all. I've gotten to 1934 in the 1933 start and I could build units if I wanted to extend service times to get the manpower to do so. I will most likely start shortly.

I suspect your initial choices on what to build were poor...and you didn't free up manpower from your useless brigades.
Click to expand...

Why is this a surprise? Where am I supposed to find the information to make better informed choices? HoI2 I could get quite a few units built with limited production.

It is easier for me to add the units I need into the save file than to figure out how to build them honestly.
 
Riel Hamard said:
Why is this a surprise? Where am I supposed to find the information to make better informed choices? HoI2 I could get quite a few units built with limited production.

It is easier for me to add the units I need into the save file than to figure out how to build them honestly.
Click to expand...

I felt a similar sense of irritation the first time I played France, which is in an even tougher starting spot.

It can be done, and without adding units by save file modding.
 
Here is one of those decisions.
1752453283494.png

Economic Recovery Policy.
-2 Dissent
+5 Production Efficiency
1 Central Planning

Are there future events tied to this decision? What about Issue Currency? Those were the decisions I was asking about several posts. Is there a post on this forum where it is discussed what they do?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back