GAME MANUAL - Steam

HEARTS OF IRON DARKEST HOURThe Three FactionsWhile an alliance can beformed between any twoneutral nations, there arethree pre-existing factions inDarkest Hour that areconsidered to be natural anddominant alliances: the Axis,the Allies and the Comintern inthe 1936 scenario and theCentral Powers, Triple Ententeand Comintern in the 1914scenario. A nation may onlybelong to one alliance and,upon joining, is automaticallyconsidered to be allied withany other nation which is alsoa member of that alliance. Ishould point out that thenations who lead these threefactions are not onlyconsidered to be allianceleaders (see below) but arealso programmed to beextremely reluctant to agree toany peace terms other thanthe outright annexation of amember of another alliance.You should expect any otheroffers of surrender to berebuffed when they areinvolved.Spheres of InfluenceBefore we look at the variousdiplomatic options, you shouldbe aware that there is anadditional component todiplomacy that is not readilyapparent from any of theinterfaces but will have animpact on the outcome of youractions. This is termed“spheres of influence” andrepresents the historicalsituation where a number oflarger nations took a very dimview of other nationsconducting diplomacy in anarea that was geographicallyclose to their interests withouttheir expressed permission.This is most easily seen bywatching which countries havetheir independence guaranteedby larger AI nations,since they will typically do sofor any nation in their spherethat isn’t diametricallyopposed to their form ofgovernment. Be warned thatstepping on their diplomatictoes can result in no smalldegree of resentment, a dropin your relationship values,and possibly even war.Claiming provincesClaims are used for diplomaticpurposes and are useful toassert the desire of a countryto own and control a province.There are no economicbenefits of claiming provinces:they are counted as nonnationalwhen it comes to IC,manpower, resources or revoltrisk and there is no way totransform those claims intocores. However, claimedprovinces are counted asnational when it comes todiplomacy or country release.That means that a claimedprovince appears in the "Haveclaims against..." section andcan be asked with the"Demand Territory" mission inthe Diplomatic tab (seebelow). The AI won't secedeprovinces it has claims on toallies/puppets even if thoseprovinces are cores to thatally. In most cases claims willbe used by players just to"redraw" the map in the waythey wanted it to be after asuccessful war, especially incase of partition. So, howdoes claiming provinces work?Via the right-click menu it ispossible to add and removeclaims to single provinces,areas or regions. Claimingnon-owned province increasesbelligerence and removingclaims from such provincesdecreases it. Claimedprovinces can be seen best onthe Diplomacy map mode -they use lighter green thancores and also a yellow dot asopposed to the red one usedfor cores.New claims can be freely setto war enemies, but can be setto neutral countries only ifpolicy allows that (interventionismmust be high enough).Moreover claims cannot bedemanded from countries thatyou are guaranteeing at thesame time (see GuaranteeingIndependence below).Initiating DiplomacyTo initiate any diplomaticaction, select the country fromthe listing at the left side of theDiplomatic Screen. TheDiplomacy Options area willnow display a list of allavailable actions that you maytake with this nation. Onesthat you may performimmediately are highlighted inorange, while others may begreyed out if you fail to meet anecessary condition to initiatethat action, generally a casewhere the relationship orbelligerence values are toohigh or too low. Somediplomatic options requirecash to perform, so this couldalso prevent you from takingan action until your nationalcash reserves have increased.There are also somediplomatic options that willonly appear if you are at warwith a nation, or if you are onpeaceful terms. There are alsooptions that will only bedisplayed if you have selectedyour own nation as the“target”. A tooltip will appearwhen you hover over anoption, briefly detailing what it76