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Avindian

People's Commissar of the Navy
120 Badges
Jan 3, 2010
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I find myself with extra time coming up, and only having two concurrent AARs feels like cheating, so here I am, with another Vicky 2 AAR, my first HOD AAR! This AAR will follow in the tradition of Sons of Kyiv and Reliving the Restoration. I am not an expert (by any means) at HOD, but I do hope that people learn something as they read!

I am assuming that readAARs have familiarity with both vanilla and AHD; I will focus on explaining new concepts and new strategies. Feel free to take a look at the other two AARs if you're stuck, and if all else fails, ask!

For this particular AAR, I have chosen the United Kingdom. My specific objective is to use the Royal Navy to exercise British power around the world, both in peace and in war. This AAR will have the following house rules:

1. No cheating.
2. No reloading.
3. No save editing.
4. British troops may not leave their continent of origin. (For our purposes, the Pacific counts as part of Asia, so I can move troops from India to Australia but not Ireland.)
5. Naval maintenance must never fall below 80%.
6. I am free to colonize as much as I like, but I must use dominions to hold all territory not historically British wherever possible.
7. If a country was historically a dominion in the British Empire, I must also create it, but I am not required to do so when it happened historically. (I will make every effort to not overextend myself).
8. No annexations of civilized territory unless I have cores or it was historically British.
9. I cannot change political parties if there has been an election for two years.

My goals:

1. Recreate the historical British Empire.
2. Attempt to keep a balance of power in Europe and prevent a Great War.
3. Build the Suez Canal.
4. Remain #1 throughout the game.
5. [Ultra-insane goal] -- Restore the United States to the British Empire. (Not very likely, but hey, who knows?)

The first pre-pause update will come early next week. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!
 
I am following! Don't forget to make an entry in my tutorial Megatread with this AAR!
 
British AARs are a rarity. Count me in!
 
always nice to see another Avindian AAR good luck fighting the USA with your rule about brigades it will be very tought trust me i know, but the earlier in the game you fight them the more likely you are to win in the late game their population explodes which makes them difficult to fight again good luck.
 
Yeah, like spiller68 said, the US will be tough without brining in troops for Europe! Good luck!
 
I certainly cannot go past an Avindian AAR and this will almost certainly help me learn the intricacies of Vic2/HOD. Consider me subscribed.
One question though, how arbitrary is house rule #4? Would Indian troops have to stop at the Bosporus if you were involved in a war with the Ottomans or the Urals if you fighting Russia?
 
I am following! Don't forget to make an entry in my tutorial Megatread with this AAR!

Give me a link and I will. :)

I'm following! It would be pretty awesome to see USA back in British empire but it is kinda hard if you can't get units from India or Europe.

British AARs are a rarity. Count me in!

always nice to see another Avindian AAR good luck fighting the USA with your rule about brigades it will be very tought trust me i know, but the earlier in the game you fight them the more likely you are to win in the late game their population explodes which makes them difficult to fight again good luck.

Looking forward to the AAR.

Yeah, like spiller68 said, the US will be tough without brining in troops for Europe! Good luck!

I certainly cannot go past an Avindian AAR and this will almost certainly help me learn the intricacies of Vic2/HOD. Consider me subscribed.
One question though, how arbitrary is house rule #4? Would Indian troops have to stop at the Bosporus if you were involved in a war with the Ottomans or the Urals if you fighting Russia?

Thanks everyone for the kind words! For the purposes of #4, I'm treating all of Turkey as "Europe" and Russia up to the Urals. I will be very strict about this. (At some point I'll draw a map to show what I mean).

Re: the USA -- it's not something I'm seriously considering, but more an end game "I've done everything else, why not do that?" sort of thing, and I'd probably relax rule #4 for this and only this purpose.

Pre-pause update will be up tomorrow! I'm going to try to include a delineated map of "continents" and play around some with the battlemap tool for my first war.
 
If I knew how to subscribe I would, but excited anway.
 
Subscribed! Looking forward to following one of your AARs from the beginning for the first time!

If I knew how to subscribe I would, but excited anway.

You just did. :)


Omg another Avindian aar. Uk too.

Usa is easy to conquer if you take New York during acw

Thanks to everybody for the very kind words! Tonight's update should be up later on; I have to make a couple of quick changes and edit a couple more screenshots. I hope to update at least twice a week, if possible.
 
"maintain balance of power and prevent great war".

Yeah, because that worked so well RL :p

I'm not good at V2, so I will definitely be hoping to learn some stuff (especially the economic stuff, I always feel like I succeed by accident instead of by design).
 
"maintain balance of power and prevent great war".

Yeah, because that worked so well RL :p

I'm not good at V2, so I will definitely be hoping to learn some stuff (especially the economic stuff, I always feel like I succeed by accident instead of by design).

Delighted to have you along!

A minor note: I went and updated to 3.03 this afternoon. Update is coming shortly!
 
Prologue

My very first decision, as soon as I boot up the game, is to pass Webster-Ashburton.

webstertreaty.jpg


If you're new to V2, it gives a tiny slice of Maine to the USA in exchange for improved relations with the US, prestige, and a little bit of infamy reduction. I'm doing this primarily because, barring a miracle, I will almost certainly not have the troops to go after the USA from Canada (and I can't send reinforcements to the New World; I have to build them there!) and I'd like to keep the US friendly.

Speaking of friendly countries, I get two alliance offers:

belgiumalliance.jpg


The other is Greece. The UK has historically insisted upon either a friendly or neutral Belgium, and I see no recent not to duplicate that. Ditto for Greece. Makes sense geopolitically, don't you think? Here's my production screen:

productionf.jpg


We've got everything a growing Empire needs. Oil and rubber will come later, and precious metal will be rectified soon enough. My early budget:

budgetscreen.jpg


One of the changes in HOD is that the budget screen is a little bit more accurate right from the start, so you get a better idea of how changes you make will affect your economy in the short term. It looks like I'll be losing a little money for now, which is fine for the short term. I want to give the game a few days to see how things change.

Despite my short term currency shortfall, I'm electing to go with Medicine first, to help with colonization.

medicined.jpg


We'll talk more about colonization a little bit later on. Here's the politics screen:

politicsandreforms.jpg


I don't have any big plans for reforms at the moment, but I do like the comforting shade of blue in my voters pie -- I may decide to hold early elections when I start playing, once I can see how temporary the shortfall in budget is. My two NFs:

nfslu.jpg


I always tend to emphasize clergy over bureaucrats early on, although I understand that most players use bureaucrats first. Increased bureaucrats reduces crime, which has a number of beneficial effects. For the moment, I want to emphasize getting my literacy and RPs up. It's mostly a matter of play style -- I'm hardly a min-maxer. :) Diplomacy!

diplomacyd.jpg


Not having tea is pretty much a crime in the UK, right? ;) Seriously, Japan is a useful ally in the Pacific, and as two largely island nations in a continental world, I've got sympathy for them. Egypt is mostly for the canal; I may influence other countries later, but I will definitely leave the South African minors alone so I can annex them later.

So, colonizing, right?

colonizing.jpg


HOD includes colonial points that you gain from the overall size of your fleet, the composition of your fleet, and your techs. The first stage of colonization (pictured here) costs 80 points (if you neighbor the region) or 100 (if you don't). If you complete the first stage with no competition, you automatically move on to the next stage. For now, I'm going to colonize the two Canadian provinces and leave Washington alone -- the last thing I want is US cores on my territory.

I make some early changes to my army and navy. First, the navy:

consolidatingthefleet.jpg


As you can see, I've drastically consolidated my existing fleet. This way, it'll take fewer admirals and it's easier to manage. Protip: I find it immensely helpful to uncheck "auto-assign leaders", as otherwise the game will usually put good generals where you don't actually care. The navy has undergone a lot of changes for HOD -- we'll get into them later. But for now, let's talk about our army.

newstuffforhod.jpg


The two boxed areas are recon efficiency (the binoculars) and siege efficiency (the castle). You want both of these to be as high as possible, as recon improves occupation and helps neutralize dig-in, while siege efficiency helps you shut down those pesky enemy forts. Now, my first target doesn't have much in the way of forts, so I'll emphasize recon.

thepowerofhussars.jpg


Cavalry, Hussars, Dragoons, and Cuirassiers have all been reworked. Hussars are the best fit for my strategy since I'm most interested in recon. Hussars now have a maneuver of 4, which means they can get all the way into the enemy rear when the line is broken. Pretty cool, huh? In a later update, we'll cover the other cavalry units.

Here is my first opponent!

justifywar.jpg


This is my super-secret battle plan.

ultrasecretplan.jpg


I'm going to send the infantry/cavalry army where the horse icon is, and use roughly equal amounts of pure infantry stacks to attack from the other two parts of my territory. It's not super genius, but then, it's Johore. :)

Here's my rough demarcation line between "Europe" and "Asia".

continentalline.jpg


And finally, a world map and a map of the Empire.

v2mapeng1836111.jpg


v2mapeng1836112.jpg


That's it for now -- I'm going to start updating seriously later on this week, after I get a chance to play. Until then, if you have questions, let me know!