GAME MANUAL - Steam

HEARTS OF IRON DARKEST HOURprovincial border without muchtrouble, so the ESE calculationis only applied to the provincethat your divisions arecurrently occupying, and not toeach province in the chain.This abstraction and somewhatincorrect assumption isnecessary to prevent undueCPU load that would slow thegame to a crawl, and to avoidforcing you to micromanagethe exact route that everysingle one of your supplychains uses when there aremultiple possible paths. Whenthe supply chain is created, itwill always use the closestavailable source of supplyfirst.This could easily be an ally’sdepot rather than your own, aslong as it has the necessarysupplies. If that depot lacksthe necessary supplies, thenext closest depot will beused, and so on. As long asyou or your allies have a depotsomewhere that has thesupplies and can be linked,you will remain in supply.While the Supply Mapmodewill display all provinces thatcurrently could receivesupplies, this doesn’tnecessarily mean that thesupplies are actually in place.If you become cut off fromyour capital or if you lack thesupplies and fuel in either yournational stockpile or that ofyour ally, you will be in verydeep trouble. The best way tocheck a division’s currentsupply status is to select thefield command and look at itsstatus on the display. A smalldot appears in the status areato indicate that the fieldcommand is in supply, and thesource of that supply is listedimmediately below this. If itisn’t in supply, this will beindicated as well.OverseasSupplyWhile supply chains areestablished automatically,overseas supply also requiresthat a flow of goods movefrom your capital, wheresupplies are manufacturedand collected, to whicheverdepot is acting as the supplysource for your forces. Youcan have this doneautomatically for you byselecting the Auto-Create/Destroy Supply Convoysoption in the ConvoyManagement interface, whichis accessed via the ProductionFolder. You may prefer tomanage this yourself, usingthe same interface, to build upextra supplies. Don’t forget tocorrectly identify the materialsthat this convoy shouldtransport, and if that depot isalso a collection point for oilfrom local provinces, you willalso need to ensure that anyconvoys that are shippinggoods back to your capitaldon’t end up taking oil awayfrom this location.Air SupplyIn an extreme situation, yourfield command may becomecompletely cut off from supply.In such a case, it is possible touse transport aircraft to shipsupplies to your encircledforces but this is extremelyexpensive and very inefficient,not to mention that enemyfighters will do their best toblow your transports out of theskies. Using air supply willcreate a new depot in theprovince that your transportsare shipping to - a depot thatcould subsequently becaptured by the enemy, andshould be considered as onlya short-term emergencymeasure. Details of how toassign this mission are givenin the Air Combat section.ReinforcementAny unit that is in supply andthat has sustained casualtiesmay be reinforced back up tofull strength by allocatingsome of your national IC toreinforcement. The details arethen automatically handled foryou by deducting thenecessary manpower and ICand gradually replenishingyour divisions. This can takesome time, and the newlyadded strength will reduceyour unit’s experience a bitsince these reinforcementsare new recruits and notbattle-hardened veterans.If you click the prioritise buttonfor a field command, it will begiven top priority for reinforcementbut it will still take a bit oftime for the losses to bereplenished. If you click thereinforcement button, you canprevent all divisions within afield command from beingreinforced.UpgradingNew technologies will bemade available to your forcesas soon as the research hasbeen completed. To upgradeyour units, you must allocatesome of your national IC tothis purpose, and the unitsmust be in supply to receivethe advances. This does notdilute their experience but cantake a little while to achieve.As with reinforcements, unitscan be given precedence byclicking the prioritise button inthe field command informationpanel; conversely, they can bedenied the new technology byclicking the upgrades button.Units in the force pool are notupgraded until they have beendeployed, and any units thatweren’t in supply at the timethat the new technologybecame available will beupgraded once they are backin supply.109