HoI: Doomsday: Armageddon - Brigades? Armies advice

[dagorkan]

New game, still playing Canada, events played out like they should have, managed to hold France until mid September then I take my troops home. I'm messing around with upgrading my troops and planning my new navy and suddenly I look at Britain to access the diplomacy screen and do a blueprint deal and I see:

Fuck, what do I do now? I haven't got a save since the war in France, I decide to loan my 3 air groups currently in Greece to the UK. Which under AI control sends them back to Greece, then to Scotland and back to Greece so their org is never higher enough to actually perform missions, meanwhile Germany is taking over England. When it finally starts using them they do OK but suddenly a German army lands in Portsmouth which for some reason was completely undefended and wipes my entire air force out...

Think I should reload an autosave? Can Britain be saved (and where the hell is the huge British fleet and army)?Is the war winnable without Britain (never happened in a game before) and if so what strategy should I follow? I'm just now starting my navy which I based off Vancouver to be in the Pacific theater, will Germany try to invade my provinces?

I'm hoping the USA enters the war pretty soon but I have my doubts whether they can take on Germany with only the other minor powers, the Soviets will probably be crushed. In all my previous games the USA has hardly done anything, they take forever to invade Japan and when they get Morrocco just send a couple of divisions over.

More importantly, if mainalnd Britain remains just a colony maybe it won't be so bad, we'll be deprived of their industry/research but Germany won't get it. On the other hand if Germany turns Britain into a puppet (British Nazis?) and takes over the British fleet I'm fucked.

 

[Araanor]

The AI sometimes has problems defending and garrisoning the british isles. And yeah, it does some silly stuff with planes. You should've controlled them yourself and tried to help the AI. How about landings of your troops in the UK? The germans may have a hard time reinforcing their troops, while the UK and allies can keep piling on their own. (Odds look awful as of now, though.)

The brits won't surrender or get puppeted.

The soviets are likely to eventually win over the germans regardless.

 

[Destroid]

^^ I will agree with that, taking control of the british isles as germany is very easy.

 

[Fez]

I think that's a pretty cool scenario. You should keep playing and see how it goes. Reloading with every set back or ahistorical event is dull. It's this kind of thing that makes it worth replaying.

 

[dagorkan]

I would have continued it if I hadn't lost my whole air force (didn't have anything else, my navy and army were still incomplete). I reloaded and everything's gone pretty much historically except I think Japan and Germany are both stronger - the Axis annexed Yugoslavia and Greece so the entire continent of Europe except Russia is fascist, Japan annexed Nationalist and Red China just months before America joined the war (happened in every game so far) so the whole of east Asia up to the border India is fascist as well.

Britain is still not defending it's coasts for some reason though Germany hasn't tried to invade and I noticed when the war started the USA is really weak - only about 30 army divisions, 15 air units and tons of tech which I had they hadn't researched yet.

I can upload the savegame at the time of that last screenshot if you're interested, it should just need Armageddon + 1.2 patch

 

[dagorkan]

New problem...

Here's Indonesia which I reconquered from the Japs after single-handedly kicking them out of Australia, my fifteen divisions against about 25 of theirs. I finally liberated them about three months ago because supplying all my troops garrisoned on their islands was a pain in the ass. I built two extra IC for them which are now being taken into account and donated four Militia divisions.

Unfortunately it seems this my new protectorate is at a dead-end, they're not getting any manpower. As you can see Soerabaja has 0 manpower though the Paradoxian.org reference tables say it should have six. I went and checked by loading the game as Indonesia and sure enough they have 0.0 manpower growth each turn (but a 115% modifier so it's not that), they started off with 50 when they first became independent but have used almost all of it up reinforcing the Militias and two Infantry divisions that they built.

Why is this happening? I did a search on ParadoxPlaza (through google, for some reason the forum search says I don't have enough priveleges) and the only thing I can find is an update list for 1.06 patch saying Indonesia now has manpower.

Any idea what could be causing this? If it's been set in the game data files then how would I fix it, would a savegame editor work? I thought of loading Indonesia, using a cheat to give them manpower and saving again but I don't want to unbalance the game and have to do this each time they get low on manpower again.


By the way, here's the list of Japanese ships I've sunk. I knew I'd won a few battles but I checked the stats and was amazed:

Carriers: 9
Light Carriers: 2
Battleships: 2
Battle cruisers: 2
Heavy cruisers: 7
Light cruisers: 14
Destroyers: 28
Submarines: 1
Transports: 12

This was with three groups of CA/CL/2DD/2SS ships and a handful of submarines, though my tactical bombers got a few as well. I've lost two of my heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and about ten destroyers and subs.

First page (of three and a half):

I got quite lucky several times, catching their carrier groups during storms at night and out of range of their smaller ships, and they tended to target my transports of crappy allied destroyers who joined in the battle. I also seem to have much better tech (I built my navy in 1942 and all my ships have the max allowed seabrigades) and better admirals.

 

[Trash]

I'd say it's a bug. Try the bug report thread at paradox to see if someone else allready reported it. It might yield a solution, else give indonesia a shitload of manpower through the console or a cheat. it's not like they'll become a mayor powerhouse anyway.

The naval ai is rather idiotic as it is. Somehting that takes a lot of fun out of playing against the Japs. There are mods that try to remedy it.

 

[dagorkan]

I'm playing with Armageddon which was supposed to fix naval combat, but yes it obviously hasn't.

One other thing about the Japs... how do they manage to have always full health divisions? I can beat them with fresh units but pretty quickly my units lose men which takes forever to reinforce even with a slider setting of 20%. Any Jap casualties I inflict in a battle are regenerated next time I attack so I really have to rely on speed and stealing their resource depots to keep them low on morale. I had a look at the Japan game and they have a pool of 5000+ manpower. I wonder if this is part of game design to make sure Japan will stand a chance... that would be pretty crappy design, they should have balanced it another way.

 

[Trash]

Yup, it's a way to balance the japs and help the AI. I'm not sure, but I believe that certain mayor countries get bonuses like this to help them. It's a way to ensure that it's Germany that becomes the bad boy instead of say Luxembourg. I'm not 100% sure of this with the latest pacthes and so. It's been a good few months since I played this, and then I enjoyed trying stuff with the minors.

 

[dagorkan]

OK this game sucks. I'm in mid 1946 now and liberated Indonesia, Siam, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos single-handedly. I also gained a foothold in southern China and freed half of Burma so the British only have a handful of provinces left to regain integrity of their Asian empire.

I liberated that entire mass of countries in mid March of this year.

What is everyone else doing? The entire combined armies of Britain, France, South Africa, Belgium and a bunch of others are concentrated in India. They're not even participating in Europe where it's a straight Axis (Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia) fight against the USSR... that's another story. You have the entire Allied military force in South Asia against a single enemy, Japan with 90 IC and it's sidekick China (80 IC) and they have barely pushed back two provinces, they haven't touched China yet.

Meanwhile we have the great US military force. These guys have been fucking around for almost five years now trying to take control of New Guinea. When I liberated Australia (all by myself) they had a foothold there. By the time I liberated most of Indonesia two years ago, again on my own they had all but three of those provinces. Today they control all but three provinces again... EXACTLY the same.

They even managed to lose a couple of islands to the Japs, lost and regained Guam.

MIDWAY ISLAND IS STILL A JAPANESE TERRITORY!

...It hasn't changed hands since the very beginning of the war.

And then there's Singapore. After I freed the island of Sumatra I noticed the Americans finally doing something useful, they landed a few troops in Singapore. Well they lost about half a dozen units, landing them one at a time there and then leaving them (transports getting sunk as soon as they're out of port, for some reason my allies never escort their transports). So the Japs attack from three different provinces and destroy that single defensive unit one at a time since the transports have left and they can escape to regroup.

I take pity and land some troops on the coast to the north, I'm whipping Jap ass and fight my way down three provinces to come and help the Americans. About that time the brilliant American generals decide it might be a good idea to land a bunch of troops together and so there are seven or eight armor. Just as I finish flushing out the last pocket of Japs between us (with no help from my ally who just sits there watching, no concept of flank attacks apparently), there's one province left neighboring Singapore which some Japs fled into and regrouped. This is when Americans all decide to evacuate all their troops except one infantry... basically leaving the port of Singapore is left wide open for attack.

Luckily the Japanese AI didn't think of that, anyway they delayed long enough for me to destroy that last army but I do not see any logic in the AI at all.

Another thing, while I'm doing all this I've left completely undefended all the island province that I previously liberated in Indonesia including all of Borneo. The Brits installed some aircarft there, I don't know why but no troops... my Indonesian friends have an excuse since they have an army but only on Java and no transports. The Japs at any point in the last two years could have reclaimed all of that before I could react and destroyed several expensive bombers but they never even tried.

Practically every single loss of the Nazi/fascist powers (except on the Russian front) has been my doing alone. I've left huge opportunities open to the enemy and they haven't even noticed. The AI of this game is completely moronic, I can't remember a strategy game that I've played with worse AI. What a waste of time...

edit: I'm about to research my first nuclear bomb ('Nuclear Waste Bomb'). I checked recently and my spies tell me Germany is just now researching 'Experimental Reactors' (stage 1 or 2 of the research chain I think)... Britain is one step behind me and the USA still wants (in Negotiations/Blueprints) 'Nuclear Fuel Analysis' which I had done again, two years ago. These guys have 350, 200 and 400 IC respectively compared to my 60. Oh, and I've also 50% researched my first jet bomber, Germany is exactly at the same progression.

What the fuck is going on here? I know I'm not that good, I just started to get the hang of this game.


edit2:
All this is on normal difficulty/aggressiveness.

I've now given up on the war and am just looking at what new depths of uselessness and stupidity the AI can reach. I seriously can't see the point of this game, I know if I want to I can take half of China just looking at the map... but there's no challenge, you may as well be playing with yourself.

edit3:
Here's the map so you can see I'm not exaggerating

That blue in Asia is either Menchuko or Vietnam. The US have taken the irrelevant/worthless part of the Phillippines and I see they've taken a couple of inner islands but that's it, in a year they have not even been able to deal with that one isolated province of New Guinea. The British colored territory in Malaysia and south Burma is stuff I liberated, it automatically turned British though they never risked a single soldier. I also split up the Japanese force isolating the part in south Burma and breaking through into India, that was four months ago. Since then I've been on fast speed and touched nothing so the Japs took back some provinces even though their supply lines must be insanely vulnerable. I had a bigger chunk of China but decided to abandon it all except Hainan which has only two marines but apparently that's more than the Japs can handle.

 

[Trash]

To be honest I'm rather baffled by the stuff you see in the game. Personally my wars with the AI have been rather difficult affairs that I often lost and where the AI didn't seem to do that many stupid things apart from the atrocious naval ai.

Then again, I usually played minors in europe that had little or no navy. So I didn't have to deal with the naval AI and had to fight for my life from the start. I also played with either the compendium or the trp mod. Both are great and do a lot to improve the AI. The trp mod seems to do the most. I also heard that the latest armageddom patch does a lot to help the ai fight on more than one front.

If you're looking for a challenging game I'd suggest you try to play as Finland. It's difficult but doable and provided me with a lot of entertainment.

Edit: Found an old post about it.

I blatandly ripped off the op's idea and started playing as Finland. It has so far managed to survive the winter war, but it was a close one. As soon as the war is under way the soviets will send huge reinforcements to the front. Outnumbering your forces by a huge margin.

I got through it by focusing my research on infantry, arctic warfare and industry. Then built some new infantry divisions, plenty of artillery and some at guns. All the while spending quite a lot of ic's on upgrading my infantry when new tech became available.

As soon as the war started I launched an offensive cutting off the forces in murmansk. I then captured murmansk encircling around 10 soviet divisions in the frosen north. Soviet reinforcements started to arrive in huge numbers so I stopped my offensives and dug in at the southern front while I quicly mopped up the encircled divisions in the north.

My navy never came in contact with any hostile forces during the conflict. They spend the war patrolling the northern baltic. I also recieved an outdated interceptor wing that became my own luftwaffe. They lasted one battle, since the soviets send huge fleets of bombers that had around 4 or 5 wings of fighters with them.

I couldn't do much against the bombers, so I just had to live with it. The soviets in the meantime attacked with only 3 or 4 divisions at a time. These attacks were repulsed so easily that I decided to go on the offensive again. Big mistake, my attack ended depleting my forces and when it broke off the soviets began a huge counterattack with everyhting they seemed to have.

Had to retreat like crazy and managed to create a new frontline just outside of my capital. It was a miracle that they didn't overrun me, but I managed to hold them there untill the peace talks event.

I started out quickly gaining 4 or 5 russian provinces, but lost them all after my disastrous attack. I utterly underestimated their numbers and power. It was a great game to play so far, and I'm looking forward to operation Barberossa. My Finnish troops age for revenge.

 

[Fez]

What's the opinions on the mods (especially ones that alter the AI)?

 

[Trash]

TRP seems to do the most for the AI. It however changes almost everything in the game from manpower, balance, tech tree's, etc. Some changes are nice, some I don't get. Same with all mods I guess. At the moment it seems to be the best mod out there.

The compendium mod adds stuff like longer battles, elite units and historical news events to provide a background. I enjoyed it for awhile, but the events do tend to railroad the game on a historically accurate playthrough. Also, while it changes alot with the battle system, the ai remains basically the same. At least in the last version I played. It's a fun mod though. (read a little about it and it seems later versions did change a lot in the Ai)

What's very annoying is that almost none of the mods have a clear stated goal, or some other description on what they want to achieve and what kind of changes they bring to the game. Most just seem to be more than happy to post a new changelog with each new version, but looking at these it's hard to see what they try to achieve.

A number of the mod people seem to like to bash each others work as well. So in the end it's nigh impossible to get a good idea on what's what from the paradox forums. DAIM (an AI mod) and the TRP seem to be the most popular. With the TRP mod actually fixing some stuff that the DAIM mod doesn't. Frankly, I was wondering to restart HOI2 again, but after snooping around for a bit I'll stick to EU3.