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I subbed at the opening pic to be honest.
 
War Junkey's: Maintaining the Habit

Our great sitzkreig in Finland was about to come to a very strange end. On April 19, 1939 we recevied this event.

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Normally we would have just settled for what we asked for, as that would puppet Finland. (That was our war goal). BUT the Turkish threat level was agonizingly close to where we needed it to be.

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I learned that staring at this angrily did not, in fact, make it go any faster.

So I made a cunning decision, if we pick conquer, we will need to do exactly that. It will take some time to do so and in that time the Turkish threat should be good to go. After we conquer Finland, we will just release them as a puppet and get some sweet lettering in the north.

My genius plan worked out pretty well. It took a few weeks to beat up Finland and take their sovereignty.

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And was able to declare war on Turkey without missing a beat.

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Oh you are going to look real good in Cyrillic...

This was when things got weird and my cunning plan turned upside down. Shortly after our war with Turkey began, on May 13th, Finland surrender to all of our demands. That's rather nice of them. Wait just a minute. I sense a disturbance in the force.

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The fusion of shark and gorilla are used here to demonstrate not only the sheer awesomeness of the puppetconquer but also the metaphysical unlikelihood of such an event.

As it turns out I both puppeted Finland and conquered it. As you can see their army remains, yet their country does not. I got a 6 IC boost and some more leadership along with extra resources I can also deploy units and buildings in Finland. But at the same time Finland exists as a political entity. I can still contact them and When I look at my list of countries to release as puppets they are not there, even though my diplomatic pages SAYS they are my puppet.

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You have entered the twilight zone, where up is down, puppets are conquered and communism is considered good.

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Evidence of Finland's Statehood is baffling and amusing as I occupy their entire state.

Anyways it is probably my fault for attacking Finland before the Winter War event stuff actually happened and then demanding they both be puppeted and conquered. I assumed the game would overwrite my initial demands. If anyone knows how to fix this by editing the save, could you let me know how? I may give it a shot.

Operation Turkish Delight:

Now the the Finnish madness is explained but not understood, we can move to more comforting and realistic issues. Like beating the stuffing out of Turkey.

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Our operation is mostly hope based.

The units involved were part of the Caucus corps that was built specifically for Turkish Delight. There were a number of mountain divisions, a light tank divison, 2 motor infantry divisions (the poor mans mechanized as they have some light tanks mixed in) some weak unupgraded infantry divisions, one weird cavalry division and at least 3 of my formidable "regular" divisions.

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The attack begins on May 5th

To say the Turks were unprepared is an understatement. They tried to retreat from their border as fast as the rough terrain would allow, but in a few days we had inadvertently destroyed the majority of their army. Just by marching into provinces before the Turks could get out. Only a few HQs remained from their entire border force, whoops. Even if I puppet them they will be basically crippled for the rest of the game.

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I almost feel sorry for them... also that generals name is Turkes!?!?!? This battle is now a metaphor for the entire war, you're welcome.

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After a week of fighting we break through in the north.

And also in the south.
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Note that the Turks do have some decent divisions, but my surprise attack and their pitiful mobilization levels are making this war far easier than it really should be. I guess the LUA files don't cover politics.

Central Turkey is nice and flat so I am trying to get all my mobile divisions onto that ground as soon as possible so they can rush past the remains of the Turkish army.

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June 4th, some Turkish elements are being annoying, Ankara is still decently defended. We have to wait for the better infantry divisions to march up and assault the city. Once again I realize how difficult the war would be if the Turks had been fully prepared.

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After another month of furious fighting around the capital we begin the mop up. We also lost a motor infantry division in the south when it ran into a Turkish division, lost the one-on-one fight and decided to retreat sideways into Turkish territory.

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Dat Cyrillic.

Turkey joins the Comintern on July 12th, but all is not well. Now there is nobody left with a threat high enough to attack, we are at peace.

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The bittersweet victory.

Right after the war ends Soviet high command starts sweating and shaking. Stalin spends hours staring at Japan on a map while stealing glances at Germany. Molotov just starts screaming from the Kremlin's roof about aliens from Mars preparing to attack. When the army is demobilized it finally sobers up and it falls into a deep existential depression. The armament minister Lazar Kagonovich breaks down in tears when he sees the new industrial figures, he takes a leave of absence.

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The horror, the horror. Actual IC count will fall to 335 after the laws fully switch.

When scientist report to high command that they have made a breakthrough in a new and powerful weapon field they are asked if it can lower neutrality. When they say it does not further research is canceled.

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What good is a super weapon when you have nobody to use it on? Sigh.

Hurried plans are written out on sweat stained napkins and vodka bottle labels. They include filling Tibet full of spies, declaring war on the moon, and constructing a giant "Quantum neutrality teleporter" to transfer neutrality to another dimension. None of these are any good, and the Soviet Union will spend the summer in agonizing peace. Is there anything that could save them in this horrible year of Nineteen Thirty Nine?
 
As it turns out I both puppeted Finland and conquered it. As you can see their army remains, yet their country does not. I got a 6 IC boost and some more leadership along with extra resources I can also deploy units and buildings in Finland. But at the same time Finland exists as a political entity. I can still contact them and When I look at my list of countries to release as puppets they are not there, even though my diplomatic pages SAYS they are my puppet.

next to the puppetbutton there is the "free country" button, thats the button you need to hit.
 
There's no need to raise the threat of each individual nation you want to attack. Just raise the threat on Germany and you will be able to DoW who you want much faster. It's less of a Leadership drain than some people might argue since the AI doesn't respond that aggressively to that type of mission, and you won't need to bother for long sending Spies since you can get your neutrality down to zero in about a year (or much less, since this isn't 1936 anymore and Germany should already be threatening).
 
you are certainly taking a very aggressive approach here, just hope it doesn't leave you too exposed when Adolph comes to visit

Well I have never played Russia, so don't exactly have the experience to back this up, my general logic for all the early aggression (and there will be WAY more to come) is this:
1) I have been able to run a sick war economy for much longer than Germany, meaning even more factories building factories and higher practicals.
2) I could have achieved that by wardecing Afghanistan or Tibet ASAP and then leaving them alone for 3 years, but that would be super cheesy and boring.
3) My army gets much needed experience and the disorganized officer corps gets turned off faster.
4) All the puppets I'm amassing would have probably joined Germany, now instead of fighting them, Germany has to. (And they are giving me free stuff and look cool)
5) I can get some handy strategic effects like Black sea and veteran army by waging all these wars.

Overall I think a hyperaggressive Russia will be far stronger than a historically passive one. Although I would like to know from those who have played Russia exactly how dangerous is Germany for a human player?

There's no need to raise the threat of each individual nation you want to attack. Just raise the threat on Germany and you will be able to DoW who you want much faster. It's less of a Leadership drain than some people might argue since the AI doesn't respond that aggressively to that type of mission, and you won't need to bother for long sending Spies since you can get your neutrality down to zero in about a year (or much less, since this isn't 1936 anymore and Germany should already be threatening).

Can you explain the threat mechanic a bit better? It seemed to me that you could only war dec a country that had a higher threat than your neutrality. Are you saying a higher threat country will lower neutrality? If so, that would explain what happens in my next few chapters :p and also make is even easier to be an assertive Russia.
 
The DoW mechanic works like this: When your effective neutrality [ (base neutrality) - (highest threat against you) ] is 25 or less you can declare war on any country. Axis members can do that when their effective neutrality is 35 (or is it 45?), and countries that have cores outside of their borders get an extra 25 bonus, so they can declare war on a nation with their cores at 50 effective neutrality. The tooltips for FtM were never changed from what they said in Semper Fi. So, when you see the word neutrality in the diplo screen that's talking about your effective neutrality, but when you hover over the grayed-out declare war tooltip the word "neutrality" there is actually your base neutrality. Yes, that's confusing, especially to someone who didn't play the earlier expansions.

TL;DR: You only need to raise one country's threat, not each individual target. Germany is a perfect target for the raise threat spy mission. So is France and the USSR if you're playing as Germany.
 
The Red Rampage of 39'

The war drought continued through the summer, by August Stalin was considering initiating a civil war just to get Russia fighting again. But in our darkest moment a savior arrived. His name was Hitler. On August 7th (nice and early) we were presented with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of non-aggression between Russia and Germany. The key fact of this pact was that it gave us cores on the Baltic states, allowing us to declare war immediately.

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Thank you based Ribbentrop. You will surely regret this.

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Gimme dem cores!

Having never played the USSR I had not really anticipated these exact events, but fortunately I had carelessly stationed a huge army right beside the Baltic states.

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They were doooooomed

Now three tiny little states would not last long, I needed more targets to sate my war lust. Thanks to German aggression my effective neutrality was down to zero so I could attack anyone at anytime. Back in the Kremlin, when informed of our new freedom Stalin nearly had a stroke, then fist bumped Molotov, and ordered the army back to full mobilization. The heroic conquers of Romania were sent back into the Balkans to prepare to bring another nation into our warm embrace (warmth is most likely caused by flowing blood).

The Second World War


Germany mobilized in mid August, and so do a bunch of other countries. Or neighbors do not, those fools!
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Our army was still mobilizing when they started attacking Riga, and were handed a few defeats before the city capitulated.

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Attacking across a river with a huge stacking penalty did not help either. But it was 4am when I was playing, forgive my noobery.

It took an embarrassing 21 days to subdue Latvia, they surrendered on August 28th.
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Latvia, you don't even deserve a Puppeting.

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Something is brewing in the Balkans, and it is going to involve Hungary. My rational for hitting them first is they are closest to joining the Axis, and occupy a strategic position in the region, their job will be to act as a meat shield for the much more valuable Romania.


"War were declared"
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The war between the Axis and Allies begins in earnest on September 1st, with a German assault on Poland. The war in Poland will be pretty textbook, although Warsaw lasted a surprisingly long time (surrendered in early October)

Historical Analysis:
Meanwhile the Soviet Union gleefully attacks everyone else. This is an interesting experiment and question. What exactly could the western powers or Germany do about a hyper-aggressive Russia? Not much, if they are all too busy fighting each other. The Germans desperately want to stave off a two front war, and the allies want a Fascist-Communist slug fest so will not aggravate the Bear. In reality they did let Russia get away with a whole bunch; I am just taking that to the next level. If the Russians had the political will and the military means to go hulk smash on eastern Europe there is very little anyone could do.

Just a heads up the next few moths are a whirlwind of wars, domestic events and even more wars. All attempts at AAR organization will fail.

Military production continues to ramp up.
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The famous II-2m. We are going to build a whole bunch of these beauties. Stalin said they were as essential to the Red army as air or bread, they built nearly 40,000.
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Hungry for Puppets:

The rampage beings. On September 18th.

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I just posted this for the ridiculous province name. What were you thinking Hungary?!?!?

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The progress after a few days of combat

The Hungarians did not put up much of a fight, they used fragile binary divisions and were not fully mobilized (god I really abuse surprise attacks don't I). The only thing slowing down our advance was fuel. An entire mechanized corps had been deployed and had not been given enough time to build up fuel stocks before the invasion. They started to run out of gas frighteningly fast.

The offensive stalled on October 1st.
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I thought our tanks could run on the blood of our enemies. :(

Fuel eventually got to the front and our units were soon moving again. The 6th armor division, was about to slam into the north-eastern suburbs of Budapest.

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And the city was totally unprepared, it was given up without a fight.
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"We drove 120km for this?"

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Hungry joins the fold on October 7th.

As this little war was going on we had lazily smashed the Baltic states.
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Lookin' good in red.

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Ahhhhh another glorious Strategic effect!

By the end of 1939 the Soviet Union is well on its way to becoming a superpower. Now that the gloves are off and the rest of the world is busy we can run wild and carve up all of Eurasia. Next update will see even more aggression in new and interesting places, and hopefully a complete overview of our economy and its spectacular growth. Also could anybody comment on the feasibility of attacking Japan in early 1940? Just curious... :)
 
By the end of 1939 the Soviet Union is well on its way to becoming a superpower. Now that the gloves are off and the rest of the world is busy we can run wild and carve up all of Eurasia. Next update will see even more aggression in new and interesting places, and hopefully a complete overview of our economy and its spectacular growth. Also could anybody comment on the feasibility of attacking Japan in early 1940? Just curious... :)

Go for it. Aside from making sure you have at least 8+ Transports to invade plus a few more to cover loses, you won't need anything more than your starting navy to take out Japan. I think the USSR is actually the best placed to do so out of anybody who might attack Japan `early`. Since most of the IJN will be located near China, it is very easy for the USSR to quickly hit Hokkaido and then get a nice toehold in Honshu. It would be easiest if you brought Mountain troops, but nearly any force of 15 - 20 divisions will do. After Honshu is in your pocket it won't be much of a chore to force their surrender, especially if the RoC is still in the game.

EDIT: For extra special levels of evil, start using Spies to raise Japan's threat so that the RoC and the Communist Chinese have their effective neutrality reduced enough so that they can join a faction (this could take a bit; these countries are very threat resistant). Also, start influencing them down into your corner. Keep a rump of Japan alive long enough to get those Chinese factions into the Comintern and you can get them in peacefully.
 
Why did you demobilize after the Turkish war? Was it automatic? I know the laws revert automatically, but I didn't think mobilization did.

I would have stayed mobilized, as you lose 50% of your demobilized manpower.
 
Why did you demobilize after the Turkish war? Was it automatic? I know the laws revert automatically, but I didn't think mobilization did.

It seems to be automatic, or else it is tripped by some other factor I haven't sussed out. I think Paradox was trying to be `helpful` and have you demobilize automatically so you didn't get socked with the increase in consumer goods demand that the little icon likes to warn you about.
 
It seems to be automatic, or else it is tripped by some other factor I haven't sussed out. I think Paradox was trying to be `helpful` and have you demobilize automatically so you didn't get socked with the increase in consumer goods demand that the little icon likes to warn you about.

yep it does, one reason why in the short wars (like the winter war) I often set the Soviet replacement rate to 0 on the grounds of why spend IC on mobilising units that you then are forced to demobilise afterwards
 
Red Rampage II: The Bloodening

The hyper-aggression and sloppy play continues through to the end on 1939 as our Soviet Heroes attempt to sustain their crippling addiction to war the only way they know how (fighting even more wars).

No Balking in the Balkans

On the same day of Hungry's surrender we declared war on Bulgaria, although they would have time to prepare as we had to relocate from Hungry.
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We also declare war on Persia for good measure.
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Persia did not get the respite that Bulgaria was given. We had a large army of mountain troops and a fresh corps of our finest infantry divisions waiting on the border.

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Look at the beautiful infantry corps! LOOK AT IT!

Persia may be resistant to spies, but lets see how resistant they are to bullets. It is a very large and hard to get around country so this is going to take a while. But it will be worth it. Persia holds a great strategic position and tons of resources, this a very important country to get on your side.

Meanwhile our troops rushed to take position in Bulgaria, but their army had disappeared. Deciding to take a stand in the mountains of their country. A cowardly yet cunning strategy.
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We quickly captured the coastal regions of Bulgaria without a fight and got our sought-after strategic effect.
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Back in Persia our troops begin attacking Tehran on October 21st. The city was poorly defended and it fell quite fast, but Persia decided to continue the war.
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The Bulgarian capital was a different story, they had crammed most of their army inside Sofiya, the rest were sitting in the mountains beside the city. Utilizing my normal level of criminal negligence I assaulted the city with a bunch of motor-infantry divisions, and followed up with some armor. My actual infantry divisions were still slogging through the mountains. This stupid capital city would survive the Russian onslaught much longer than we expected.

The battle begins on October 22nd, guess how long it lasts...
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I've made a huge mistake...

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The battle of Bulgaria. The rest of their army is sitting in Pernik.

This was our bloodiest battle fought so far. Assaults continued without rest after our initial loss. By this time some infantry divisions would take position and started attacking the city piecemeal. At the same time the Bulgarians cycled their worn out divisions for fresh ones still waiting in the adjacent province of Pernik. They also launched semi-successful spoiling attacks against part of my army. To make myself look slightly less incompetent there were some factors affecting the invasion of Bulgaria. Once again I was pulling punches by not surrounding the city or exterminating their army before attacking because I want strong puppets. Also a significant portion of my force was redirected to another border... :)


As one capital city refused to fall, on October 29th another did.
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Tehran was full of desperately needed metal but also not really needed oil. Now our oil stockpiles are so unhelpfully large we started shipping the surplus to the German border and burning this excess stock right in front of them. Stalin lol'd. (at least this is how I imagine excess stockpiles are dealt with by the game)

Even after the loss of Tehran the Persians were not done. They (unsportingly) moved their capital to a random city in the middle of their eastern desert. They also still had numerous VPs in the south. Luckily their army had ceased to be an effective force. Now our troops were on a scenic, all expense paid, hiking vacation.
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First one to the Gulf gets a prize!

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The Persian counter attack!

As soon as war was initiated the Persians began to invade our endless expanse of empty desert. Soviet High Command neglected to do anything about it, citing better things to do, like slipping further into alcoholism. The situation will continue to be lazily monitored with bemused contempt.

As we carved up Persia VB-Day (Victory in Bulgaria) was achieved.

The defense of the city had lasted over a month, and cost thousands of Russian lives. Reprisals were arbitrary and harsh.
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Sofyia was captured and Bulgaria promptly surrendered

You go, I go, we all go, to Slavia!

Balkan states are like Pokemon. You gotta catch em all! Next on the chopping bloc was Yugoslavia. The poor saps were busily preparing for unprovoked aggression from the Axis and for their mistake they would suffer unprovoked aggression from the Comintern. This will be the first war where one of my puppets (Romania) will make a contribution (albeit a laughably small one) to the war effort.

We declared war on November 29, 1939.
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The infamous and feared Southeastern Army prepares for its next victim.

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The plan.

Just as our war in Yugoslavia is initiated we get this!
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Oh baby...

We also get these.
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Oh baby, baby!

We go through Yugoslavia like it was made out of paper mache. Note how awesome our economy is.
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God I love curb stomping weak countries.

The pitiful resistance provided by Yugoslavia and the inevitable end of our Persian hiking junket began to cause concern in Moscow. Just in case these two wars end faster than expected it was deemed prudent and entirely justifiable to start a third war. Just to be responsible.

Stockholm Syndrome:


Sweden a lefty paradise, they're practically communists already, we're just making it official.

War was Declared on December 22nd.
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Our nefarious naval landing.
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Our plan involved landing a corps of infantry (and some tanks in the second wave) outside Stockholm, while a force leftover in Murmansk marched down the coast from the north. This was complicated by the surprising and annoying existence of a Swedish navy and possession of naval aviation. We lost many convoys during the war.

I have to say these war are all very easy and seemingly positive for the USSR to do, Why don't more players do this? Is it just far too gamey, or does this put me at risk when Germany comes?

Next update, the conclusion of some wars and the initiation of even more wars.
 
I'm intrigued to see how far you can go with this. Last time I opted to start the war with the Soviets was back in 1.2 when the German AI was none too competent.

You've run up a whole load of bonuses that you usually only get late war, at which stage it doesn't really matter, so even if the Germans catch you off balance that should ensure you are well prepared.