I have just downloaded and started playing Darkest Hour (a game recently featured in one of Stalin’s videos) and must report at once something which I have to admit I find horrifying in any war game. Once again it seems that neutrality has been added in to the game, it does not however go by the name “neutrality” as it did in HOI3 but now it is “Belligerence” and it fulfils the same function, once again you be denied the ability to judge the correct moment to declare war, you will instead have to begin a process which will telegraph your hostile intentions (literally years in advance) before the game will permit you to conduct a war. I find this all very disheartening due to the fact that as I remember it HOI2 (the game on which this is based) did not have neutrality which means that it was artificially added in by the creators. I also find it troubling that they seem to find that this is a good practise. I feel I should justify my problems with this practise that paradox have adopted, now I don’t know how many of you are boardgamers, but there is a game out there which was designed as a very much simplified experience of leading a nation during the first world war, that game is called Diplomacy and part of the game is betrayal, conspiracy and attempting to find yourself a solid alliance that you can count on. Now it could be argued that Darkest hour is a war game and as such does not need such diplomatic game play, an argument which would lead to my question “why if it is a war game does it then stop me from engaging in war and force me into spending time playing with the politics, diplomatic and economic elements of the game which are as we know extremely limited due to the fact that it is supposed to be a war game. It might just be me but the feature of “neutrality” is absolutely insane, I can’t think of one argument to add it into the game other than to cover up an AI which would otherwise be unable to compete with a human in the department of diplomatic cunning, I can’t see how a company which produced a master piece like EU3 would even consider such a thing.
That is a correction not an answer, the neutrality concept is still spreading and the fact that it has spread to another company and paradox endorsed it does not qualify as an answer to my sarcastic rhetorical question which did not beg an answer to begin with but rather was searching for thoughts and comments on the spreading of this concept.
I dont have a problem with Neutrality, then again I was playing the Kaiserreich mod right off the bat. =) Declaring war for no reason FTW!!!!!! Though, the Kaiserreich seemed to have blended elements from HoI II and DH togeter. Also, for some reason they removed rivers from the map.
Well I guess it’s not as if rivers make much of a difference in most games, unless you have the option to sail a German battleship down the River Thames.... =) But besides that.... anyway Its not really the fact that its declaring war for no reason there is always a reason, the problem is that these games are beginning to try and control the action to much. For instance I was playing as the CSA in a Making history scenario and because of the conditions of the game I was having food shortages due to some kind of locust, long story short I started getting food from china (buying in mass). Now the AI leading the Union to declare war on china to disrupt my food supply in the hopes of causing my government to collapse, once I learned of this I declared war on the union due to the fact I had run out of options. Those are reasons to start a war; everything is interconnected and has a good reason especially given the victory conditions of the scenario which were victory over the north for me and victory over the south for them. There was a great deal of plotting and planning, buying time and attempting to get the upper hand before the war broke out, this was all genuine build up to the conflict and to be honest without the ever looming threat of attack it wouldn’t have been so tense and to be honest knowing you are protected by a magic wall of neutrality just isn’t right, it’s not how things are you know?
Well, since Belligerence was in HoI2, I don't think it's entirely correct to say DH took it from HoI3 and renamed it. Anyway, as I remember the only thing that belligerence does is prevent one from declaring war willy nilly in the 1914 scenario, while simultaneously preventing a democratic country from entering a war until their target reaches a certain amount of belligerence; so in which way is it affecting you?
