0300 November 26, 1942. Germany.
1936 - 1939 : everything went rather historical, but by 1939 there was a stalemate between Spain and Republican Spain. The Republicans held Madrid, Badajaz and Bilbao.
Polenfeldzug, 1939: Invasion of Poland didn't go quite as expected: the Poles folded and gave Danzig to me, so I declared war on them a day later. The Allies declared war on me and the aerial bombardments on Germany began.
early 1940: tried an early invasion of Yugoslavia which was a success, but then Italy declared a separate war on Greece and then Romania delcared war on Italy. Decided that having to choose between Italy and Romania (both valuable for different reasons) is not worth it so I went back to early 1940.
early 1940: invaded the Netherlands.
Operation Weserübung: invaded Norway and Denmark on the historical date with paratroopers in the south and an amphibious landing in the north.
Fall Gelb, somewhere May 1940: Invasion of France was quick and easy, nothing special noticed. After the Vichy France event fired I moved some forces east to attack Yugoslavia, northwest for the planned invasion of Britain, south to attack Spain and north to attack Sweden.
Operation Sea Lion: The invasion of Britain was terribly difficult. Paratroopers can take out a territorial unit but these are reinforced by others before the paratroopers can hold on to the territory. Amphibious support is hard because the German Navy is quickly intercepted by Royal Navy, especially carriers who are just beyond effective. After a few attempts and reloads I did in fact conquer Britain. Once you have around 27 divisions on the British mainland nothing will stop you from reaching Scapa Flow.
Spain: The Spanish civil war situation hadn't changed for two years. The German invasion changed everything and Republican Spain ceased to exist. Seville was captured by the British but they were pushed back and now Gibraltar is Spanish for the first time since 1713.
Weird fact about Spain: as an ally of Germany they stack units in their capital, their defence methods seemed so bad I assumed military control. Also, Spain builds many garrison units, by 1942 they have 19 of them, I moved them to cover the Atlantic coast and some are stationed in the Balkans.
Yugoslavia: the invasion was quick. Hungary requested to join the invasion after a week, they put some of their forces under my command and didn't invade Yugoslavia themselves. Bulgaria joined too. The Bulgarians were quick to invade the south of Yugoslavia so Germany didn't even get to control any Greek provinces.
A question about the SS recruitment in the Banat. Why does the revolt risk lower the most in Belgrade instead of Zrenajin/Banat? It should lower the most in the Banat.
Croatia was created and assigned as much land as possible, it's quite a bummer this automatically makes your units redeploy to Berlin.
Finland joined the Axis in early 1941. By the time the relation was +180.
Invasion of the Soviet Union, late may 1941, the world holds is breath: I launched the war against the Soviet Union, I made a lot of use of major (the entire swamp area, Lithuania & Latvia, Western Ukraine) and minor encirclements. The Soviets launched a major invasion against Finland but they got lost in the central forests of Finland and never tried to reach Helsinki or Turku. The Soviets don't seem to be using a lot of infantry nor build many. In the first two months they lost 50+ divisions due to encirclements. Although the logistics really become a problem in the southern Caucasus and approaching the Urals, Germany still gets off lightly. Germany's TC is very high and troops move fast. Some suggestions to make it harder:
- partisans need to pop up more often, perhaps even by persistent events in random provinces. Belarus should be able to be supressed by a Slovakian reserve unit. The whole swamp and forest area around there needs some serious partisan issues.
- Stalingrad needs to be properly defended, it's usually pretty much empty.
- Soviet Union should get a temporary bonus in the winter of 1941 perhaps?
I decided not to take control of Sverdlovsk but instead move south to establish Central Asian buffer states. All of Turkestan is now made up of pro-Axis puppets and I even released the Transrural republic.
Now it's November 1942: The Soviets have lost all provinces west of the Urals, they have lost the entire of Central Asia and the Urals themselves. Yet the Bitter Peace hasn't fired yet. I checked the triggers and there seems to be no reason why it shouldn't trigger by now. There haven't been any battles for some time and in fact I am replacing my front line troops with Hungarian, Romanian and Spanish ones and I'm moving them to the Persian border (who remained neutral) and back to Germany: by the time you reach the urals it's hard to reinforce units. Today, I'm going to play until somewhere next year and see what happens.
Oh btw, Italy has some strong ambitions. They have taken over Congo, but as always they are stuck in southern Tanzania, they have also taken over all French posessions in Africa as well as Nigeria. But that's not all: they invaded and annexed Oman and Yemen, they control Kuwait and they decided to invade Pakistan last month.
Japan is just fighting China and hasn't declared war on the USA, I'm actually thankful for that. But I may try to make them join me for it could trigger the different version of the Bitter Peace.
As for the sub war. I had a minor sub war in 1940 just after the establishment of Vichy France and just before the invasion of Great Britain. It was a disaster. The subs were met by surface fleets all the time, especially carriers. Now I have a long range submarine (1941 model) and all submarine techs. I am sending it down from Podgorica to the Indian Ocean, it destroys a convoy every now and then.
Great Britain should not relocate to Malta after it loses the British Isles. I would say Lagos is a better option, and eventually Colon or Fiji. Heck, by the time it has to desperately move to Fiji Canada should just take over its fleet and that's it.
Also, by 1942 Germany has huge amounts of everything, well except manpower of course.
German-Soviet front:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6763/screensave01.png
Chinese-Japanese front:
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/2514/screensave0d.png