The Dog Days of Summer
The war drags on through the early weeks of July, my hand hurts from all the micromanagement, Russia's OOB has been reduced to total chaos along with a considerable portion of our lines on the Rhine front, the supply situation is also deteriorating. By mid June the giant spastic supply flows began in earnest. One day we are down 8000 then we are back up 9000 the extremity of these flows is also increasing. We may have to start producing supply like savages or capitalists. I shudder at the thought.
Adding to my rage good old Danzig gives us a nice costly loss. At least some things can still be counted on.
Denmark is
liberated and becomes a puppet, hopefully that event where the US takes Iceland and Greenland will not fire if it is a Soviet Puppet.
Danish air and naval bases will be helpful for attacking Canada.
Germany Dead: A Midsummer Night's Dream
July 13th. The primary battleground is looking decent, Dusseldorf may just fall, and despite German attacks our armor thrust will cross the Rhine and start its advance to Bitburg. Our attack against Bonn is not so promising.
Oh the battle percentage is at a 3? Better keep on attacking.
It ends in bloody failure.
At this point I start to get desperate and move every available plane into nearby air bases and start bombing everything in the Bitburg area. That helps us take Dusseldorf and hold Kleve.
Pushing south into the next province proves difficult for our tanks that have been fighting constantly for weeks now. The stack of infantry in Dusseldorf will be thrown into the fray. Along with more CAS. I even use INTs to bomb that province.
We continue to be attacked in the south.
I have a tendency to be only able to provide rational, focused leadership on one front, with my attention on Bitburg the Balkan front deteriorates into a mad stampede. Hoards of Russians rush south hitting everything in their path. The terrain sucks, but that is the only thing stopping us right now, other than roads clogged with dead Italians.
Over in
Asia land we begin to initiate a plan to capture Korea, the first stage involves destroying the Japanese forces in the north, then overrunning the rest of the peninsula. In China we will attempt a probing offensive and gain a better position while they wait for the rest of the army to clean up Korea.
Things look pretty crazy in Korea but I have reinforcements rushing from all over Manchuria, along with a mechanized division and some
Red Rollahs. We should be able to bring the pain.
The front in China does not look to hot, we are surprisingly outnumbered and the Japanese currently have air supremacy, the only thing going for us are the handful of armored units we have, but they are getting swamped and worn down.
Diplomacy Strikes Back
It seems that as we were busy waging massive wars against powerful countries those fancy pants, perfume wearing, girly men of the Allies were glad-handing and back-slapping their way to world domination by bringing more countries into their silly alliance.
I actually think this was induced by a war declaration by either Italy or Germany, in any case the Western front just got a whole lot more complicated.
The Swiss are invading Germany, Germany is invading Switzerland, Italy is invading them to, and France is invading Italy. Oh lawd.
What a mess, I can't wait to make it even worse.
But then the Americans joined the party.
This is a far more alarming development, but before everyone starts flipping tables, don't worry the US did not drag the rest of the Allies into a war with me. Yet. But what this does do is give the US and their jaw droppingly powerful navy access to the British and French empires to launch attacks against us where ever they want. And we can't do a thing about it. Yet.
To give us a taste of what is to come the Yanks land marines on one of the two Peruvian VPs. Even though I am marching into Lima right now, I cannot puppet them. To add insult to injury this province is bugged or something, all troops I send in there take a whole month to march in, and then don't attack anything just standing there in some twilight zone where you can't kill Americans, even amphibious landings won't work. blarg.
The Great American Satan
The Road to Bitburg: Paved with Ground up Bones
On July 19th M. Gladbach was the next province to fall on the road to Bitburg, huge air and infantry assaults helped us take this heavily fortified province. Any German player who actually builds forts deserves to be brutally crushed by Communists. Many of our units are tied down defending ground already taken, thankfully the Germans left the next province, Duren, undefended.
July 25th. Giant stacks of Germans move ominously around our advance. This is one of the few times I wish we waited for the Germans to attack us, these armies are impossible to kill in their current position. My only hope is they do not properly utilize their power.
We launch our first attack on Bitburg, it is more of a probe and is smashed by strong German defenses. We start bombing the living hell out of Bitburg, but the giant stack of defenders shreds our planes. We continue anyways bringing in even more bombers. Battles like this are the whole reason you have an air force.
On July 25th, our first attack on Bitburg is repelled after a counterattack from another province.
We still need to bring up more tanks to help out, mercifully Bitburg is not an urban area.
Summer Blockbusters:
In the last week of July the intensity of the war stepped up, huge battles raged and casualty figures rose to new ridiculous heights. For the first time in the game I actually looked at the manpower levels, they had dropped to 2150, from a prewar level of almost 2300 ( along with an extra 200 from an event)
We are still holding on in the south, with a nice fat victory.
Hurrah for even less consumer goods!
But we are being pushed in the center.
We give the Italians and Germans a damn good thrashing in northern Italy, our smaller force inflicted huge casualties. Unfortunately the rest of the enemy runs away in the wrong direction, into a city instead of more plains.
Oh well, that just means more prisoners instead of bodies.
Speaking of bodies, on July 27th Danzig ran out of supplies, and for the first time we could launch a productive assault on that blasted city. This was my most satisfiying moment of the game so far. The rage and frustration that this city has caused will soon be purged in fire and blood.
There were too many battles to be contained in this single update, we will continue the summer bloodbath next time, perhaps I'll do another update tonight for continuity's sake.