Chapter 15: June, 27 to December, 31 1937.
Author’s Note: I followed my own tutorial to the letter, so I think everything will be allright. After all, this is a new campaign for me. Especially in this first new chapter, some of the timing may be jumbled a bit. So if I mention deploying something that you allready did, you all know what happened. Especially concerning CAS, I may have messed up.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE 3 CAS WINGS BY HALF NOVEMBER 1937!!! (forewarned is forearmed)
On the 27th, we get a new detroyer for the Kriegsmarine, but we are about to complete something much more interesting.
As you can see, I have Austria’s NSDAP almost powerful enough to fire the Anschluss. This will raise our threat level, which, in some mods, may be enough to trigger a war if you’re not careful. Just to be on the safe side, let’s deploy the 1. Armee, shall we?
Find them just north of France, in Darmstadt. Select the IX. Armeekorps and click the green bar to select the corps and all it’s divisions. The idea is to have 2 divisions in every border province with France. With all of them selected, right-click Trier. This gives them an order to march there. Click the white “x” next to the corps HQ to deselect it and leave it with orders for Trier. Next right-click Saarlouis. Again deselect 2 divisions, reaving you with 2. Give them orders for Saarbrucken. When you’re done, selecting them all again will look just like the screen above.
Now do the same for the V. Armeekorps. Set the corps in Kaiserlautern and send 2 divs each to Pirmasens and Landau.
The XII. Armeekorps will go to Pforzheim, while the divs will take up residence in Karlsruhe and Baden Baden.
The VII. Armeekorps will be send to Rottweill and it’s divs to Offenburg and Freiburg.
Finally we have the XI. Armeekorps with only 2 divisions. The corps will also go to Rottweill and the divisions to Lorrach.
When you’re done, selecting the entire 1. Armee should look like this:
On the 1st of July, simmering border incidents between Japan and the republic of China will flame into what many historians consider the start of the 2nd World War: the 2nd sino-Japanese war has begun.
First off, the date, like the Spanish Civil War, is not set in stone. Neither is the outcome anymore. It used to be, in Semper Fi, that japan walzed right over China is less than a year. Not anymore. Sometimes they still do, sometimes they get kicked right out of continental Asia alltogether, sometimes it turns into vicious trench warfare that lasts for years.
In your own campaign, you might want to wait until you can see a winner prevailing. In this one, however, we set out to enlist Japan’s mighty Imperial Navy against the UK’s Royal Navy. So if you haven’t been able to get Japan on board the Axis yet, now would be a good time to try again.
Remember to keep prioritising CV techs as they get finished and shut others down that have become up-to-date.
On the 8th, we get the Anschluss. Austria becomes German core territory. Annexation without blood of fear of partisans. What more could a guy want?
Note the fine print here, though. We get 5 dissent and 20 threat, plus diminished relations with several of our neighbours.
On the other hand, we get all their IC, resources, MP and LS as if it were our own, along with a bonus of 500 MP to simulate the integration of the Austrian army into the German Heer. (sorry, no free units in vanilla FtM).
Before we continue, we’ll have to deal with that dissent. This simulates elements of the Austrian people less than happy with the “reunion”.
Put ALL our IC into CG for a few days until the dissent is back to zero.
Again, the date may differ, depending on your game and the success of your spies. Just keep going at it if you haven’t gotten them there yet.
Wait one day and pause the game. Go to the research screen and send all extra Leadership to research. 1938 will be a busy year in this regard, so the sooner we can get started, the better.
In my game, dissent went back to zero on the 14th. In the production screen, adjust the sliders:
0.75 in reinforcements, CG 0.05 above need (in my game, this was 9.08), and supplies to 29,00.
Put all the rest in production, giving us 24 extra IC to play with, enough to start building 2 new interceptors.
On the 16th, we get a new infantry division. Deploy it to Köln and give it a new corps (III. Armeekorps, mysteriously missing from the starting German OOB), and attach it to the 2. Armee. We will build this up to 4 divisions as well and send them to occupy the fortresses bordering Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. Give the division a defender or a log wizard, and the corps a log wizard. Start a new one right away.
Two weeks later, we get a new interceptor for the III. Fliegerkorps. As always, start a new interceptor.
By the Way, I was asked why I don’t use serial builds. There are two reasons. First, doing it this way allows me to adapt my queue more easily to the needs of the moment. Secondly, this way whatever I build, will use the most advanced techs AT THE TIME PRODUCTION START.
Playing a minor, however, or a nation with a limited budget, makes this a viable strategy: produce everything you need first and update later. (heck, to some extend we’re doing that even with Germany. Large scale upgrades will wait until 1939).
At the end of august, our subs get commisioned. Deploy them in a new fleet (IV. Unterseebootflotte) in Kiel. We could start a new batch, but we are very close to finishing submarine research. Much better to wait a month. Transfer the wasted IC to supplies or upgrades for now.
On the 7th of September, we get some new artillery for our infantry. Attach it and check the OOB browser to see how many we are short (remember to add the ones allready in the queu!!). Start building them (there should be 6 or so) in a parallell build. Time is precious here. We still need to get started on our tanks and motorised infantry. Adjust the sliders to account for the added production load.
On the 22nd, our light cruiser is done. Attach it to the Kriegsmarine and go to the production screen. We have tons of Manpower wasting away in our pool.
In the division tab, find the template for the “Gebirgsjäger”. This is a division of 2 mountaineer brigades. Add a third one and save the template before starting production.
In case you’re wondering, it is always better to keep these kind of special forces “pure”: you should never mix marines, mountaineers or paratroopers with any kind of support brigade. Some players use marines mixed with engineers. While this makes them awesome in river crossings, it still dilutes their unique skill at amphibious landings.
On the 24th, the final sub tech, Submarine Hull, gets finished. It gives us the opportunity to start 1938 research:
Industry: agriculture, education, industrial production, industrial efficiency, decryption machine (in the case of the UK, should you ever start a game with them, this one is part of the key to catching those rotten subs faster), oil refining and supply production.
Theory: Supply transportation, supply organisation.
Infantry: small arms, infantry support weapons, light artillery, infantry anti-tank weapons, desert warfare equipment.
Armour: all Light Armour, Armour, artillery and anti-air techs.
Escorts: all Destroyer and Light Cruiser techs.
Capital: all 3 Battleship techs, capital ship main armament, heavy cruiser anti-air, battlecruiser anti-air.
Fighter: multi-role. Essentially, this gives us an interceptor with decreased combat power and increased range and ground-attack potential. Perfect for taking out isolated enemy bombers at the edge of the front. Just don’t expect them to win against the Uk’s Interceptors.
Land: mobile warfare, operational level command structure, elastic defense, blitzkrieg, infantry warfare, special forces, assault concentration, integrated support.
Air: all fighter, CAS and Tac pilot traing and ground crew training, interception tactics, ground attack tactics, Interdiction Tactics, Tactical Air Command, all naval plane techs (note that there is still one naval tech researching 1936 technology; leave that one alone).
You should now have a total of 77 techs in the queu, to be finished (hopefully) by the start of 1939. Hence my choice to drop militia support weapns and some of the tactical mission techs (log strike, intallation strike and runway cratering).
While we’re here, we might as well make a little change. Check the number of idle spies in the intelligence screen. If you have over 50 of them, you can sefely decrease the leadership spend on spies by a full point and transfer that point to research instead.
Research: 23.01
Spies: 3.11
Diplo: 2.05
Officer training: 2.19.
Leave the game paused and go to the production screen to start building 3 shining, brand new long-range submarines. (these babies can reach halfway the Atlantic from Kiel). Adjust your sliders to match before unpausing.
Let the game run until you get a new infantry division. Attach it to the III. Armeekorps, but DON’T START A NEW ONE.
In stead, we are going to begin building up the thing that made Germany so feared in real life: the panzers.
In the production screen start production of 1 armour division, consisting of 1 arm and 2 mot brigades. Alternately, you could use 2 arm and 1 mot for added combat prowess, but they use more supplies and fuel. Precious commodities deep inside the Soviet Union.
Adjust the sliders to match. Our supplies will turn red, but that’s ok. We can handle a few weeks of shortcoming here thanks to our careful stockpiling in the last 2 years.
On the 10th of November, NAV tactics gets researched. It is now 38 tech. Leave it at the bottom along with the rest of the air doctrine stuff.
Because I messed up in recreating the tutorial from scratch, I get a 3rd CAS in november. Attach it to stuka 1 and send the IC to supplies to make up for our shortchanging it these past weeks. You may have gotten this one sooner. Or not. The important thing is that by now you should have 3 CAS in the field by half november.
One day later, we get 2 new interceptors. Deploy them in Stuttgardt and rename them into “IV. Fliegerkorps”. Attach them to Heeresgruppe B and start work on 2 new ones. Also start training a new mountain division.
On the 26th, I get a message that Japan conquered Shanxi (the green Chinese warlord in the north of China). While this does not concern us directly, there is one reason to keep an eye on it every once in a while. If Japan can conquer all of China by 1940, they usually puppet it, leaving them with a handful of idle Army Groups that could be used to help keeping British attention away from us. I’ve seen them take India for us by 1942 in some games.
The next interceptor should go to the IV. Fliegerkorps and a new one should be started.
On the 14th of December, our 1st CAG gets done. This wing will eventually be stationed on board the escort Carrier KMS Weser.
Contrary to HOI2, you can station CAGs on regular airbases and use them as short-range naval bombers (no that’s not an excuse to go for gamey tactics, they never get the kind of hitting power a real Naval bomber has), but where they really shine is in CAG duty, protecting the carrier from enemy fleets. Note that a CAG can only be attached to a Carrier. Never to a land-based HQ by itself.
For those of you interested in history, it should be noted that a CAG strike on an enemy naval base out of range of your land-based bombers, such as Force H’s strike against the Italian base of Taranto, is possible. I plan to give a more indepth look at naval and aerial matters once we’ve reached january, 1939. So bear with me.
Station the CAG in Stettin and rename it “I. Trägergruppe” (or is that Tragergruppe without umlaut? Germans help me out here).
Transfer the IC to supplies.
20 December sees a bunch of infrastructure works get done (finally!). Set supplies to 30 and transfer any wasted IC to upgrades for now as this will give us a clearer view of how much we have left.
CV techs should still be prioritised when finished.
Our last artillery shoud get done by the end of the month. Attach them and don’t forget the 3 divisions in East Prussia. How you do it without troop transports is the following:
1) Click the deployment queue once.
2) Click the OKH.
3) Open the OOB browser by clicking the edge of the OKH card.
4) You can now drag the art over to the division and drop it in place. (also very neat for those micromanagers among us)
Use the IC to start a new armour division.
Save on 31st of December.
If you thought 1937 was fun, just wait to see what I have in store next year, when we really start building an army to be feared!
‘till then, have fun!