Germany, 1936: Cabals from the Meuse to the Memel

soulking said:

Also, interesting move in not ally Japan - it could work to your advantage when the Allies + US are at war with Japan whilst only the Allies are at war with you.

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I would be surprised if the USA would not join the Allies as soon as the Japanese attack them.

GpcGarag said:

so far so good ^^

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So far so murky would better describe my situation. I heavily rely on chance right now, so I can't foretell what I will do and if I will succeed eventually.

FlyingDutchman said:

I think I am missing something in your use of ministers. You put in the manpower minister +10%. But the Daily Manpower rate of Germany is 0.0004 or 0.144 per year. With the minister it would be 0.00044 or 0.1584 per year. At that rate you would need 10 years to get 1.584 manpower into your pool.

My testing shows that the minister provides no benefit to the mobilization events at all.

Do you really think he is worth giving up a 5% discount to consumer goods? Given your consumer goods are still high (you are at Peace) and will get higher as you gain IC from Austria, Munich and Partition of CZE.

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Thank you for pointing this out. Indeed, you're right, and I've made a mistake here. I missed a decimal point and actually thought that Germany's daily manpower growth is around 0.005, and not 0.0005, which makes indeed a difference. I assumed that due to Three Year Conscription, Partial or even General Mobilization I would benefit after ten years from roughly 30 points of manpower, but this is obviously lightyears away from the truth. In fact, around 1 or 2 points of manpower in ten years make Walter Buch virtually worthless -- I will reinstall Gürtner as soon as the Anschluss fires to circumvent yet another dissent hit.

Actually it makes the Man of the People minister personality completely worthless. I checked the Soviet manpower growth, they also have only 0.0016 daily manpower growth under Three Year Conscription. At this rate they would get around 6 points of manpower in ten years, regardless of whether a manpower-boosting minister is appointed or not. It's actually really sad, because I have the impression that this minister personality was intended to be a useful one. It also makes the Chief of Staff ministers with Mass Combat Doctrine (+ 15 percent manpower growth) and all other ministers that provide this bonus less attractive. I think it would be good if someone would suggest a change to this by either proposing a higher manpower growth bonus or the replacement of the manpower growth bonus with another suitable one. If I find the time, I'll do it myself, but as the swarm intelligence of the forum has more resources available ...

FlyingDutchman said:

Also I did some manpower testing and if you extend service by 3 years in 36 you get 636.5 men. If you do the same after Austria is yours you get 703.0 men. Again if you did it after Partition of CZE you get 788.5 men.
You also get 300 men for Austria and 100 for Munich.
It would seem that you can max your available men by waiting to extend your service. I know your strategy dictates having more units early as you are going after France first (if I read that right), but thought you might want to know what you give up for that.

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I'm aware of this, but as you have written, my strategy dictates a tighter time schedule regarding the mobilization of my armed forces. I've already now almost reached the number of divisions a Germany AI would use (around 110, according to some handsoff games) to start World War II. It's June 1937, and I have 97 divisions -- before the Anschluss, that will allow me to inherit the entire Austrian army. I will indeed try to enact Three Year Conscription after the Anschluss, but this won't be possible if the Anschluss doesn't fire in the next three or four months. When my current manpower pool is depleted, I can't just stop my whole production and wait for the next part of Germany's event chain -- although I could probably use the time to upgrade some units, this won't happen. In all my test runs I've managed to beat France with 1936 infantry (or even worse), our land doctrine and our armor is sufficient enough to give us a critical edge about the French, let alone the Polish who are even beatable with 1918 infantry. In order for my France First Strategy to succeed in case of a 1938 Anschluss -- otherwise I would stress class more than mass -- I need dozens of additional divisions, if only to stop the Polish from a trip to Berlin while I fight in the west, and not to speak of the fact that I wish to confront the Soviet Union as soon as Case White is concluded, and thus 105 divisions, even if they would be fully upgraded, aren't sufficient enough to hold a front line from Lake Peipus to the Black Sea.

FlyingDutchman said:

Also one last thing. The Chief of the Army gives -5% to armour units, but note it is armour not light armour, so you get no benefit to your light armour builds. On the other hand you should switch him with Luttwitz who gives a 3% discount on infantry which you are build allot of.

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I agree, of course, your argumentation is plausible. However, the appointment of Lüttwitz will cause three dissent hits. The first, if I would appoint him right now, and the second after the retirement of Werner von Fritsch, which automatically installs Walther von Brauchitsch as chief of staff, even if Fritsch isn't the incumbent Chief of the Army, the third when I would reappoint a minister that boosts armor. Considering the fact that I will -- I think -- as soon as 1939 upgrade my production queue to ordinary armor, it isn't worth the trouble, in my opinion. With his 3 percent bonus he would perhaps give a two IC discount and speed my infantry and engineer production by 27 days at best before I woul be forced to replace him again, but I would rather have the immediate combat modifier and the lowered production time and cost for my armor in 1939 as soon as possible, as armor costs way more IC and time to produce than infantry. If it would be 1936 and I would have noticed it earlier (I indeed thought that the bonus of von Fritsch would also apply on light armor) I would have appointed von Lüttwitz, but now it's too late for a change.

FlyingDutchman said:

I really like the deep analysis of your play, very informative.

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Thank you, especially for pointing out the mistakes I made.

Bosnian Comrad said:

what about making a title with parts for better viewing

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Do you mean titles like in this update?

Bosnian Comrad said:

no, like this or this

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Ahh, I see what you mean now.

soulking said:

IMO, if he just had the titles as Chapter 1, 2, 3, etc..., I'd be fine with that.

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After I fnish the update I'm currently working I will add the titles like you suggested tomorrow. I'm afraid that more won't be possible, not only because it would be difficult to find dozens of interesting titles for a Gameplay AAR, but also because the updates aren't really "Chapters", I'm just posting the screenshots I created during my game session in chronological order, with five pictures in one update at the most; therefore one update can cover a variety of topics.

soulking said:

As well, a table of content would be a welcoming addition!

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It certainly would be, but we shall see. I actually considered when I started the AAR the creation of a table of contents, but until now I enjoyed the fact that I hadn't to foster an index. So I don't guarantee anything in this direction, but as the AAR will grew bigger and bigger, at some point it will be indeed necessary to add an overview at the beginning. Perhaps later during this week, I'm still feeling a little bit too comfortable due to Easter to start this kind of manual work right now, and also hope that I can shorten the update intervals considerably during the next days when daily life will start to re-energize me.

One month after our shocking assessment about Japanese incompetence, the tide has turned in China. Japan rescued itself from receiving the rating "Inferior to Italy" by starting an amphibious attack in Shanghai, capturing the Chinese capital of Nanjing after some days of fighting. This has indeed inverted the tactical and strategical situation in Japan's favour, the Chinese were probably caught with their pants down at the eastern coast, triggering a hasty retreat of divisions from the north towards the Japanese beachhead in order to stop a pending catastrophe. This, however, allowed the Japanese army in the north to push the Chinese finally to the Yellow river (it's about time, I might add). The capture of Nanjing also resulted in the obligatory massacre event, but interestingly the Americans aren't concerned with it, which, fortunately for us, hurts them, as they skip one possible policy step towards interventionism.



At the beginning of September our first HQ division is produced, which gives us two HQ divisions in total, as our starting army already contained a HQ division from the beginning. The newly-produced HQ division is deployed to Berlin and Field Marshal von Kluge is appointed as commander. I like to have Field Marshals with five skill points as HQ commanders; as the HQ Field Marshals will often have the command in the most critical battles. The other HQ commander is Field Marshal von Rundstedt.

The production of the HQ division, however, consumes our remaining manpower to the point that we can't continue with the production of the HQ run. I will allow this to happen, for the time being, as I still hope that the Anschluss will occur shortly, and increasing our mobilisation level after the Anschluss would net us more manpower than enacting Three Year Conscription beforehand. However, while the halt of the production of one PR of HQ is bearable, the stop of other PRs is not, so as soon as the lack of manpower will start to stop other PRs, we will increase our mobilisation level nevertheless.



In the meantime, the predicted intelligence mass assault started. I did not count exactly, but I believe that since the last update we became the victim of around twenty espionage missions. A lot of countries does not like us, so this isn't very surprising. However, a positive surprise was that we managed to successfully withstand all of their hostile missions. I will nevertheless increase our intelligence level again, which raises our counter espionage effectiveness by eight percent.

On the diplomatic stage I continue to invest my money in Spain. By the end of 1937, the relations with Nationalist Spain increased to + 122 points, which is a good foundation we can use later to invite them to our alliance. In the next year, before the reparation of relations with the Soviet Union will start, I will direct my money to Romania and Bulgaria. I'm still wondering when the Romanian coup will happen that replaces the current Social Liberal government with National Socialists. I also want to notice one thing: Ordering the Trading AI to trade for money has proven to be very effective; I make a money surplus of around 6 units per day, which allows one diplomatic action every one or two months, so no need to open negotiations with the Soviets again if we don't have extraordinary expenses.



In November ten PRs of infantry are finished (the two other PRs got delayed), we deploy a six-division corps to Stolp and a four-division corps to Eupen. This certainly won't be the war setup of my corps, but for the time being I just try to distribute my corps evenly in the German border provinces.

This, however, makes our manpower problem critical, as the majority of the infantry PRs can't continue with their production. The year is almost over, and no Anschluss happened at all -- I guess I was again unlucky, and therefore we have to reconcile with the idea of a 1938 Anschluss. So we can't wait until 1938 and stop our infantry production, as we need a lot of divisions for the France First strategy and the early attack on the Soviet Union. I immediatly enact Three Year conscription, which replenishes our manpower pool somewhat (I would have expected a little bit more; after some manpower is injected to the halted PRs, we only have around 160 MP points left). The annoying side effect of this is the three point dissent hit; luckily the Anschluss in 1938 is not far away, so we won't need to burn this dissent manually by increasing our consumer goods production.



During the last months Blohm & Voss finalized the research of Long Range Submarines, Konrad Zuse on Basic Computing Machines, Focke-Wulf on Escort Fighters 1937, Junkers on CAS 1937 and Krupp on Basic Light Tanks. After Blohm & Voss researched Long Range Submarines, I tasked Ernst Udet to start with the research of some 1938 Air Doctrines, he has already finished in December 1937 the development of Direct Ground Support Doctrines. You can see my current research I initiated after all the aforementioned techteams ended their research in the screenshot, I'll give you a short explanation why I research them, they're all 1938 technologies, except for Basic Encryption Devices:

• Battlefield Interdiction Doctrine is comparable to other Air Doctrine technologies like the Direct Ground Support Doctrine. We want to have a competent and well-organized Luftwaffe, so we need to research some doctrines for CAS, TAC (Tactical Bombers), NAV (Naval Bombers) and INT (Interceptors). And there are lots of technologies to research in these areas, we have in 1938 already five Air Doctrine technologies to research, so we have to start a little bit earlier in order to research them all. This explanation is applicable to almost every other Air Doctrine technology, the Battlefield Interdiction Doctrine itself provies improved organisation and morale (organisation replenishment speed) for TACs and NAVs.
• Tactical Bomber 1938 is researched because we will continue to have a small amount of TAC wings in the Luftwaffe. Although we won't build them extensively, it's nice to have them nevertheless with modern equipment.
• Bomber Veteran Initiative is an Air Doctrine technology (see explanation above) and will improve the organisation and morale of our CAS by five percent, as well as CAS attacks during rainy and snowy weather by ten percent. CAS will form the bulk of the Luftwaffe, so this is a really important technology.
• Basic Pharmacology will increase our manpower growth by one percent, which is not much, but as it doesn't hurt and we have with I.G. Farben one of the best industrial techteams in the world, we started the research nevertheless.
• Basic Encryption Devices should be self-explanatory. This is the last technology from 1937 and makes army intelligence for the enemy more difficult.

But you can't only see my current research in the screenshot. Look at my dissent. Yes, some days before Christmas the heinous French succeeded, despite the recent allocation of funds to my counter intelligence, with a smear campaign, increasing our dissent by two percent. I will spare you from a detailed description of my reaction to this, I normally have a very forgiving nature, but I just want to say at this point that the French should not expect a return of Longwy and Nancy when World War II is over. Hopefully the Anschluss can handle this new dissent and my minister changes in 1938, otherwise you'll become partitioned, dear France.

shepherd352 said:

I thought that the Anschluss was not intuitive: you really need to read the FAQ and even read the code. It would be better if critical events like this were easier to understand. On one run-through, I waited 8 months, after the Anschluss note became visable before stopping to reasearch what I needed to activate it.

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Well, the FAQ essentially doesn't tell me anything new, as it only explains what to do in order to enact the Anschluss decision -- and I've already figured that out during my very first game by moving my cursor over the little 'X' and reading the requirements for it, and now with the latest Beta they've even replaced the historical text for the Anschluss with a foolproof instruction how to enact the decision, as a lot of people seem to have serious problems with more than one tier of logical conjunctions and disjunctions. However, for people who are able to utilize their knowledge about logical connectives and aren't intimidated by the HoI syntax (I think that the latter is probably the main reason why many people fail to understand the decision, they're certainly not stupid, they know what AND and OR mean in logic if I would ask them, but the dashes that signal a new tier of conditions are just too unobtrusive), this was never the question. The crux for someone who thinks more out of the box and wishes, for example, deliberately trigger the Anschluss in 1937 before its historic date lies not in the Anschluss decision itself, whose conditions are sufficiently displayed and even explained, but in the Nazi coup event, that is indispensable in order to trigger the Anschluss peacefully. However, this is, in contrast, explained nowhere, the conditions are not displayed and the FAQ only mentions the Nazi coup in brackets (because it's not a frequent strategy to trigger the Anschluss earlier, admittedly), so I wasn't in the picture from the beginning but had to study the code of numerous events among multiple files to understand the event chain that leads to the Anschluss.

Regarding the question of intuition: It's actually more historical than in HoI and AoD. Italy must join the Pact of Steel and renounce their guarantee of Austria before the Anschluss can happen; this is all backed by history. Unfortunately it isn't so clear if you don't read the code, so you're probably right when you say that it's not intuitive.

shepherd352 said:

It just seemed to be overly complex, especially when compared with the relatively simple acquisition of Czeckoslovakia.

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Well, I would not second this. The Treaty of Munich and all subsequent events of Germany's historic event chain rely on the Anschluss, so basically it becomes even more complicated the further we go. The Treaty of Munich decision, for example, becomes exactly 150 days after the enactment of the Anschluss decision by Germany available, the End of Czechoslovkaia exactly 160 days after the Treaty of Munich, and so on ...

shepherd352 said:

I'm looking forward to the rest of your road to war.

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Thank you.

Baltasar said:

Good going so far. Seems like the French like to stack single divisions on their border. Are you goign to leave East Prussia undefended? What about the state of your land techs and land doctrines?

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I think that the stacking of single divisions is based on the reason that the AI will never ever go about the command limit of their leaders, and that France uses during peace almost only major generals as leaders. Regarding East Prussia, I will probably leave one corps there to defend it if I have enough divisions at my disposal, as together with Memel it would be 7 IC lost to the Poles. I have only researched Basic Hospital from the land doctrines until now, as the next tech I could research is from 1938 and it is not important to get it immediatly, it would be even sufficient to have the 1938 doctrine tech just a month before World War II. But our land forces are, for 1938, up-to-date, we have 1936 infantry, 1930 engineers, 1938 light tanks and this will be all upgraded to 1939 status already at the end of 1938 -- I hope.

I've added now, on popular request, titles to my updates (after finding an ingenious solution for the problem to find adequate titles for a Gameplay AAR ) and a table of contents in the first post. I hope you appreciate it, because the time I invested into this would have been otherwise used for a new update.

AshesFall said:

Looking forward to the next update!

Also; Good (and obvious ) solution to the titles, it is good to have a firm structure.

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Thank you.

MartinBG said:

I just spent the last hour reading this wonderful AAR instead of working on the game!
Well, that was a nice hour

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Oh my, so much praise from the leading DH programmer, I feel flattered and cajoled. I better start writing the text for the next two updates ...

And so 1938 begins. At midnight our slider is automatically moved one step towards Central Planning, so we have now a ten percent IC bonus from our policies. On the next day the new policy modifier will be applied and our Effective IC will rise by 8 points.

During the next weeks Messerschmitt will conclude the research of the Bomber Veteran Initiative Air Doctrine that will benefit our CAS, and we will continue with Arado researching 1938 Naval Bombers, so that as soon as our IC will allow it, we can start to improve our naval power by building modern submarines as well as naval bombers. While I'm mentioning the submarines, the Soviets have succeeded in stealing the blueprints for Long Range Submarines -- I wish the Red Fleet much amusement with it, unfortunately the Soviets don't have a channel that will protect them from my armies. Perhaps they wish to play Stöterbeker in the Baltic Sea, who knows.



The two delayed PRs of infantry are finished. I deploy them into the XXV. Armeekorps under the command of General Nehring who guards with his troops the German-Belgian border in Eupen. Notice that Nehring, although he was just a year before only a Major General, is now a General, so the auto-promotion works very well and I don't expect to see any corps with commanders that aren't at least Generals (my standard corps consists of six divisions, so Lieutenant Generals would be too overwhelmed) when World War II breaks out. Nehring is a panzer leader, but because I don't have enough panzer divisions, it will be indeed common that I use some panzer leaders as the commanders of infantry corps, because Germany's most gifted leaders are obviously to a significant part panzer leaders, and leaders that have less than four skill points do not really qualify for a corps command considering the vast amount of leaders with four or even five skill points when playing Germany. Of course, as soon as a new armored corps is deployed, I will only appoint the most competent panzer leaders to it, next in line for a panzer command are Guderian and Rommel (the latter won't appear until 1939, so due to his low rank Guderian is first).



Isn't it charming to have a prostitute as a wife? Well, actually the wife of Herr von Blomberg is not a prostitute, she only sold her body to the precursor of a playboy-like magazine, but the event nevertheless dictates that I have to banish him and his wife to Capri if I don't want to lose 500 funds. I'm afraid that 500 bucks are just a little bit too much to allow my sense of justice to take over, so I order his retirement and Hjalmar Schacht, well, is again appointed as Armaments Minister, so this event has basically killed the minister and leader von Blomberg and that's it. Von Blomberg was also the commander of the infantry corps in Waldenburg, he will be replaced by General Dietl shortly.



Children of Germany, rejoice! Finally, this useless epigonal Nazi leader of Austria, Arthur Seyß-Inquart, has couped the Austrian government, making him the head of state of Austria -- which is historically wrong, as he only became Chancellor and thus head of government, but this only as a side note to anyone who is interested in historical accuracy. The Anschluss is about to take place -- finally, I might stress. It's extremely unfortunate that the Anschluss happened so late. Everything would have been easier if it had fired in 1937; the state of my production queue is due to the lack of IC still an embarassment.

So, in order to add precious Austria to the German Reich, we can take one of three different ways: An alliance, an invasion, and diplomacy. Well, an alliance with Austria would not result in the annexation of the country (and its IC -- I want the Austrian IC! I want it now!), so this is not an option. Violence, well -- this is something we could have done already in 1936, so this is also not an option, especially as I don't only want the Austrian IC, but also the Austrian army. Logic tells us that we must therefore take the diplomatic solution. Yes, diplomacy is the most obvious and common way to achieve the Anschluss; we have cores on all Austrian provinces, so we can demand the territory of Austria through the diplomatic menu, and because of the coup the chances that the Austrians agree are now high enough.

EDIT (thanks to Timmie0307): Allying with Austria will also result in the annexation of all Austrian provinces, my previous claim that an alliance would prevent Germany from annexing Austria is wrong. Nevertheless, as the chances for an alliance with Austria were zero percent, this option would not have been considered by me even if I had known this fact before.



So, will our beloved Führer return to his homeland now? Or will the Austrians force us to wait two another, painful weeks (DH increased the diplomatic cooldown period from one to two weeks when performing diplomatic missions in the same country) and deny us the additional IC and divisions, until we start our second attempt? Will the Austrians require even a third or a fourth attempt? This could be very well the case, considering the non-existant amount of luck we had until now. I press OK and ...

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a serious cliffhanger.

Timmie0307 said:

I thought that if you are in an alliance with them, you get the Anschluss decision, therefore you gain them as well..

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Thank you, you're right. After you posted this, I checked it with an older save; if you ally with Austria, they will get annexed, too. I will edit the latest update accordingly.

Lord Blekinge said:

I am enjoying this AAR. Does DH come with those beautiful unit portraits or is another mod?

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Thank you and yes, the unit portraits are from DH, my game is unmodified. Finally the infantry looks a little bit more masculine.

Miihkali said:

Never been so stressed about an AAR cliffhanger.

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Miihkali said:

Have you any idea why should it cost 500 funds to not to force von Blomberg to retire. (That's a lot of not's by the way.)

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I guess to cover up the fact that von Blomberg wished to marry an alleged prostitute would require at least some bribes for his prospective wife, so that she wouldn't marry him (historically von Blomberg staunchly refused to end the relationship with his wife, so convincing the woman would be the only option to prevent the marriage) and the other low-ranking people who know about the affair.

On the other hand the refusal to hunt down alleged gays costs nothing in this game, as you will see shortly.

Cybvep said:

The cost of the whole affair? It seems exaggerated, though. Sth like -100 would be more in line.

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I second, just to see that it will be easier for Germany in the future to keep von Blomberg.