Overview: an historical AoD1.08 single Russian player (SOV), 1936 campaign. SOV will be kept militarily weak pre-war. Role play limited to non-existent. My first AAR.
Inspired by Marshall18’s stirring efforts with his first AAR (GER). Having to disband the navy to reinforce the army following significant losses on the eastern front was a highlight (perhaps one to be forgotten).
Motivation from Mr_B0narpte, he suggested tackling an AAR.
The Setup:
Game Settings
Normal AI aggressiveness
Full IC Takeover OFF
Tech Team Takeover OFF
Historical Leaders Death OFF
Historical Events Outcome ON
Democracies can start war OFF
Customised VH difficulty: Blue Emu tradition, only a few variables are changed.
All AI nations:
Industry (IC) +60%
Resources +50%
Manpower +120%
No additional benefits for the human player apart from normal flat difficulty settings and one’s advance knowledge of history. Difficulty is probably close to, but still less than, a normal hard setting.
The AI wastes its manpower, so needs a lot. Industry & Resources will enable the AI to do more. I wanted to create a slight resource shortage hence the lower resource percentage. This will benefit the USA, the only major nation with across the board resource surpluses.
Other Customisation:
Added two events
GER DOW USA if JAP at war with both ENG & USA
USA joins allies if USA & ENG both at war with either JAP or GER
Modified USA gearing up events 56, 57, 58 to give AI USA +3 standing army slider moves per event. Default settings are –1 move to drafted army, plus two –1’s commented out (ie does not move). I want the USA military to have the higher organisation & lower upgrade costs provided by full standing army.
Jan 1936:
+1 slider move towards full hawk
no minister changes
All eight research slots assigned and an attempt will be made to fully fund these.
The 8 interceptors are disbanded. This could be a mistake, but earlier in the forum I proposed that SOV only needs fighters, so I’m being true to my word.
The ageing navy is disbanded, Russia’s survival will determined on land, not at sea.
The 5 cavalry are disbanded, the rest of the army is retained.
The Pang Bingxun doctrine of infrastructure will be strictly adhered to. Major infrastructure builds in many key provinces (qty 19), the rest on IC builds (qty 10), with one round of garrisons started. Infrastructure for a couple of provinces start at 2x, these will drop back to 1x once fully geared.
This is about double the difficulty that I have tried previously. The garrison line is also new. So I will be interested to see how things go.
Plan is to reduce the 15% dissent, then change Culture to conformist work ethic to obtain +5% IC even though this comes with –5% manpower. Defensive world view has +10% manpower so offsets this. Propose two slider moves (or a little more) per year to move towards standing army.
Dialog:
After five years of lobbying Stalin to trust me, he has agreed to take extended leave. I will be in charge, and under orders to keep the Soviet army as weak as possible. It took a great deal of persuasion to convince Stalin to allow a small expansion of the army. Once I said that the primary purpose of these new units is too suppress the Soviet people and to spy on the army from within, Stalin gave a wry smile and said “excellent, carry on”. Stalin's train on its way to who knows where.
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