The Plan
The Plan
The following is a discussion of my current thoughts on further operations. I have actually played through to the end of November but the slow pace of operations means that this has very little impact on the future flow of operations. The immediate future remains clear but longer term plans need to be thought about and decided.
Progress to the end of October has successfully secured our position in Europe with all land threats having been eliminated. This means that the short-term plan is coming to a close and it is time to decide where to next. There are some obvious steps to complete the establishment of the security perimeter on stronger positions.
The red arrows indicate ongoing operations and the blue arrows indicate the proposed next stage. This principally consists of the conquest of North Africa via amphibious operations and the conquest of the Middle East.
The proposed North African campaign has little to be said about it. I don’t know how strong the enemy is but I suspect they will be relatively modest. I intend to secure the whole coast from Casablanca to the Suez Canal and proceed inland. Small probes will be sent through the Sahara and stronger forces will proceed south on both east and west flanks. The longer-term goal will be to secure the whole of West Africa (ie advance round to Nigeria) eliminating all Allied air and naval bases. This will give much better access to the central Atlantic and the opportunity to pursue operations against allied naval forces in that theatre. This seems a little safer than the north Atlantic. On the east coast I want to work my way down through Ethiopia to Kenya. This will allow Italy to be annexed and provide air and naval bases for India Ocean operations.
I have strong suspicions that I will ultimately encounter very significant numbers of enemy forces in Africa and therefore the whole campaign will be a bit hit and miss. I would like to secure the objectives above but may find myself with insufficient force. Gauging the right strength to commit is going to be all but impossible.
In the Middle East I intend to secure a line across southern Lebanon and Syria and then move up all available forces. This will take a while, as Turkey has not been fully subdued. Meanwhile Persia should be annexed and all units in the eastern part of the theatre will move up to southern Iraq. Once I have the western forces fully concentrated I intend a wide flanking movement around Iraq and conquering the Arabian Peninsula. This operation should end with all forces converging on southern Iraq to eliminate the huge allied forces located there. I will be making maximum use of converging attacks to gain the best combat bonus possible and also will make sure that the final attacks all go in together so that I only have to fight each sub-force only once. This is a critical element of dealing with this sort of enemy concentration. You must use maximum available force and once started complete the operation as quickly as possible to minimise the total fighting required.
Planned operations around the Mediterranean are the easy part of this situation. The longer-term issue is what to do on my eastern frontiers. In the north I am faced by a resurgent Russia that still has a very large army. In fact it is unlikely that engaging the Russians will involve smaller Russian forces than those engaged during the main Russian campaign. This makes this the key theatre where I must decide what to do. The current position is a line of very weak German forces plus significant quantities of air power all based behind the line of the Volga (behind the green line). I am building up airbase capacity in the Volga bend from Stalingrad northwards. This puts me in the position of being very unhappy to allow the Russians to cross, as I will then lose my airbases.
However, as you must have all realised by now I don’t like wasting troops on defence. Any troops assigned a purely defensive mission and inactive troops that are not contributing towards victory. This means that a focus on the Russian front should be treated as an offensive task and very large forces committed. This will mean Russia becomes the focus of army operations with only secondary forces elsewhere. Unfortunately given the time of year the Russians will compel me to address the issue before summer and hence end up with a supposed winter offensive against them. This is also not good.
The alternative would be my traditional defence with space. This means abandoning the Volga line when required and simply retreat from the Russians until summer comes. I can then launch a counter-offensive and fight them in the eastern Russian lands west of the Urals. This has some benefits in terms of better terrain for fighting them but obviously involves more risk.
Moving south we should at least give some consideration to the Persian front. The normal next operation in this theatre would be an invasion of British India. With global war this would be heavily exposed to attack from the north with both Russia and Afghanistan threatening communications through Persia. Obviously a major naval commitment would make this much more secure but this still seems like a bad idea before considering the difficulties of competition for resources. The defence of India is likely to be extremely strong since the whole of Asia is in the allied camp. The invasion of India is therefore definitely off for now.
An alternative operation here would be an invasion into the Russian lands. This has similar risks to invading India since it would have heavy allied presence on its eastern flank. The general conclusion is that the Persian front should be brought to a static status and I believe this can be best achieved by forming a line through the Persian mountains between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. This is clearly the shortest and strongest defence line and can be defended by a reasonable scale of forces. Taking just infantry modifiers my current modifiers are +25% defence and –50% attack. Assuming the enemy has similar modifiers these mountains should be defendable against a much larger enemy force. In fact the enemy would probably need an overall force ratio of at least 3:1 in the theatre if competently led and would still suffer very heavy casualties in the process. As it is I see no reason why I cannot defend successfully at odds of about 5:1. This will allow this front to be held static by relatively modest forces.
As a side note, the allied obsession with Basrah is likely to persist after I have eliminated the current occupants and therefore I will need significant coastal garrisons in the immediate vicinity.
The longer-term plan
Ultimately I do not have sufficient forces to pursue more than one major campaign at one time. In the absence of other short-term opportunities it seems I will be forced down a redeployment of forces to Russia and commencement of an offensive there. In truth the only major question is when and at what rate I increase forces along the Volga. I could select the completion of the Middle East campaign as a cut off and send everything to Russia for immediate operations on arrival or forces could be sent a bit at a time. This would allow early commitments to successfully defend the Volga line and offensive operations to commence later when further forces arrive.
Amongst all this we must remember the issue of org depletion. Even our ground forces are badly depleted and many divisions will need significant rest periods somewhere and sometime before they are ready for major offensive operations.
Naval and Air-Naval operations
With the completion of the operations in the Middle East and North Africa I should no longer need a major commitment in the Mediterranean. This will not be realised immediately as there is likely to be a period of cleaning up but once this is done forces can be released to operate elsewhere. There is however one question which is what to do about all the Mediterranean islands. My amphibious technology is very poor and these islands appear to mostly be very strongly held. There is a temptation to leave them to rot and pick them up once supply deprivation has taken its toll. On the other hand they represent a continuing threat of air operations and a refuge for enemy naval forces. This means that ignoring them will result in a continuing commitment of air and naval forces to mask the risk.
In other areas I will need to build up a major air-naval base in Oman once it is captured. This forms an ideal safe location for a base to dominate the northern Indian Ocean. Given the long distance back to Alexandria it may be well worth building it up as a naval base. The traditional base in this area is Karachi which is going to be unavailable to me for a considerable time. As such I think a bit of naval base building might be a good plan. To supplement this I will be building a major presence in the horn of Africa. This development is somewhat further off but I suspect the Indian Ocean will be a theatre of major naval action for a significant period.
In the central Atlantic Lisbon and Gibraltar will remain my main naval bases although I may build up Dakar as a base for operations against South America. Such operations remain a long way off but air bases along the African coast will extend the naval attrition zone.
The main area for air-naval operations will remain Western Europe where constant air patrols are essential to keep the allies at bay.
