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A Kinder, Gentler Germany: Avoiding War for Fun and Profit.

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jju_57 said:
SM, great AAR really enjoyed reading it. One question. You mentioned that if this was on VH mode you never would have gotten out of Poland. Would the combat malus really have that much impact on your units? I was thinking of trying something like this except on VH mode.
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Not the combat malus; the supply malus.

Even with letting Poland fall to the Soviets so I could use my better technology, a test run I conducted resulted in hopelessly snared logistics an a lack of fuel long before we even got within sight of Moscow.

I haven't tried sitting Poland on defense for a year or two building up a more logistically efficient force or a ton of suppression to keep lines open, but I suspect that it might not help. Still, it's worth a try. Even on VH, you should be able to defend Poland indefinitely as long as you keep air superiority. And if you have STR around like I do, on VH you can just bomb Soviet logistics for two years while you get a logistics friendly force in place for an offensive.

An Axis Poland is a friendly Poland with no partisans if you let the Soviets turn them GiE. :)
 
I have a few more questions. Did you influence any countries or does the coutnry move enough toward you as long as your keep supporting our party? How did you handle Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Hungary, Greece and Nat Spain? Do you place a guarantee on Poland and other countries?

Also, what were some of the threat levels against the UK by years? This is a really cool idea and puts new life into the game.

As for VH I modify the impact. I like the combat malus but think the supply one is full of it. I reduce the supply malus to just 5% land and 10% port. I still keep the AI bonus but reduce the global IC and resources for them. Too much IC and they actually play worse since they have no MP left. And a big bonus to global resources for the AI makes it too easy to get them in trades. So in other words my VH mode is a tough combat malus, a very slight supply malus, limited human IC and resources and only a 5-10% increase in AI IC and resources.
 
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Secret Master said:
An Axis Poland is a friendly Poland with no partisans if you let the Soviets turn them GiE. :)
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Better yet is a totally conquered non-aligned Poland, after the Allied faction is exterminated.

Note: The following is played on Hard.

I am currently playing a German game in which I followed most of your strategy. I occupied the Rhine, as its benefits outweigh the small neutrality reduction in Britain - it has a bigger effect on France. I have a stronger navy, as I built two runs of two CVLs after my IC runs to build up practical, and built two runs of six CVs (@ '38 and '40 techs). I also built a number of divisions, so I think I had a larger army when the British DOWed in June'42. I kept tanks and infantry, so I have had to spend leadership on more research areas. I annexed Austria after the British DoW.

I let my two fleets of 6 CV+6 CL rip the RN and French fleets for several moths, as I fought an air war over France. Then I went with a Britain first strategy and was happily occupying Britain in November'42 when I noticed that France had invaded northern Italy. I discovered that Il Duce sent most of his army to North Africa, so I had to send my tank army and one mountain army to save Northern Italy, while one Panzergrenadier Korps and one Marine korps invaded from Normandy, like you did. I ended up defeating France, and cleaned up Britain. Then my eight Marine divisions and my lone motorized infantry division hopped from Gibraltar to Malta to Egypt to Iraq & Oman to the two 5 VP provinces in India. In the end, I needed to take Singapore too, and Britain went GIE. Then I had to puppet Nepal and Bhutan while Italy puppeted Yemen for me.

France (GiE) was kicked out of the Allies, and the Allies faction was dissolved.

While all of this was happening, Stalin went after Poland, but botched the invasion. Some 15 Polish infantry brigades put up a brave defense of Warsaw for over a year, and the Red Army positioned several super stacks in Poland, mostly around Warsaw. I finally DoW'ed the Red Menace on April 1st, 1944. I ended up doing a huge strategic encirclement, destroying nearly 100 divisions in a big pocket. Now I need to finish conquering Poland and building up my infrastructure while I fight - and hopefully destroy the remaining 1100 or so Soviet brigades.
 
jju_57 said:
I have a few more questions. Did you influence any countries or does the coutnry move enough toward you as long as your keep supporting our party? How did you handle Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Hungary, Greece and Nat Spain? Do you place a guarantee on Poland and other countries?

Also, what were some of the threat levels against the UK by years? This is a really cool idea and puts new life into the game.

As for VH I modify the impact. I like the combat malus but think the supply one is full of it. I reduce the supply malus to just 5% land and 10% port. I still keep the AI bonus but reduce the global IC and resources for them. Too much IC and they actually play worse since they have no MP left. And a big bonus to global resources for the AI makes it too easy to get them in trades. So in other words my VH mode is a tough combat malus, a very slight supply malus, limited human IC and resources and only a 5-10% increase in AI IC and resources.
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The minors that got into the Axis were influenced largely by threat and ideological similarity. When I supported my party, I got all of those nations (except the Netherlands) to have fascists elected in 1940. After that, I stopped running Support Our Party. Then I just sat around for 3 years and let them drift to me. I had some trade going with caused relations-based drift as well. Romania joined via event like they always do, and Blugaria wanted to join, but couldn't because of threat being too low.

The UK DOW jacked up their threat and started pushing everyone towards me. I didn't really spend that much on influence except for the USA, since they were already sitting so close to that corner. And that was just a little bit until drift did the rest of the work for me.

@anweRU: Are the Soviets dug in like ticks or what in Poland? And you aren't affected by nationalism are you, as a "liberator"?
 
Secret Master said:
@anweRU: Are the Soviets dug in like ticks or what in Poland? And you aren't affected by nationalism are you, as a "liberator"?
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I actually declared war on Poland a couple of months before I declared on the USSR, to see if the Allied faction would be resurrected. I forgot to reload after the experiment, so I ended up being at war with two non-aligned countries (France, Poland) and the Comintern, which is composed of the USSR & Mongolia, as Tannu Tuva was annexed by Uncle Joe.
 
This is way fun to play. I'm in January 1941 and my threat level is 32.4 to the UK. SM once again thanks for posting the AAR as it really did put new life into the game for me. After I finish this play on normal I'm going to try VH mode. I did notice one wierd thing. For some countries like Czech and I think Belgium they have facist or nat socialsim ministers but the leader is still blue colored. Is this normal? Is this because in Belgium they have a monarchy and you can't change the leader?
 
It would just mean they appointed those ministers. Probably to try and avoid a fractured gov't. Perhaps because the LUA files tell them to, and maybe because they are the best available minister.
 
Sometimes, certain countries are able to appoint ministers of weird ideologies. Republican Spain has some red ministers, for example, despite not having a red government. Some Eastern European regimes have a variety of ministers for posts that are not the ideology of the ruling party.
 
Well early in 1940 all ministers were blue. Then in December 1940 all were grey to black except the leader for those two countries. Since one of the governments was a monarchy (Belgium?) I thought that maybe the king stays but the rest changes. These second spot (Hess's spot) changed from blue and that is one that I can't change.
 
great job.
i am inspired to try something similar for myself

one question, you mention that your STR bombers did nothing after the fall of FRance and that it might have been better if they had been TRA, would you have had enough TAC to do the same damage to France if you had no STR bombers?
 
lastmantodie said:
great job.
i am inspired to try something similar for myself

one question, you mention that your STR bombers did nothing after the fall of FRance and that it might have been better if they had been TRA, would you have had enough TAC to do the same damage to France if you had no STR bombers?
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Probably. I might have had to shuffle the provinces and missions around a bit to get optimum results, but I had plenty of TACs and TACs aren't bad at logistical bombing. They just don't have the same concentration of force STR do for that mission.

And I could have just avoided logistical bombing altogether and expanded the ground attack portion of the air campaign. With no serious opposition in the skies, I had the freedom to do darken the skies over half of France.

EDIT: Missed jju-57's post.

Well early in 1940 all ministers were blue. Then in December 1940 all were grey to black except the leader for those two countries. Since one of the governments was a monarchy (Belgium?) I thought that maybe the king stays but the rest changes. These second spot (Hess's spot) changed from blue and that is one that I can't change.
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It's the monarchy with election thing. The king won't change, but the ministers all will. If you did an actual coup, the head of state and form of government would change, too.

But with elections, those blue-oriented kings and queens are just going to have to put up with those pesky fascists until 1944. :)
 
Did you have a plan B? In case if you had lost the advance in Soviets and they would slowly start pushing you back?
 
Latvian said:
Did you have a plan B? In case if you had lost the advance in Soviets and they would slowly start pushing you back?
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Nope, but I had played this out a couple of other times, so I knew what plan I needed.

I knew that trying to invade the Soviets from an intact Poland would fail. I lost one game because of that.

I knew that trying to storm the Maginot Line was a strategy of failure because I tried it once. Spent way too much manpower and IC taking out France. I bled myself dry in a game doing that.

I knew that raising threat on the UK to push away potential allies was stupid, because I tried that and mutual threat let them DOW before I built anything.

I knew that just ignoring Poland was stupid because the Soviets would DOW and annex Poland, cutting me off from Konigsberg and putting them right on my doorstep while I was still taking out France. That was a great way to watch divisions desperately defend Berlin while I tried to take Paris.

There was a lot of trial and error before I got it right, so I didn't need a back up plan anymore because I had already failed a dozen times. It's like a WWII version of the Defense of Duffer's Drift, only with aircraft carriers and Hitler. :)
 
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I'm now all the way till September 1943 and have 45.7 threat with 54 neutrality in the UK. I'm adding officers before I do my final builds to push the UK to war. But it seems teh SU doesn't want to do anything. Is there some hidden trigger for the SU to DOW Poland? Have you played games where teh SU has a peace loving flower child Stalin?

Forgot to add that the down side to taking this to 1944 is the elections come up again and I have to make sure I don't lost the countries that went facist. But is does give me a chance at getting those that didn't change in 1940.
 
The SU will DoW Poland once you are at war with the Allies and Poland isn't involved. In my case, the USSR DoW'ed Poland either very late in '42 or in early '43. If you are lucky, the Polish AI will put up a spirited defense of Warsaw and the 3.062 AI USSR will build superstacks in several Polish provinces that you can annihilate with a mere three infantry divisions each, thanks to the 90% or so stacking penalty they get...
 
I like what SM did by letting Poland fall. Then attack south from Prussia, north from southern germany and use some para drops to completly cut off all forward SU divisions.

On my next playthrough I will be spending more IC on even more airbases and building up ports and even some AA. I don't think any of these add to threat. I know adding convoys and escorts didn't seem to increase my threat.
 
Spent several hours for reading this perfect AAR. Even now, despite new DLC, it looks fresh. And I found some new facts and ideas to myself. Great reading! Thanx
 
Do keep in mind that the information in this AAR is a bit out of date for TFH. But the same general approach is possible: Germany can manage her threat and go for a late war if she pays attention to key things.

You'd really need to read the strategy guide for TFH to get my thoughts on division composition.
 
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