Inevitable Triumph: The United States at War, 1939-1947

I'm afraid that's already sort of happened.

I've tried playing out a similar scenario a few times since, and the result is always the same- I get squashed pretty convincingly. Try invading Germany with thirty divisions in September of 39 under Doomsday 1.2 and see what happens.

Japan isn't quite as radically improved. The AI is much better about garrisoning the Home Islands, but five garrison units still won't cut it against fifty divisions with ten carriers and ten battleships behind them. Taking Honshu in the first month of land combat is still completely doable. Still- Japan is a much tougher nut to crack than it was.

Also, you may note that I've said very little about my use of airpower. Simple reason: there was none. This game was played under 1.3, and it's radically improved since then as far as airpower goes. I didn't take a single tac bomber or CAS squadron with me. There's no way I'd do that now (in my latest US game, in fact, I've got 40 CAS squadrons).

So- given the following:

1) I've been so busy lately that this AAR has lost all momentum
2) I barely remember the details of the next three wars
3) The gameplay details are so outdated that newer readers will find them ludicrous

I'm not terribly interested in seeing this through.

If you'd like, though, I'd be happy to recap the remainder of the game in a brief way.

Back in the USSR

Well, in March of 42 I had well over a hundred divisions lined up on the Soviet border, along with a number of allied troops from my puppet regimes. I declared war, poured my ridiculous IC into reducing the 10% dissent, and poured over the frontier.

It took me about three months to slog to Leningrad, Moscow, and the Crimea. It was an unimaginative, brute-force operation. Very few encirclements- I just kept nudging the Soviets east. Without the Nazis around to trigger a Great Patriotic War, the Soviets had lousy ground defense efficiency.

In July, the Brits landed at Arkangelsk. While my line faced increasingly stiff opposition, the Brits were able to waltz into the Urals and start marching south. They also seized Vladivostok while I was trying to set up a viable defensive line in Manchuria.

(This is what I was setting up with the British/German collaboration: tricking the Americans into taking the brunt of the fighting while the Brits/French took enough territory to prevent the setup of an American puppet Russia. Then, an exhausted America would have to give up its hegemony in Europe to keep the Soviet prize- or vice versa.)

The British incursion broke the Soviets as they moved troops to face the fifty or so Allied divisions pouring through their back door. It took me about a year and a half to take the last Soviet VP at Okhotsk. Britain seized about 2/3 of Siberia and the Urals.

After Soviet resistance slackened, I moved divisions back to Europe. In late 1943, I puppeted Nationalist Spain, Italy, and couped Portugal.

So: October, 1943. The USA stands triumphant over the entire world. I've liberated all of the USSR's European SSRs and defeated every non-democratic regime in Europe. I have vast military superiority over every other nation. I'm building a level 4 nuclear reactor and my first strategic rockets. My troops are positioned to take out Tuva and Mongolia, and then begin a blitzkrieg war on the Fascist Republic of China.

And then? Game crash. Ouch.

It really is kind of anticlimactic. But I'm simply being pummeled between getting married next month (had I mentioned this? yes!) and prepping for publication.

For those of you interested in finding out what could possibly be distracting me from the worthy business of actually finishing this AAR, check out my book here- http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR3267.aspx.

Tell your local library!

Which is why I said "tell your local library" instead of "get out your credit card".