I'm a dude who likes to mod AIs in various games. I really enjoyed playing Darkest Hour, but it didn't take very long to notice that it's not really a gameplay-focused game, which felt pretty weird. The AI is literally incapable of winning against the Player without events spawning hundreds of divisions - and even then, in some cases it's still too bad (ie Germany will almost never invade Britain successfully, much less the US), or the division spawning completely destroys the game's performance.
So I decided to take my favourite mod - Edge of Darkness, huge props to their team - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/edge-of-darkness-new-version.701724/ - which itself is based, I think, on WiF and some other stuff - and make an actually decent AI for that. I have worked on this for a relatively long time, so I think the EoD dependency might not be the newest possible version (and I'm to lazy to update it), and I ended up also changing balance for various stuff, as well as adding events and AI switch sequences that I though would make the game feel more alive - for example, the UK can randomly decide do to Operation Catherine, invade Denmark and attempt to perform a massive invasion to the Baltic. Is that a good idea? No, it's terrible, and won't work most of the time - but it's added variety, and hopefully with all possible variations, it helps create unique games and experiences that are actually supported by the AI.
Does the AI still cheat with divisions? Kinda, I added some events to help AI train transports and get militia if it's getting invaded unexpectedly early - mainly to keep Germany from getting overrun if it gets a sudden second or third front before 42. I have also left most of EOD "difficulty selection" events intact, though I've removed the division spam from them and just left other bonuses intact - which the AI can actually use now, so the div spam should not be needed. The AI is also capable of using most decisions that were disabled for seemingly no reason, especially the ones that help Germany progress into the lategame - for instance, Germany will integrate Baku to amass oil before striking the US.
Download:
If you have any feedback or want to poke me about anything related to the mod, you can reach me on my Discord channel -https://discord.gg/jcKe3KYjRb
It's mainly StarCraft-related, but I'll talk about Darkest Hour anytime. On Discord and anywhere else (except on this forum), I go by "Nekron".
You can download the mod here -https://mega.nz/folder/ww5RQZ7T#8NbpTZMoGLsGretX1gJmnQ
(last updated: 2023.05.14)
There is also a repo set up for the project on GitHub - https://github.com/BoneHorror/EODAIP
How to play:
Just unpack the folder in Mods, select the mod in Darkest Hour launcher.
Difficulty settings:
Instead of Easy > Hard, difficulty settings in EODAIP go between "Very Strong Axis" through "Balanced" to "Very Strong Allies". Player modifiers are not affected by those, outside of the faction they could be in. Neutral countries receive minor compensation changes and resource maluses on Very Strong Allies (to make resources scarce for the Axis and Japan).
If you encounter a crash - that's probably just Darkest Hour. It randomly crashes sometimes, and can crash mid-save which makes the save broken - you need to go back to OldAutosave in that case. But I've went through all EOD and my errors and warnings (there is a lot of them) and there should be none left on the mod-end of things. I've also removed unused or broken dependencies from the cold war tech, stuff like tech components that just were not used in any techs etc.
The campaign is balanced in a way where almost everyone can win - rarely, the Axis breaks through the Soviets and resist Allies long enough to get Bitter Peace. Then, it can assault the isles, and attempt an US invasion. In very rare cases, the Axis can overrun the British early, but that will prompt the US to join the war sooner. The Allies can try to invade Balkans to create another front early on into the war. There are lots of options and permutations, and I'm always interested in creating more of them as I get new ideas over time.
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