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Even your manpower seems to rise a little, growing by about 100 since last month.

It's a pity it is because of a bug ;)

A good thing you managed to cut off the Soviets in Romania. But what about the situation in Turkey and China? By the way, you might be interested in that with the new version scheduled to be released today, such costly victories would take a heavy toll on your war efforts even aside from your manpower losses! For example, your victory in Jeabpils on June 22th would give you 0.25 War Exhaustion. (It would also give you 0.25 National Unity though.)
 
@Baltasar: Yep, the Soviets lost a LOT of troops in Romania and in Ukraine. I loaded up as the Soviets to check up on their build queue, and they have about 1,600 MP but are only building IC and nuclear sites. While that's what they are supposed to build pre-war, if they keep building that then we'll need to tweak the production AI again. The good news is that their army is now smaller than mine :) About the MP gain, it's a bug, and I discuss what exactly is going on in post #233.

@Enewald: If I were controlling the army myself, then yes. Since the army is on AI control, I don't expect much from it. But then again, it did cut through Ukraine on its own.

@Slan: Makes sense. Glad to see what we were discussing a while ago finally making it in. China's situation hasn't changed at all, and Turkey's is deteriorating at a slow pace.

@GulMacet: Finland and Iraq aren't doing too well either, but at least I have troops in Finland trying to help. My 4 mountain divisions were finished sometime around the 20th and deployed to Odessa to gain org, and they will be sent to Turkey if the need arises. Regardless, those troops will stay near the Black Sea area, in case they need to be moved to Turkey in an emergency.

I have to say though, that the Saudi's sole cavalry and infantry divisions are quite possibly the most badass in the Axis. Seriously. The Soviets got close to Baghdad and only were pushed back when the 2 Saudi divisions arrived, resulting in them being pushed back to where you see at the top. Later, in July, those two Saudi divisions managed to push into Turkey alone, with the Iraqi militia resting in Kurdistan. Quite impressive for a nation with only 6 brigades; I'm wondering if there's a bug there, I'll need to load up as them and see what's up.
 
The Soviets are not building provincial stuff becaue they are stuck with their pre-war build plan. They didn't get those Infantry and tanks you were fighting from Santa Claus :) But since they had a large army already and they wanted to have some MP left to reinforce the Divisions, they decided not to build more units. The problem is that when they started losing their frontline troops and thus the current MP reserve became higher than the prefered minimum, they still didn't have any IC to allocate to units because their production queue was still full. The even bigger problem is that even though I guess I could tell the AI to remove certain items from the queue, I have no idea how to tell it which ones to remove...
 
Great work!

An HPP question... How did Italy, Croatia and Hungary grow like that? Are there rules for dividing spoils? Or was that added in SF?

Renss
 
The situation in former Yugoslavia was created after they surrendered. There are decisions that do it for the AI, but what I did was give Italy, Bulgaria, and Hungary their cores back via the "return land" decision, then released Croatia then Serbia as puppets. Croatia would've been smaller had I released Serbia first.

We edited the 1st Vienna award to allow the option of giving Slovakia to Hungary, which is the option I chose. Slovakia isn't very useful, and beefing up Hungary is a better option IMO. I got more threat for that though than the historical version, but that was a moot point since the Allies were gone. I also did things out of order, so it's kind of gamey too, and the mod has been changed to not allow what I did in the AAR.

Italy expanded West due to my post-UK negotiations events, which are now included in the mod. We're going to abandon those events later and replace the entire Axis victory post-war border cleanup with a "conference" type event, where nations that sign the Anti-Comintern Pact will be allowed to make claims on various set regions. After the war is over, nations will swap land if they want to and make the borders cleaner. Of course, if say AI Bulgaria claims Thrace and AI Italy owns Thrace, then Italy may not want to give the land back, which could potentially spark a war (the exact details are being worked out). The Axis was more an alliance of convenience than anything else, so it's entirely possible that they would fight amongst themselves after the war ended. The whole idea is being hammered out in the HPP forum, and the above is the result of our initial brainstorming and is subject to change.

On a side note, expect the next update sometime tonight, probably in about 2-3 hours. I won't repeat my earlier style of listing battles with over 1k KIA, because I have about 65 of them this month...
 
Chapter 37: Axis of Confusion - July 1 to July 31, 1942

The month of July brought mixed results for the Axis. Unwilling to continue tolerating Italy's incompetence in Greece, the Reich declared war on Greece, and the fleet patrolling the Black Sea was recalled to shell and bomb Athens instead. The Greek surface fleet hiding in Athens was obliterated by July 5.

In addition, the situation in Turkey had deteriorated quickly. Despite also being at war with the Soviet Union, Bulgaria had committed no troops to the war, and Italy's entire army was situated outside of Athens. Due to the severity of the situation, Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop managed to persuade both Bulgaria and Italy to redirect troops to aid in the fighting. Both nations agreed, but refused to aid Turkey and sent their armies north to aid Finland instead. The cause for these actions is unknown, but both Italy's and Bulgaria's foreign ministries initially claimed that von Ribbentrop had urged them to aid Finland instead of Turkey.


The Reich, as leader of the Axis, attempts to coordinate the defense of Turkey

Hitler, and indeed all of the Wehrmacht's leadership were enraged by this turn of events. Not only were both nations' actions ignoring the blatant threat to their east, but their advances north would put a major strain on the Reich's supply line. It was true, that at this point Finland's situation was worse than Turkey's, but HG Nord's advance into Ingria and subsequent linkup with the paratroopers in Leningrad meant that the Reich would soon be able to turn its might to aid Finland. In the meantime, the paratroopers in Lapland had been recalled to take the last Baltic port available to the Red Navy. Twenty submarines were anchored at the port when the paratroopers captured the city, forcing them to flee into the waiting Baltic fleet. Ten submarines were sunk in the initial engagement, and the remaining ten were sunk later in the month, emptying the Baltic Sea of Soviet naval vessels.

innergulfofbothnia.jpg

The situation in the Far North on July 12, 1942

Meanwhile, the Soviet troops in Romania had been fully captured and defeated by July 18, freeing up HG Süd's armored divisions to move into the Crimea and further east to the Don River. An estimated 20 Soviet divisions were captured or destroyed in Romania, and the result was that the Crimea and coast of the Sea of Azov was free of Soviet defenders. Indeed, the Soviet resistance was heaviest east of Leningrade and near Homyel'.

romania_secured.jpg

The trapped Soviet troops in Romania finally surrender

Due to the failure of the Axis as an alliance to aid Turkey, on July 28 the four mountain divisions deployed to Odessa were sent to the Turkish port of Samsun by sea, to stop the Soviet advance. While little more than a token gesture, the operation was in reality a test of the mountain divisions' performance, and the mountains of Turkey would prove to be a good testing ground for later operations in the Caucasus Mountains.

chpt37status.jpg

The status of the war on July 31, 1942

chpt37closeup.jpg

A view of Bulgarian and Italian troops heading to Lapland

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Sorry for the poor post, I had a case of writer's block. Also, I want to hijack this post to RAEG at the ridiculousness of the first and last pictures :mad:

Seriously, WTF!? I thought the allied objective "feature" was supposed to make your allies attack the province you set. I tried setting an objective in both Soviet and Turkish-held areas of Turkey, and the Italians and Bulgarians, who had large armies sitting near the border, decided to go help Finland instead, which also seriously messed up my supply lines. While Finland isn't doing so well, I have complete control of the Baltic and HG Nord is getting close to being able to cut off the Soviet's land supply routes. I also have 4 marines and 2 paratroopers there already, and another 4 paratroopers will be freed by the beginning of August, so Finland is mostly ok.
 
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I thought the allied objective "feature" was supposed to make your allies attack the province you set.

And that is where you were wrong. From what I've seen it's more like telling them who to attack, not where to attack. Since the Soviet Union is a large continuous landmass, it basically is a single, extremely long front line. The AI considered that front to be most threatening in Finland, and you said yourself that the Northern front is in a worse shape. The AI can't realize that it will be much better soon.

Anyway, you will be able to deal with it, I'm sure! :)

May be it's just that Italians and Bulgarians hate Turkey. And you. :D

Yeah, they probably don't like falafel :D
 
The "Allied Objectives" feature works in a counter-intuitive way. Unfortunately, your allies don't really bother to listen to you and deploy where they want, which limit the feature's potential severely.
 
And that is where you were wrong. From what I've seen it's more like telling them who to attack, not where to attack. Since the Soviet Union is a large continuous landmass, it basically is a single, extremely long front line. The AI considered that front to be most threatening in Finland, and you said yourself that the Northern front is in a worse shape. The AI can't realize that it will be much better soon.
Which in turn means that unless you want all those Italian and Bulgarian men walk the whole way back, putting another strain on your supply system, you might want to consider taking forces off HG Nord and adding them somewhere else.

Gonna be interesting to see how you break up the staring contest in Athens.
 
You know, I could deal with the issue if the AI was consistent. Unfortunately, the AI isn't consistent. The moment I started the game up again, all of those units in Sweden heading north went south instead, aiming to secure the Finnish southern front instead of their original destination of Lapland :(
 
It could have been worse. They might have opted for Ankara after all.
 
@All: I'm currently writing up the next chapter, and it's going to be a nail biter. The chapter will cover the months of August and September.

In the meantime, here's a picture from the adventures Al Jaballah, who eventually reached Trabzon with his cavalry before being forced back to Iraq. The picture is from early August, and he wasn't forced back until mid-September. Enjoy :)

 
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Chapter 38: The March to Moscow - August 1 to September 30, 1942

The fifth and sixth months of Unternehmen Barbarossa took a harsh toll of both sides of the conflict. While the entirety of the war was characterized by German soldiers bravely assaulting Soviet positions in battles similar to those waged in the Great War along this front, HG Süd was able to use its tanks to maximum effect, encircling and destroying 13 Soviet divisions in local pockets. The reason for HG Süd's success when compared to the other two fronts is the fact that the terrain of Ukraine and southern Russia is predominantly steppes and open fields, compared to the thick forests to the north.


Five Soviet infantry divisions trapped in the Svatovo Pocket

Throughout August, the Soviet forces had begun to show signs of reaching their breaking point. The Red army had been pushed back almost 1000 km from the border and had suffered horrific losses numbering in the hundreds of thousands. While the Reich had also lost many men, the losses the Wehrmacht suffered paled in comparison to the numbers of Soviets that died in battle. With the loss of Ukraine and the Baltic states, in addition to suffering high rates of attrition in occupied Finland and Turkey, the Soviet war machine had begun to break down. As a result, resistance near Moscow and in the southern steppes had lightened considerably. The cities of Rostov-na-Don, Kharkov, Kursk, Orel, and Tula fell with little to no resistance, as the Soviet defenders were pushed to the breaking point, being unable to set up even rudimentary fortifications such as fox holes and basic earth forts.


The outcome of the Battle of Kursk

The fiercest fighting of the entire war occurred in September, as the Wehrmacht approached the outskirts of Moscow. The bulk of the Red Army was entrenched outside of the city in an impressive series of light fortifications. Tired and battered, then men of HG Mitte had no desire to assault the dug-in defenders. It was on September 5 that Hitler ordered his famous No Retreat order. HG Mitte was to press on and capture Moscow at all cost. By September 12, a breakthrough was made by the SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", led by general Dietrich. The motorized elements of Panzerarmee 2 followed.


The breakthrough created by Dietrich allowed HG Mitte to attack Moscow directly

The battles were fierce and bloody, as the infantry attempted to exploit the breakthrough and flank the Soviet defenders outside of Moscow. Despite a heavy bombing campaign waged by the Luftwaffe, little ground was gained. It wasn't until September 28, that enough troops had filled the breach and stabilized the front that the assault on Moscow, the den of the Russian Bear, the battle that would decide the fate of millions, began.

battleofmoscowstarts.jpg

The Battle of Moscow begins


The status of the war on September 22, 1942
(Author's note: Take a close look at my MP, which is circled in red :()
 
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I'm not at all sure if that no reatreat order is a wise choice, especially in light of your low manpower reserves... Make that: It's bloody stupid, just as in real life :p