Are they? But I haven't seen anything there that actually tells you they're already assigned. Which means you might be inadvertently stripping one of your armies of his commander!Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Not good.
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Are they? But I haven't seen anything there that actually tells you they're already assigned. Which means you might be inadvertently stripping one of your armies of his commander!Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Not good.
No, no. They are jsut not there. If you attach a General to an army they are removed from the pool, then added back when you select remove.
Note that when strat deploying the generals of the divisions being moved end up back in the pool, but are reassigned to their old commands when they arrive usually. Sometime old commands get merged but not often.
Oh, and if you have auto assign commanders turned on, which is generally a good idea, then make sure you assign mj gens to your garrison divs manually otherwise the ai will assign good mj to there, which I imagine you don't want. Just assign your worst commanders to garrisons.
2nd edit: TO see what I mean start a game as GER, and pick out a field marshal(make sure you note who) and assign him a command. Then open put the command menu(be sure to arrange by rank) and look for him.
Oh sorry, I completely misread your post. When you said: "No commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool" I thought you meant "No, commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool." ~:)
Do you happen to know if commanders are sent back to the force pool when you merge two or more led units? I haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are. (Which reminds me of another little UI gripe. There doesn't seem to be any way to select which commander leads the new group when you merge units, it just appears to be assigned randomly).
One of them is yes. As for which gets the post, I think its based on skill. I generally don't merge corps and armys. Just pump out divisions in groups of 3, and get instant corps.Quote:
Do you happen to know if commanders are sent back to the force pool when you merge two or more led units? I haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are. (Which reminds me of another little UI gripe. There doesn't seem to be any way to select which commander leads the new group when you merge units, it just appears to be assigned randomly).
I've been trying a new strategy as Japan in Doomsday. Built 9 Light Tank Regiments, grouping them into three seperate Corps. Then I built A LOT of Infantry, and blitzed China from Japan held Manchukuo. It's February 1939 and I've managed to Push Nationalist China into Shanxi and Yunnan. Capitulating Communist China was a bit difficult at first, but the AI was dumb enough to focus all of their forces in their Capital, allowing me to ceal off entry from Every side. After I take total control of China (which I presume isn't too far off) I'll have enough forces to easily blitz India from Tibet.
My only problem in the beginning was that Japan has a relatively low IC. However after taking China my IC has improved very much. So now I can focus on building LOTS and LOTS of Marines for my conquests in the Pacific Rim. I plan on taking South East Asia as soon as I'm at war with the Allies. Quickly take down Indonesia, and puppet Australia/New Zealand. Then I'll shift my focus north and capture Far Eastern Russia. Thereby dooming the Soviets by cutting off their Lend-Lease with the Allies. If all goes according to plan and I continue appeasing the Americans, the Pacific Theater may never even happen. I would REALLY Really like to get my hands on Parts of Africa and the Middle East, thereby giving U-Boats valuable basing in Africa as part of my Greater plan to eventually invade America.
Heh. I've spent all evening blasting those miserable partisan baskits down to zero. And I'm on the verge of getting dissent back to zero, so I can finally pull all those otherwise wasted IC's out of consumer goods (damn whingeing public!)
The problem now is - what to build? what to build? I've got enough garrison divs (24), I'm pumping out two infantry divisons every three months but I've already got 40 or so - gee, it's tough to decide what to go for!
I thought I'd create an assembly line for destroyers, since they're cheap to build, but apart from that I'm undecided. Planes are horrendously expensive, maybe I should build a few tank divisions now?
BTW does anybody know if you get the production line improvements on an already existing (ie geared) assembly line? Or do you have to start all over again to get the benefits? I thought I noticed when I got a tech to build forts 50% faster that it didn't affect the speed of forts I was already building, so it made me wonder.
Yeah, I think that's a good strategy. If you make bigger groupings it tends to hamper your options on the battlefield a bit, doesn't it?Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Hmm, now that you mention it, maybe I should add a third infantry division to my assembly line...
Actually this issue isn't as important as I thought since I found out you have a complete list of all your commanders, their rank, skills etc and which unit they're assigned to (if any) in the Statistics screen. And although you don't seem to able to go directly from there to the location of the relevant commander, you can make a note of the name of the unit and then just doubleclick on that unit in the unit statistic screen and the game will take you straight there. Not quite as straightforward as it might have been, but good enough ~:)Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
What to build? Well, it depends on your objectives: If you are going to just defend your borders, build infantry with different kinds of artillery brigades attached, if you are planning a war in N.Africa, research and build light tank divisions supported by motorised infantry, if planning to take out Turkey, you'll need Mountain troops...
Tanks and planes are usually expensive, ships are expensive too, but in time more than ICs, I always have a BB or 2 on a prodction line just because it takes me so long to build them.
You might also consider building HQ divisions for every "front". They add to the defence and improve the performance of nearby troops, so they come in handy.
BTW, planes are expensive, but they are great. I love the CAS + tac bomber combo. If you have 2-3 groups on "Ground attack" missions above your front lines, the enemy will be at half strength even before they reach your lines.
I wouldnt actually say that is a good deal at all! Energy is the most abundant resource and probably the lowest resource in order of value.Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
Im sure you could get much better deals.
Screwtype, you can merge air units in provinces that are occupied by land forces by either de-selecting any forces currently selected, then right-clicking the land forces, an occupied port, or an occupied airbase icon (basically, right-click any military unit once you have nothing selected). A pop-up menu should appear. Select the 'select all air units' option and boom! Merge all you want. Keep in mind, though, that even though a general may be able to command more than 4 air divisions, 4 is the maximum to be under direct command (Air generals, who can command 8 divisions, only really come into play when two air groups are performing missions in the same province and stack with each other - more on this later if you want.)
Alternatively, hold the shift button and click on the airbase until you've selected them all (or only two groups, so you can use the 'exchange' button instead of the 'merge' button).
As for building stuff...well, once you go to war with Britain you can say goodbye to your fleet, and to North Africa. My suggestions would be to build a few destroyers, but not many, and to build some more infantry for immediate transport to North Africa. Allied planes will be on your ass hardcore once things get hairy, so interceptors/fighters will be needed...because you should build naval bombers and smash the British fleets out of existence (until you can capture Gibraltar and the Suez).
Hmm, I'm sure I tried that in my last war and it didn't work. I had my airbase in Madrid and every time I tried to click on the airbase, the dang ground units would come up instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
Anyhow, thanks for the tip and the shift-click thing. I've been trying to use Ctrl-click to multi-select things, maybe that's one mistake I've been making.
What's the advantage in capturing Gibraltar exactly? And I'm a bit confused here. You seem to be saying both that I can't hang onto North Africa and I should put more troops in there.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
As for the destroyers, I'm just building them because they're so cheap. Yeah, I should probably build a few fighters - but planes are so expensive, I can't bring myself to spend the IC. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to spending IC's ~:) I keep thinking of all those cool divisions I could be building instead ~;p
I'll probably only start building planes once it becomes obvious I need a few.
I'm not sure about the naval bombers though. Some folks over at the Paradox forums seem to think that naval bombers are a waste of IC's, you're better off building tacs because they are more versatile.
Oh - the other reason I'm reluctant to build these more expensive items like planes is because I'm not teched up enough yet, I want to wait until I get better techs so I don't have to spend more IC's upgrading them later. That's one of the reasons I went for the destroyers - the next best model is years away, and by the time I got one out of the shipyard the war would practically be over anyhow.
Speaking of which, upgrading is a bit of conundrum too. I mean, should I upgrade those 1918 Inf to pattern 39, or just build new pattern 39's and demobilize the 18's? I'm not sure, I think it is actually a tad cheaper to upgrade them, but after I get some of those production tech bonuses I'm not sure if upgrading them will be cost effective anymore.
BTW, have you had a look at the great combat bonuses you get with Mountain Divs? They use less supplies than Inf too. In my next game, I think I am going to be very tempted to build an uber-army of Mtn divs instead of Inf, I reckon my armies would be next to unstoppable! :idea2:
Hmm, well I did shop around before I settled on the German deal. I tried all the major powers and the Germans were way ahead on the offer, probably because we've got better relations.Quote:
Originally Posted by lancelot
Maybe I could have got a better deal with a minor power or two, but I tried quite a few minors too and they only had dribs and drabs of energy for sale, and none better than the 10 to 1 Germany deal anyhow.
You're joking right? Nav bombers are rediculously overpowered....Quote:
I'm not sure about the naval bombers though. Some folks over at the Paradox forums seem to think that naval bombers are a waste of IC's, you're better off building tacs because they are more versatile.
And its actually cheaper to disband your armies, well it depends on your free market and standing army sliders. But then you are left w/o an army so....
And ships can't be upgraded.
And no they aren't unstoppable, and they probably are alot more expensive. Use normal inf in places other then mountains anre forests. Makes sense that they use less supplies, since they have much less if any heavy equipment.
Maybe so, but they're aren't much good for attacking anything but ships, are they? Whereas tacs can be used in both roles (I think).Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
I don't think it is actually. It's taking me about 10 days to upgrade an Inf. That's 10 days at about 5 IC's per day. It's a lot cheaper than a new div, which costs 6 IC's for 60-90 days. Even with a couple of upgrades in a row, it's still probably not more than half the cost of a new division in most cases. At least that's how I've worked it out.Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Not unstoppable maybe, but they get great bonuses in all types of weather and terrain, not just mountains. Have a look in the divisional statistics chart. Their only drawback is that they have 2 soft attack points less. But IMO that is more than offset by the extra 10% org and morale alone.Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
As for being "probably a lot more expensive", they are a fair bit more expensive, but you can eventually get them down to about 90 days at 7.5 IC, compared to Inf 60 days at 6 IC. And then with the assembly line tech you can get them down to 75 days. Mind you, you can get Inf down to about 40 days with the same tech I think, but still, 75 days ain't bad.
The trick is I think to get your production lines up in '36, so you are taking full advantage of gearing at the earliest possible date, because the first few that run off the production lines are really slow, around the 142 day mark which is only 2 1/2 per year.
Screwtype, I meant that if you don't reinforce North Africa now, you'll lose it because you won't be able to run ships in the Mediterranean to transport, since big bad Britain will be on your ass in short order.
Mountain troops also cost 15 manpower, as opposed to 10 for infantry and 8 for a garrison. However, screwtype, check out the later versions of Infantry and compare them to mountain troops. '45 infantry are more generally versatile, but I would still recommend mountain troops, if only for your elite home guard. They move more quickly than infantry in the mountains and hills, too, so capturing and recapturing territory will be less of an issue.
On the naval bomber issue, I wouldn't recommend using Tac bombers if you intend on causing any real damage to a fleet. Sure, they can deal with a few isolated ships, but against the 20+ ships in a single flotilla that Britain will have packing, I'd want, say, 8 nav bombers on them at all times. If you're unwilling to specialise your air force in this way, though, consider Close Air Support bombers. They come in second place for naval attack and pack a very mean punch on infantry and armour. They're very vulnerable against fighters, though.
The idea behind capturing Gibraltar has several motivations, but the biggest one is cutting off transport into the Med. from beyond the Pillars of Hercules. This goes for supplies as well, so if you can push for the Suez, you can trap any naval forces still in the Med. there and starve them to pieces. I caught about 30 ships in my last game as Germany and slowly (too slowly!) bombed them out with my Tactical bombers. Also, Gibraltar can't be invaded from the sea because there are no suitable beaches, and has a gigantic port sitting right there. It's kind of a nice prize.
GAH. This STOOPID game!
Having taken all of Spain, and then mounted a suprise declaration of war on Britain to get my hands on Gibraltar, I then turned to France which had just started war with Germany. Gave her the old Italian stab-in-the-back special from the Spanish border.
The object was to grab a bunch of French provinces all along the coast so I wouldn't have to transport supplies by sea to my Spanish possessions anymore. However, scarcely had I captured a couple of provinces from France when she capitulated to Germany and established Vichy France. This was IDEAL because it meant I didn't have to compete with Germany for a whole stack of French provinces!
So then I got stuck into Vichy. It took me all evening to beat them down and capture their capital, I had the last few Vichy divisions bottled up around Vichy, and was about to deliver the coup-de-grace when up pops a window which tells me Syria is offering me peace in exchange for three of its provinces. Heck, I thought, why not? One less protagonist and I get three provinces for nothing.
So I hit "accept" and the next second all my divisions vanish from Vichy France! What the heck is going on, is this a bug???
Oh no, what the STOOPID game didn't tell me is that by making peace with Syria, I was also making peace with Vichy. A whole evening's work pissed away by a single mouseclick. YEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH.
:wall: :wall: :wall: :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :wall: :wall: :wall:
Dude, just release Nat spain as a puppet. They supply themselves and send you extra resources. Even better is to dow republican spain and ally with them I think, since it gives you a halfway decent ally. Course, all AIs are pansy so that you will have to station troops around gibralter if you want to take it, or mil control Spain, although that may or may not work. Believe me, you want to release them as a puppet. They use all of their ICs, and you don't have the TC burden of Spanish partisans.
And Syria is an ally of Vichy, so a peace with them should be a peace with the mother country.
And I'm surprised Vichy put up such a fight. They NEVER even have an army in the mother country when I play. Course, it might have something to do with the capital being in their American possession....
I've got the whole of Spain, not just Nationalist Spain ~:)
I did consider making them a puppet but I couldn't figure out how. I was only given a choice to "Annex Nation" after I conquered them as I recall. Do you get as many resources from a puppet though?
And yeah, Vichy wasn't that strong, but then neither am I yet ~:) You just seem to need more divisions as you expand. Half of my divisions attacking Vichy were pattern 1918. Most of my good divisions are protecting beaches here there and everywhere from invasion. I'm not sure if that's necessary, but I don't want to get suprised by a British amphib op. In fact Vichy tried an amphibious invasion of Tripoli, with five divisions, which I managed to beat off with one.
BTW do you know if the AI can mount amphib attacks into port provinces? Or can they only mount them on beaches? Because if they can't mount them on ports that don't have a beach, I'm wasting quite a few troops in useless defence.
To tell the truth, it probably didn't take me all evening to conquer Vichy. It took about three hours I think. But I found it pretty hard work. Infantry divisions are really s-l-o-o-w. And even when you get them into place, you have to wait longer still while they recover org.
So now I can see the advantage of motorized troops. My three semi-motorised divisions got into position so much quicker.
Click the diplo tab at the top. Then look in the upper right corner of the screen.
Only beach provs can be invaded.
Why are you using your best troops for BEACH DEFENSE? 1918 inf should be able to handle that.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought maybe they could invade through major ports too. That will save me some worry. I had three divisions defending Gibraltar alone ~:)Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
Because when I was playing Brazil in HOI 1 my best troops invariably got creamed by US amphibious invasions.Quote:
Originally Posted by discovery1
But actually my use of the old divs against Vichy wasn't really planned that way. I started out the war against Britain/France by gathering all my best divisions for a suprise attack on Gibraltar. I haven't attacked a fort province before, and since G. has a level 6 fort, I thought maybe I'd need a heck of a lot of firepower to take it. So I had 15 of my best divisions on the job. As it turned out, the solitary militia div. defending it was quickly overcome in the first wave of attack, so the fort didn't seem to make a lot of difference.
I then had to redeploy these divisions to the French border, but in the meantime I had a bunch of six 1918 divisions already there. The French attacked along the Bordeaux side of Spain (closest to Britain) and I had to divert six of my divisions there. The other nine went on the offensive along the Marseilles coast, but since I already had those six 1918 divisions sitting there, they ended up being used in the attack as well ~:)
Yeah, I just found that out ~:) Once war is declared, you really don't want to risk getting your good divisions sent to the bottom of the sea by the RN.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
Yeah, I didn't pay much attention to the '45 upgrade, because it's so far away, and I figured the war would probably be won or lost by then ~:) But since the game goes right through to 1947, I guess that final upgrade could turn out to be quite useful.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
Yeah, the CAS have some wicked stats, but I only have first gen. tech for them and with a lousy air defense rating of 1, figured they'd be too vulnerable. Maybe with a later tech.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
I should probably ask you how to go about "cutting off transport to the Med", but if I get everything from you guys, I guess it will spoil the fun of figuring out these things for myself.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
I'm not sure I want to bother too much with the naval war anyhow. Since I just lost most of last night's campaigning time, I'll be restarting the game before I declared war on Britain and France, and this time I think I'll just wait until Vichy is declared and then attack that. That way I won't have to fight the Brits too, at least not for a while longer.
I really just want to keep picking up continental countries without getting involved in the larger war with the major powers. I figure Vichy France, then Yugoslavia, then Greece, then maybe Portugal or Bulgaria or Turkey. Build up my IC's as much as possible before I join the big one. That's the scheme anyhow :eyebrows:
You want to take out greece before Yugo. It can be done and it gives the yugo's a longer front to defend and you more places to attack. Oh, it would be a REALLY good idea to put some effort into marine divisions. They rock on land and are great for amphibious operations(unlike everything else), which you will find VERY useful as Italy. And don't neglect your navy. You will have to face down the RN in med, especially if things get bogged down in NA. And get the CAS level ones, just be sure to include fighter cover if operating in north africa. Against the RN I think they will be ok, at least if you take malta.
Even researching marines improves your ability to launch amphibious assaults with all troops.
Screwtype, to check out what I mean about trapping ships in the med., click on the sea zone directly south of Gibraltar. A little window on the left should pop up. The rest will all fall into place.
Ah, now I get it. Thanks for the tip ~:)Quote:
Originally Posted by GoreBag
Vichy won't capitulate. I have to capture all its major provinces before it will, which presumably means all its provinces which have associated VP's. But they are scattered all over the world. Not that I couldn't do it I guess but I wonder if it's worth the bother. Do you think I should bother to capture them all, or just forget about Vichy and forge ahead anyhow?
Leave Vichy alone. Not worth tracking down all their VPs.
Patience. Slowly, but surely, France's colonies will rebel and join Free France's cause, and then, Vichy will be yours. You can always take Syria/Lebanon in the meantime, and if you're so inclined, Madagascar.Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
I ordered Doomsday at Bol.com on april 30th and the delivery date was between 2-4 days. 3 days later it changed to 2-3 weeks. Okay... a bit annoying. Then about a week later they cancelled the order because they couldn't get it anymore!?
I decide to order it elsewhere and today I got the game. 'Woohoo!' I thought. I slide the disk in my dvd drive. The loading takes ages! The disk is spinning, then stops and makes a clicking sound, starts spinning again, makes a clicking sound and continues doing this for a while. And then FINALLY the loading menu pops up. I click 'Install'..... AND MY PC FREEZES COMPLETELY!!! ARGH!!! It did this a everytime I tried until I gave up. Called the shop I ordered it from and now I have to sent it back and possibly having to wait a week or even longer until I can get my hands on this game! ARGH!!!
You guys who already have DD are so lucky!
I hope I don't get even more unlucky...
BTW guys, I'm not playing right now because I have other things to do, but thanks for giving me a leg up with this game. You've cut the learning curve by about 90%, I might have given it away in frustration if not for the help I got here. Much appreciated ~:cheers:
Harsh. Play the demo-downloadable version in the meantime?Quote:
Originally Posted by [DnC]
Screwtype, no problem.
What's with this screwy game? I started my campaign over, and this time I tried puppeting Republican Spain instead of annexing to see if it made any difference to the goodies I got. I made sure to tick both "puppet nation" and "allow military access" though.
Then I declared war on Nationalist Spain, and now the stupid game won't allow me to attack NS provinces! Whenever I try to attack, there's just a dull "thud" sound and nothing happens.
This can be quite a fun game, but geez, there are so many frickin' control problems and "undocumented features", it gets very frustrating. Why the heck won't it let me attack the Nationalists?
Oh and here's another funny thing. When I puppeted the Republic, I was given a whole bunch of provinces in the middle of the country - where they are most useless - and the Republicans get to retain control of all the coastal provinces??? Doesn't make much sense to me. Why couldn't I have been given a choice about which provinces came to me?