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robw963

How it Feels to be Something On
41 Badges
Oct 26, 2004
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presenting:

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AMERICA Saves the World
USA AAR HOI3 FtM 3.05

"Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will...
It is the most humane, the most advanced, and, in the end, the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history...We...would rather die on our feet than live on our knees."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Third Inauguration Speech, January 20, 1941

INTRODUCTION:
I have never played the USA in HOI3 so this AAR will serve to change that. The twist here is that I'm loading a savegame played as Germany up to December 1, 1941. I'll play using the forces built by the AI and will, of course, be building new units based on a defined set of priorities. The Difficulty setting is Very Hard. There will be no modifications used other than graphical ones. I'll follow a roughly historical timeline. To tell this story, I'll post updates in 1-3 month gametime increments (approximately). Since this AAR will be graphically intensive, updates may not come quickly. However, slowly but surely I intend to demonstrate how AMERICA Saves the World.
 
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STATE OF THE WORLD:
I started the ROAD TO WAR Campaign playing as Germany starting January 1, 1936. My main priority while playing Germany was to defeat the Soviet Union before the end of 1941. I accomplished this by November 1941. In the time leading up to the launch of Barbarossa, Germany conquered nearly all of Europe in roughly the following order:

POLAND - surrendered in August 1939
DENMARK - surrendered in September 1939
HUNGARY - surrendered in October 1939
YUGOSLAVIA & ROMANIA - surrendered in December 1939
GREECE (shared with ITALY) - surrendered in January 1940
TURKEY - surrenderd in February 1940
FRANCE - surrendered in May 1940
USSR - Barbarossa launch May 1941 - USSR surrendered November 1941 (Drang Nach Osten)

The campaign in the east vs. the Soviet Union was aided with an invasion of the Caucauses from eastern Turkey. This combined with vast encirclements of Soviet forces near Kiew in the invasion's initial stages along with amphibious landings near Riga left the Russians reeling. The high org'd, high moraled, fast-moving Wehrmacht rolled eastwards relentlessly swallowing many retreating Russians formations as it went. Winter never played a signficant role in the campaign. Finland joined the cause and regained all of its losses from the Winter War.

At the conclusion of the Eastern campaign, the USA declared war on Germany. I built a significant German U-Boat fleet which was used to harass Allied convoys in the North Atlantic with good success. Also built were advanced versions of BB's Bismarck and Tirpitz. A solid research foundation was laid to allow Germany to build a signficant Kriegsmarine surface fleet (although I'm skeptical an AI run Germany will know what to do with it). Germany's army is vast with nearly 1400 brigades. I used the EARLY MECH RUSH approach and built 8 Corps of Mechanized Infantry based combined arms formations (x2 Mech Inf brig + x2 TD brig) in addition to scores of binary based infantry divisions with artillery support (x2 Inf brig + x2 Artillery brig). No armor other than existing Lt. Armor formations and Tank Destroyers were built. The Luftwaffe is strong and predominantly interceptor based with a healthy smattering of TACS, CAS and Multi-role fighters. Having joined the AXIS, Italy responded to Germany's Call to Arms at the outset of the FRANCE campaign. Italy swept aside the British in Egypt taking the Suez Canal and pressed eastward all the way into Iraq. Otherwise, the British Empire is intact. The Italians lost a signficant portion of their fleet to the British during a series of battles in the Mediterranean but seem to be managing their supply lines to North Africa adequately.

In the meantime, Japan has conquered sizeable portions of China, but their offensive has begun to sputter. I suspect Japan is experiencing supply problems. This slowup has allowed the Philippines, Dutch Indies and many South Pacific islands to remain free of Japanese aggression...so far. No American territory has been invaded by Japan. I expect that to change soon.

I start the game as the USA at war with all Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, et al). The key will be to re-organize American forces into better, more combat ready formations and determine the best distribution of forces between the European theatre and the Pacific theatre. During this re-organization process, I'll avoid combat as best as possible.


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Sounds fun! Count me in!
 
Overviews

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US ECONOMY:
The American economy is in great shape. We have plenty of metal, rares, energy and oil. The techs associated with resource efficiency are high enough to not worry about enhancing them further at least in the near term. We possess or have access to (via Allies) all strategic resources available with the exception of Heavy Water. This will be a useful resources for nuclear research so I'll look for opportunities to acquire it. My dependence on several key strategic resources (Rubber, Anti-biotics and Chinona for example) will necessitate establishing naval supremacy and a strong ASW capability to protect these advantages.

American Industrial Capacity is huge but I will be implementing some policy changes to make it even larger to support the armed forces massive buildup I have planned. I believe I have more than enough resources to support this expansion, although I'll keep an eye on it.

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GOVERNMENT POLICIES:
I'm willing to push the population towards greater sacrifice and will be shifting our production capacity from consumer goods towards war materials. The Draft will also be implemented to address our current manpower shortage. These are necessary measures to address the most serious National Crisis since the Civil War.

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ARMED FORCES:
I've inherited a relatively imbalanced military from the AI. For example, there are 40 armored brigades organized into Armored divisions with no combined arms bonus (x2 Arm brig + x1 TD brig). US armor is numerous but relatively weak, so I'll be working to improve that. One of my highest priorities will be to reorganize these divisions by completing Mechanized Inf research and adding Mech Inf brigades with the goal of attaining the combined arms bonus. I'll also expand the Marine Corps since I can expect a need for amphibious invasions in both the European and Pacific theatres. Adding paratroopers will likely be useful as well.

The Navy is large and reasonably modern with 15 Aircraft Carriers but there is a dire shortage of Carrier Air Group aircraft and screening vessels to protect my capital ships. I'm going to focus on building CAGs and modern Light Cruisers to leverage the existing fleet. My Battleships are somewhat out of date so I may shift some effort to creating a newer generation of Battleships to ensure naval supremacy and to better support amphibious operations.

The Air Corps is an odd mix of all aircraft types. CAGs will be my number one priority. Researching better CAGs will have the additional benefit of improving the fighting capability (and range) of my interceptors and fighters. Strategic bombers will be useful but I'll likely not invest too much more effort into research in that area in the near term. I will, though, build more Strategic Bombers which will be especially useful versus Nazi occupied Europe. It's worth mentioning that when I controlled Germany (before Dec 1, '41), I expanded Industrial Capacity significantly by constructing 50 new factories in the early stages of the game.

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RESEARCH:
Based on the priorities I've outlined above, I'll be focusing on the following:
• Improved Armor
• Mechanized Infantry
• Lt. Cruisers
• Modern Battleships
• CAGs...a LOT more CAGs
• Nuclear Research

I'm choosing to prioritize Research over Espionage, Diplomacy and Officer training in these initial stages. This research push will taper down over time. The closer I get to a big offensive push, the more I'll shift leadership distribution towards officer recruitment. I will, though, ensure uninterrupted effort be made towards nuclear technologies until I achieve my goal of an atomic bomb.


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Those pictures, my god, so beautiful. Can I have your everything? Please?
 
GREAT presentation and an interesting concept which should make the game more challenging than typical USA games. Subscribed.

BTW if BB techs don't affect shore bombardment, you don't really need modern battleships.
 
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subscribes, love the details and pic's
 
Amercia F*** YEAH!...
...Gonna' save the Motherf***ing day YEAH!


Very good and interesting presentation you got going on there. It will be interesting to see how you take the fight to the Axis powers. Still I've always thought the US is just too powerful with IC such that it is never really much of a challenge. It's very difficult to ever be threatened. Thus making the game a bit of a cakewalk...even if it is on V.H. difficulty.
 
Thank you to all for following. I hope to continue to entertain and have fun while I'm doing it.

@Cybvep regarding the need for modern Battleships. There is no real need here per se...it's more of a want. It's the American way! I'm on the verge of having more than 1,000 IC and will likely be straining to find things to build rather than needing to make hard choices. I'm a big fan of the Iowa class battleship design and want to have them included in my game...particularly the USS Missouri aka The Right Hand of Freedom.
 
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I'll be following this, was a great fan of your polish AAR and the onset of this AAR seems awesome!
 
So I'm working on the next installment (currently looking like it'll be ready to post this weekend) and I'm just amazed at how much IC the US has to work with. This is way out of my normal HOI experience where I'm typically trying to squeeze blood from a rock with smaller nations. As Gensui Yamamoto mentioned above, playing the USA feels like it can take some of the challenge out of the game. On the other hand, I think it's a reasonably accurate representation of the scale of the US economy in the World War 2 era. The fact is, the US did produce absurd amounts of stuff. This chart (from the wiki) represents the GDP of all major combatants in the war. In some years, the US GDP total rivals the total of all other nations combined. Maybe not as challenging to play...but still epic!
 
You should try to make some goals for your self. Like not only defeating the axis but also any commie nations so that all nations of the world are democratic and capitalistic. Perhaps using the new nations mod, never used it my self so I don't know how robust it is and I've only seen in on HOI2 AARs/
 
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You should try to make some goals for your self. Like not only defeating the axis but also any commie nations so that all nations off the world are democratic and capitalistic.

oh for sure...I'll be making goals and all kinds of charts (and what-not) to communicate them. Not so sure the commies would make much of challenging goal though, since they just had their butts handed to them by the Nazis.