Surrounded by Enemies (Germany 1936)

Here is the starting situation.

Germany, diplomatically:



Germany's Major Rivals:

Prewar: 1936

On January 1, some new orders go out to the German army and government.

All brigades are stripped. Everything but engineers are disbanded to save on upkeep and recover their MP. The Wehrmacht's infantry and armored formations will be universally equipped with sp-art in order to save on researching different brigades, save only for 1 engineer per 9 Infantry. Eight Paratroopers will get artillery later, but given that they won't be started for several years and I will build more of them than I have artillery brigades now, it's simpler to just add the artillery to the division in serial rather than have to retool several serials, some with art and some without, and pay upkeep in the meantime.

All of the Kriegsmarine's destroyers (which suck) are converted to convoy escorts, and Emden is scrapped. All underway naval construction is scrapped with the exception of the heavy cruiser due to complete in a few days. All submarines are scrapped.

The Kriegsmarine is organized into two fleets, 3 CA IV and 1 CL IV, and 2 BC I plus 4 CL III. I'll build two more CL IV in time for Seelowe, but those will be the only non-transport ships built for many years to come.

All infantry in Germany proper converges on the French border for re-organization and to fire the Rhineland event. These troops will form the border guard during the war, supplemented by whatever Austria builds for me.

A few basic industry researches started. Only ahead of time research at this point is '37 interceptors (which I will use exclusively, no multirole aircraft in this Germany). Research is fully funded (and always will be unless I really need IC) but most slots left empty for now. Research can ramp up later when there's more IC available and fewer ahead of time penalties. Beyond the drafted slider (which I'll change when I actually start building an army) I don't touch salaries either. In Germany soldiers get paid.

Minister of security (to manpower gain), Chief of Staff (to manpower gain) and Chief of Army (to supply saver) will be changed as better ministers become available. Other than those, current ministers will never be changed (Germany will choose no to any choices to sack German generals).

On January 2, Germany handles the starting trade deals. Deals to import rare materials, metal and oil are struck with Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the USSR. Energy is sold for money to Hungary, Portugal, and Italy.
I hate micromanaging trades so I'll probably leave these in place till war and only make new deals if I start running shortfalls. It's slightly inefficient but much easier on my patience.

On January 10, after getting things in order, production is started.
Serials of 3 IC are ordered in every German province that has any IC already.
Infrastructure builds up to 200 are ordered in in Berlin, Cologne and Oppeln (the only high IC plains provinces). I sometimes build infra in the good hills provinces, but I can't shake the suspicion that it's not worthwhile. As for resources, I would rather trade for or conquer them than build up domestic production - I only really have good energy producing provinces, anyway, and I will have enough energy to cover my IC expansion without increasing infrastructure.

With leftover IC, I start a serial of 1x8 Transport aircraft. There's not enough to fully cover production but that's okay, there is no rush right now.

Germany is running in the green on all resources, slightly in the red in money, and nearly break even in supplies.

This is all OK. I won't be using much money for any non-domestic purposes and I don't want to build up a supply stockpile just yet because if I do Franco will steal it all. Best to keep it running low till the Spanish event.

On March 1, the Jan 1 minister changes take effect, giving Germany 222 effective IC. I put up some factory builds in empty east German provinces, and start 1x99 transport flotillas. I'll run this forever, and convert any transports I end up not needing into convoys. The rest of the spare IC starts to go into building up money.

On May 1, the national idea changes kick in, bumping Germany's manpower gain up to .61 per day. Loss from aging is .41 per day according to the tooltip, but I suspect this value is overreported as it does not seem to correspond with the actual manpower gain.

On July 21, the Spanish event fires. Germany sends help to Franco, and runs out of supplies. Production is shifted, I now stockpile money and supplies in the green by taking a little more off transport aircraft production.

On October 30, I get the first round of juicy, delicious factory builds:



And that about rounds it out for significant events of 1936.

1937

1937 is always a pretty uneventful year for Germany and I didn't take any screenshots. The only major change in military production is adding 4x99 1937 interceptors. In this sort of game Britain builds a lot of strategic bombers and the Commonwealth as a whole builds hordes of fighters - I'll probably need at least 32, possibly 40 interceptor groups to be comfortable. Other than that, IC continues to build up, excess is turned into supplies and money, and von Blomberg is named chief of the army. His -15% supply consumption does not make much impact now, but once Germany starts fielding armored divisions by the dozen anything that can reduce TC load will be appreciated. The actual reduction in consumption is a bit less relevant simply because Germany will run on captured supplies for a lot of the period from late 1939 to early 1941.

1938

1938 is of course more interesting. Germany nets 30 Infantry, 1 Mountain, 1 Cavalry, and 1 HQ out of the annexation of Austria in March, as well as juicy manpower and IC and some decent stockpiles. The mountain and cavalry division are disbanded, Germany will need that manpower for better things.

A few infantry production serials and 3 Interceptors (plus one building) are also inherited from Austria in various stages of completion and gearing. These are continued for the most part so as not to lose the construction already done for me.

I started 2x4 paras sometime around this time as well, or perhaps a little earlier. I didn't note the exact date, but six paras will be ready for Poland and all eight for France.



Both the IC production runs and the serial of 8 transport aircraft finish around during July and early August, freeing up gobs of IC. It's time to gear up if Germany is to have enough troops to beat Poland, so 9x99 Infantry/SP-Art (one with engineers instead) are put into production in mid August, as well as plain SP-Art for brigading up the Austrian and German divisions and some miscellaneous minor production. The rest of the new IC is routed into supplies and money, building up further stockpiles. I'll start a 9x99 Arm/SP-Art serial later this year and the large IC requirements of such a build will mean Germany will be unable to devote IC to supplies for many months, so a good stockpile is needed until Germany can start looting others to pay its bills.

German productions:





Stalin hasn't caught on yet that IC-spamming is no longer the cool thing to do:



And neither has Roosevelt. Japan puppets China sometime late in the year, giving the USA its first set of gearings.



Meanwhile, Franco proves uninspired. The Spanish war has bogged down. Clearly these lands need more competent leadership.

1939: January-August

War year! Early in the year, with tank serials already in production, all remaining IC is shifted out of supplies, and consumer goods are massively defunded to begin funding upgrades. German stockpiles and cash reserves begin to drop precipitously. Interceptor production is halted after reaching 40 groups, and the interceptor forces are organized for war - 8 protecting the North Sea, 24 protecting the French border, and the last 8 protecting the East. Germany's 8 original Tac-Is are grounded in Breslau and set not to upgrade. They will be available for emergencies but not used otherwise; if IC becomes available they may be used in the invasion of Holland or England.
Transports and paratroopers will also be based in Breslau, where German interceptors can protect them from any ambitious Polish pilots.

The Soviets exceed 1600 effective IC. I'm getting the feeling that when war in the East comes it will be me facing a blitzkrieg. Let's hurry up those tanks...



Czechoslovakia dies uneventfully in the spring. Germany creates Slovakia and then unallies it. The Slovaks are already marked for conquest by the Reich, immediately after Poland.

By the time late August rolls around the Wehrmacht is organized and deployed for the coming war. On the eve of Danzig the Heer is deployed in three groups.

Army Group East, 73 divisions, is tasked with conquering Poland. This force contains the panzer (12 divisions) and paratrooper (6 divisions) forces. Visible on the borders are 78 Polish divisons (8 armor). The Wehrmacht estimates another thirty to forty Polish divisions are under the fog of war, armor amounts unknown.
Attached to Army Group East are eight interceptor wings, eight badly obsolete tactical bomber wings (whose only task will be recon), and eight transport wings. The Kriegsmarine, such as it is (2 battlecruisers, 5 light cruisers, 3 heavy cruisers, 20 transports), is based in Memel to avoid allied bombers and will be available for shore bombardment.

Army Group West, 55 divisions, is tasked with defending the French border. Army Group West is entirely infantry with self-propelled artillery, plus one HQ. No reliable estimates are available as to the total size of the French army although it likely significantly outnumbers the Wehrmacht both in total divisions and in armored divisions. 36 divisions are concentrated in Freiburg where the main weight of French attack is expected, while 9 divisons apiece, plus the headquarters, guard Stuttgart and Saarbrucken.
32 interceptor wings are assigned to the West to ward off an expected French and Commonwealth air onslaught.

The Konigsberg Defense Force consists of 3 unbrigaded infantry, and 1 armor division with a SP-Art brigade (shipped from Kiel in the picture). Their task is simple - delay the Polish capture of Konigsberg long enough for Poland to be annexed, so that I won't lose its IC nor have to repair it later. They face 26 Polish divisions and their task is to tie up as many of them as possible in a long defensive combat with the aid of shore bombardment from the Kriegsmarine - the second major benefit, as every division attacking Konigsberg is a division not defending Poland's VPs. Should things go badly, these divisions will be retreated onto Kriegsmarine transports.

Marshall - glad to see a reader! I hope you do - I learned a lot of my early playing of the hoi2 series from AARs

One very useful thing to know is how the AI utilizes support defence to respond to attacks by reinforcing the attacked province with divisions from adjacent provinces. Being prepared for this tactic can be very advantageous, as the Polish (and hopefully later the French) campaigns will show.


The Polish Campaign - Initial Offensives:

Three initial attacks are launched, with targets in Bydgoszcz, Czestochowa and Cracow. The attack on Cracow is a spoiling attack - Czechostowa can only be attacked from one direction which limits the German firepower that can be brought to bear, and while this attack involves the elite Panzer divisions, it might become overly costly if troops from Cracow are allowed to reinforce the battle. Germany has insufficient divisions to take Cracow, but can succeed in keeping the divisions there from reinforcing the north until the initial defenders of Czestochowa are suitably battered.
Bydgoszcz is a straightforward infantry vs infantry battle in which superior German numbers and mechanized artillery are expected to gain the victory before Poland can bring its overall larger army to bear. This battle will likely suck in the divisions in Poznan but the Konigsberg forces should distract other Polish divisions.




Several days in, the attack on Cracow is broken off as expected, as the Cracow defense draws in a stray Polish cavalry division and (more worryingly) six armored divisions, presumably from the Slovak border. It's no matter as both northern battles are won shortly after - the objective of the Cracow attack succeeds as none of the now twenty divisions in Cracow can get to Czechostowa before the 13 divisons there are routed. The armored divisions do manage to get there before German panzers do, though, and set of piecemeal battles with arriving Polish armor develops. It is much more advantageous to Germany of course to fight the Polish piecemeal than in one large battle.

Bydgoszcz is won and seized in short order, after drawing in four Polish armored divisions from Poznan and one cavalry from Torun on support defence. With eighteen Polish divisions all retreating to Lodz, and other Polish divisions in full retreat towards Radom, I make my first try at a paradrop overrun; Lodz is defended, but if my paratroopers can defeat the four Polish divisions in time, all eighteen retreating units - with German units occupying both their current and destination provinces - will be destroyed.

Radom is a bit of an experiment in what will happen if I paradrop into a retreat destination province before my troops control the original province the enemy was retreating from. As it turns out this causes the retreating units to attack the paratrooper blocking their retreat. Dangerous. However with their retreat interrupted, these six Polish armored divisions will shortly again become engaged by twelve German armor and twelve infantry from the other direction, helping the paras out and redirecting the Polish retreat to Kielce - which is well south of where the Polish Army needs to be to protect Warsaw.




Note in the second screenie that Warsaw is empty! My best guess is that the four divisions I'm dropping on in Lodz were the Warsaw garrison, and that the AI was rushing them west to try to repair its front line. In any case, leaving Elbing undefended has tempted the AI into advancing into it from Torun - leaving no troops available from Torun for immediate counterattack against a German paradrop on Warsaw. The landing in Radom will likewise prevent Polish armor from arriving in Radom and attacking the paratroopers that are shortly dispatched towards the Polish capital.

France must realize the desperate Polish situation since it begins a massive attempt to break through in the West. The 36 German defenders, however, mean there is little danger.



Note in this picture also that Konigsberg is serving its intended purpose. The twenty-one Polish divisions busy attacking here will be unable to react to the fall of Warsaw nor to exploit the small size of the forces occupying it.

Also the paradrop on Lodz - with German infantry to the north on support attack - has succeeded. 18 retreating Polish divisions will not live to fight another day.

The fall of Warsaw triggers the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, which leaves only two remaining victory point provinces - Danzig and Cracow. A spare HQ is directed to occupy undefended Danzig, while the armored spearhead swings south to attack Cracow. Whittled down to seven divisions as the rest were defeated piecemeal to the north, and now facing a forty-division German onslaught, the second battle of Cracow is much more in German favor and German light tanks are soon racing for the city.



Cracow falls on 9:00 September 10, and Poland is annexed.

Casualties so far:



Army Group East immediately begins redeploying for the invasion of Slovakia and Hungary, while the Konigsberg defenders - severely battered, but successful - are ordered to the Danish border.

Meanwhile, the French keep on pushing at Freiburg, and massive Allied heavy and medium bomber groups attempt to penetrate the German border. The Luftwaffe is ready.




September 19, German forces are in position to invade Slovakia. I open the diplomacy screen...

Oops. Forgot to cancel military access. Ahem. o

Denmark is invaded on September 24, and Slovakia (for real this time) on the 29. The Slovak war is nothing to write home about (they only had five divisions) and the Danes surrender by event once Germany occupies the border.



The French are sent packing repeatedly, with heavy casualties.



October 5, Germany declares war on Hungary.



The border is quickly overrun - this is also a fairly straightforward war. Hungary's VPs are in Budapest, Debrecen (which has already fallen to the panzers) and Pecs.

One of my own VP provinces, Kosice, has been left unguarded except for a HQ, which is a bit careless of me as it is uncertain whether the slow infantry will reach Pecs before the Hungarians reach Kosice. Fortunately, paratroopers can cover for me here.





When Pecs falls to airborne assault, Hungary surrenders on October 13, marking four nations fallen to the German war machine in barely over a month. Almost all of Hungary's armies were still in the field and nearly half were never fought by the Wehrmacht, but the lightning speed of German armored and airborne offensives overwhelmed Hungary's capacity to respond.

This will be the last offensive operation of 1939 as Yugoslavia has guarantees from Greece, Romania and Turkey which all expire Jan 1, 1940.



With Germany successful for 1939, I start eyeing France.



29 French armored divisions in Mulhouse, interesting. British expeditionary forces in France, also interesting. Germany should have a fight on its hands come spring.

Computer issues have lead to the temporary hiatus of this AAR. I have a new laptop now. (Still have the save available). I will resume after the holidays.

So, um, I didn't say which holidays, right? Right!

(Ahem.)

Well I have screenshots up through winter of 1940, and then I can see about the save. It should be good.

So the remainder of 1939 has little excitement. The French in no way give up their ambitions to break through German defenses in the West, but an incessant series of attacks across frozen ground nets them little more than lopsided battle casualties. A weaker French army in the spring will be good for Germany.





Towards the end of the year French divisions are getting to be severely attrited. Trying to fight with badly attrited divisions is a Very Bad Thing in AOD, as you can see; Germany is suffering notably fewer casualties now compared to November.





And come January, it is time for Yugoslavia. This will be a bit slow as the last Yugoslav victory point, far to the south, takes a while to reach. I don't want to drop paras on it since it is inland and they would be cut off from supply for several weeks.

You can see the Luftwaffe interceptors strafing grounded aircraft in Belgrade while paratroopers have seized Sarajevo and are battling for the Split airfield. I am generally unenthusiastic about bombing airfields, but against outdated airforces it can have its uses. In this case, because there are only two divisions in Sarajevo and they will be on their own for a while, it will be beneficial to have the Yugoslav airforce busy repairing and reorganizing till the fall of Belgrade, instead of bombing them.

The other attacks are nothing special. All German armor is in Debrecen for a heavy left flank, but the German army is superior to Yugoslavia's on all fronts.



One division quickly supports attack on Osijek (which when successful will link the paras in Sarajevo to supplies). Modifiers for multiple directions of attack mean that one division attacking from the rear adds +10% to every one of the thirty divisions attacking from the front.



Weak enemy counterattacks on Sarajevo over frozen ground are unlikely to amount to much. These could have been stronger but the forces in Belgrade are already in retreat from German panzers.



Tanks leave a few divisions to guard Belgrade while the rest drive straight for Skopje:



They arrive about the same time as the first German HQ enters Zagreb, thus securing all Yugoslavia's VPs. Though it took an unattractively lengthy twenty days, total German casualties are light.



End of campaign statistical overview:



The next planned target is the Netherlands in early March.

Mr_B0narpte said:

Hopefully the French will be able to put up some sort of a fight after taking such heavy losses attacking the Siegfried line!

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Combined with the information we got from an earlier screenshot that most of the French divisions are armored, this makes for a good observation for AOD mechanics in general, and also something that will be very pertinent for the Soviet campaign:

Armor is terrible in an extended series of battles.

This is, I think, for three reasons:

-First, armor suffers high casualties in combat. In AOD, the harder a unit is, the more strength damage it suffers in combat, generally speaking, with tanks, as the most armored unit of all, suffering the highest casualties of all.
-Second, reinforcement time is based on construction time for the division, so tanks refill lost strength much more slowly than soft units.
-Third, units fighting while below peak strength leads to even more lopsided attritional casualties due to AOD's combat model in which it is the division count, not the actual number of soldiers, that determines stacking penalties.

The French are pretty clearly suffering from all three problems. Tanks suffer higher casualties to begin with, then they reinforce so slowly that they are still understrength by the next attack, and then this leads to even more casualties.

Meanwhile, the German defensive line, which is solely infantry with not an armored division to be seen, is acquitting itself superbly.

Pang Bingxun said:

Clearly Armour is designed to suffer the lowest casulties of all unit types.

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But it doesn't.

Do units of low softness suffer a higher strenght loss to org loss ratio than soft units? There is some evidence towards that, Arm and Mech are physically annilihated much more often than soft like infantry, but is this also true if compared to soft commando units? Being physically annilihated might just be the result of slow reinforcements. Imo there is no clear evidence to suggest armour in general suffers a higher strenght loss to org loss ratio than soft units.

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I believe that a hard attack hitting a hard unit deals double Str damage (with the baseline 1x being a soft attack hitting a soft unit). I am not 100% certain of the 2x, but I am certain it is increased.

This is somewhat offset by
a) there is less overall manpower in the division, so a point of str loss is a bit less of a manpower loss than a point of str loss in an infantry division (However, this is not a huge deal - 9 vs 12 manpower, brigaded)
much more significantly,
b) early to mid game foes tend to have few to very few hard attacks.

However, per attack, hard attacks definitely deal more strength damage to hard divisions than soft attacks deal to soft divisions.

Put two late game armored divisions against each other and you'll see that their battle deals a lot more str damage than two late game infantry divisions fighting each other.

In any case, the upshot is that if you can prevent yourself from being overrun and the like with armored speed, armor can't win attrition battles. If you intend to fight a war of attrition against a superior foe, armor is not your friend.

*glances east*

Adolphin said:

Imo, you should have annexed Luxemburg at day one. Would have given you some nice free IC for three years at the cost of having to defend an additional province against France.
With an AI that's got such a huge IC and manpower bonus, you will need to play as gamey as possible.

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IC isn't as valuable to Germany in this scenario as manpower, and Luxemburg doesn't have enough manpower to repay what I'd lose defending it 1939-1940.

A navy and bombers are the high-IC low-manpower items, and I haven't built either. If I can successfully Seelowe Britain I won't need to spend much IC constantly repairing my fighters either.

Carmanor said:

Soviet's IC point is exaggerated.

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I actually can't play the save right now - problems with AOD overall, not this game in particular - but IIRC by the time I'd played up to I think they were over 2000 effective.