And come now, questions questions, I see there must be at least one lurker or way too many search bots reading through this, gets boring to write with no replies 
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At this point, 20th of April, the 'pocket' of 1 mechanized division is still alive, out of supplies, little fuel left, it was surrounded by 5 divisions but I think 2 of those went somewhere else, in all probability it was as forgotten by soviets as it was by me at this point, main action took too much of our attention, inevitably it will fall the moment soviets decide to attack it, can't remember when it actually happened, but considering closest friendly units are over 1000km away at this point, chances of relief are rather low.
I just keep thinking - playing human opponents makes for stomach ulcers!
As Gewrmany had you predicted USA and Brits landings oin Iberian Peninsular? If so - what have you done to prepare for the inevitable march through France. If not - why not?
As Gewrmany had you predicted USA and Brits landings oin Iberian Peninsular? If so - what have you done to prepare for the inevitable march through France. If not - why not?
Well, yes and no, I have actually forgotten to mention, but USA tried invading, err, sicily (? the island italian boot is kicking) and was repelled, I suppose that should have been hint, along with the fact that as axis were driven out of Africa, and Japan was not in the war against Allies, there was little else for them to do...
While Spain was AI at this point, I expected them to hold for a good while, their army was after all, last I checked, quite nice sized...
So I did take minor action, as you can see in that last screenie, I moved 3 x 2arm2mot divisions to pyrenees, in case spain would fall, I'd have a defensive line to hold them away from france, and, yes, I do believe in superiority of german armor, in mountains, to hold of any amount of americans/british, even if they probably have better units than soviets...
Besides those I have only the 75 infantry Brigades in west, of course, should it become clear that Allied invasion was real and big problem, there was always new production coming every month or so, those could be deployed to west if needed.
While Spain was AI at this point, I expected them to hold for a good while, their army was after all, last I checked, quite nice sized...
So I did take minor action, as you can see in that last screenie, I moved 3 x 2arm2mot divisions to pyrenees, in case spain would fall, I'd have a defensive line to hold them away from france, and, yes, I do believe in superiority of german armor, in mountains, to hold of any amount of americans/british, even if they probably have better units than soviets...
Besides those I have only the 75 infantry Brigades in west, of course, should it become clear that Allied invasion was real and big problem, there was always new production coming every month or so, those could be deployed to west if needed.
I'm clearly going to win now?
Chapter Eleven
8th of June '41
One might think it is inevitable now, that the soviets shall fall, afterall, no military can survive losing ~50 divisions... Right?
Sadly, let's take a look at what's going on in the east, for real...
First, what's left of soviet military at this time?
Ouch? 121 Armor brigades, isn't that... Double what there was when we last checked in september, and they lost so many in that pocket... (Indeed, soviets had 100 arm brigades by the time the Barbarossa actually began, but as you can see, they are still producing tons)
So, there's ~30 more in queue, coming right up, not much more than that luckily, as, well, to get here, they have gone very far...
So those troops will be losing in experience, and there won't be much more, if we ever manage to defeat that, at this rate they need 7 months worth of mp just to reinforce, and well, you can believe that I don't plan to just sit still and let that happen either, it was becoming obvious that they were running out, as more and more, I began to notice divisions not at full strenght in battles, but ahh, so many of them...
Indeed, after closing the pocket, we scrambled again to create one in south with Romania, this became even more critical, as the british managed to logistical bomb Romanians out of supply and soviets mounted general offensive to push them back...
Thus, Germany would have to divert some of those divisions to prevent Romania's fall, as it was indeed closer than you might think, they were out of manpower just as much as the soviets...
Thus Germany first advanced back to surround moscow;
And alongside cut south to create the pocket;
While you may wonder how it's possible that I can do such thrusts without soviet interference, you should remember, that my units are so much faster...
My Armored divisions moves at speed 8,5 mechanized at 10,5... Soviet Armor moves at 6,75 and as they have very generalized way of doing things, these are their fastest units...
So after I break the soviet line, I can go wherever I want...
Oh, and so how large is the Wehrmacht now? More panzers have come out of the line, 4 mechanized divisions have been lost when pushing too far too fast, but we are far behind soviet numbers anyways...
Oh, and Nationalist spain surrendered, and became puppet of United Kingdom.
Chapter Eleven
8th of June '41
One might think it is inevitable now, that the soviets shall fall, afterall, no military can survive losing ~50 divisions... Right?
Sadly, let's take a look at what's going on in the east, for real...
First, what's left of soviet military at this time?
Ouch? 121 Armor brigades, isn't that... Double what there was when we last checked in september, and they lost so many in that pocket... (Indeed, soviets had 100 arm brigades by the time the Barbarossa actually began, but as you can see, they are still producing tons)
So, there's ~30 more in queue, coming right up, not much more than that luckily, as, well, to get here, they have gone very far...
So those troops will be losing in experience, and there won't be much more, if we ever manage to defeat that, at this rate they need 7 months worth of mp just to reinforce, and well, you can believe that I don't plan to just sit still and let that happen either, it was becoming obvious that they were running out, as more and more, I began to notice divisions not at full strenght in battles, but ahh, so many of them...
Indeed, after closing the pocket, we scrambled again to create one in south with Romania, this became even more critical, as the british managed to logistical bomb Romanians out of supply and soviets mounted general offensive to push them back...
Thus, Germany would have to divert some of those divisions to prevent Romania's fall, as it was indeed closer than you might think, they were out of manpower just as much as the soviets...
Thus Germany first advanced back to surround moscow;
And alongside cut south to create the pocket;
While you may wonder how it's possible that I can do such thrusts without soviet interference, you should remember, that my units are so much faster...
My Armored divisions moves at speed 8,5 mechanized at 10,5... Soviet Armor moves at 6,75 and as they have very generalized way of doing things, these are their fastest units...
So after I break the soviet line, I can go wherever I want...
Oh, and so how large is the Wehrmacht now? More panzers have come out of the line, 4 mechanized divisions have been lost when pushing too far too fast, but we are far behind soviet numbers anyways...
Oh, and Nationalist spain surrendered, and became puppet of United Kingdom.
Which nations are player controlled? And have they been that through the whole game?
I had that hidden somewhere before but, anyways;
Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary and Romania were around for almost all sessions for axis, with occasional visit for someone as Nationalist Spain, Japan was gone for few sessions and we had hungary sub for italy near the end on a session (or two?).
UK, USA, France and, I think, Canada as well, were frequently around, France moving around to Australia or sub/co-op something after the fall.
And yes, we had one and a half soviet players as well.
Edit; and I can specifically remember there was no nat spain player in the session where it was invaded by UK
Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary and Romania were around for almost all sessions for axis, with occasional visit for someone as Nationalist Spain, Japan was gone for few sessions and we had hungary sub for italy near the end on a session (or two?).
UK, USA, France and, I think, Canada as well, were frequently around, France moving around to Australia or sub/co-op something after the fall.
And yes, we had one and a half soviet players as well.
Edit; and I can specifically remember there was no nat spain player in the session where it was invaded by UK
And as comes to the MP being more engaging, indeed, AI can be good, and I give tactical AI of hoi3 quite good number, strategically it's lacking, human opponents are so much more unpredictable and force you to actually commit troops to covering your rear areas and so forth. Once you go to multiplayer it's very hard to go back.
AAR writing wise it does present a problem, if you write all this out during the game, you give away way too much information, and gentleman agreement not to go looking other people's nations via save games prevents statistical view during the game. I was so very suprised here when I found out how much more armor soviets really had, during the game I knew they had some more, but I would never have thought they had twice the numbers, especially at start, I expected them to go heavy on industry and assumed he was planning for spring '41 timetable, which he was, but he was still more prepared than I hoped back in dec '40... It's quite possible that if I had waited to say June, he would have DoW'ed me instead, and not rush built all that armor, he said he started lot of those minimum training 20-30 parallel armor division builds after the initial breakthrough to moscow...
AAR writing wise it does present a problem, if you write all this out during the game, you give away way too much information, and gentleman agreement not to go looking other people's nations via save games prevents statistical view during the game. I was so very suprised here when I found out how much more armor soviets really had, during the game I knew they had some more, but I would never have thought they had twice the numbers, especially at start, I expected them to go heavy on industry and assumed he was planning for spring '41 timetable, which he was, but he was still more prepared than I hoped back in dec '40... It's quite possible that if I had waited to say June, he would have DoW'ed me instead, and not rush built all that armor, he said he started lot of those minimum training 20-30 parallel armor division builds after the initial breakthrough to moscow...
Certainly an impressive set of moves to unbalance your opponents. Good work so far.
Quickie this morning...
Chapter Twelve
Early June '41
After nationalists switched sides, it was inevitable the Allied would turn to north and strike to France, while it was uncertain if they would respects Vichy's neutrality, Germany could hardly affect that, and chose to only take advantage of the fact, that for time beeing, they seemed to be happy to leave it alone.
Thus 3 of Germany's brand new panzer divisions, with the double motorized infantry section, were sent to hold the passes in Pyrenees, the command in France was sure they would be enough, to hold the Americans there to infinity, with backup from the VIII. Armeekorps holding ports of Bordeaux and La Rochelle, as well as providing second line of defence, should the Pyrenees defence fail...
Alas, British were not quite happy to duke it out on those Pyrenian slopes, instead, they staged a landing south of Bordeaux, swiftly cutting the german divisions to south out of supply and taking port of Bordeaux from the single division defending it.
Now this was highly worrisome turn of events, and required drastic action, which was unfortunately slightly delayed, as the initial thought was that they would not be able to take the port, by the time they did, plans were drafted to get a second line of defence to barricade them from entering france, and to somehow extricate my divisions from south.
First was to send the single Luftwaffe transport wing in existence to fly airdrop missions to the troops cut off. Secondly divisions defending coast of English channel and few from Brest were dispatched to south, in hopes they could reach North side of Charente, or at very least, banks of Loire.
The divisions retreating from pyrenees were harassed by chasing Americans, and eventually failed to push through to north to connect with rest of the army, and transport wing got shot down, after succesfully supplying them for a month, all this had done, was delay the inevitable. On north, things were slightly better, the divisions managed to put up a shake line on Charente, and at least slow down the british, alas, they are sneaky people those british, and staged yet another landing, behind this defence line aswell, and forced a retreat to Loire, fighting retreat, certainly, retreat nonetheless.
At this point, I was starting to catch up on the british tactics, but there was no force in France that I could use to push back the invasion force landing behind lines, or if there was one, it was the one encircled in Champagne.
On July 6th, the situation was approaching serious in west front;
As you can see, the Line at Loire is not ready, and will almost inevitably get encircled, and it would, forcing a fast paced retreat all the way to Seine, this line of defence was better prepared, having some actual fresh divisions raised to from french volunteers to boost up the line, and and infantry corp was expected to manage redeployment from east in time to support this line, after all, there would be only the Maginot line left before German proper should this fall.
So, what's going on in east then, with all this distraction going on in west?
Alot, so let's start from north, Leningrad, is now surrounded, few infantry divisions having finally circled lake Ladoga. And yes, all those engineer brigades are heading there, to bust that fort...
...alone? no, but their counterpart reinforced infantry divisions are not quite ready yet, and they were built separate since the doctrine for having five brigades to a division was still considered too unorthodox. There had also been small lapse in the equipment list for those divisions, somewhere along the requisition list, the 88mm AT guns had turned into 88mm AA guns, which in the armor rich east front was serious lapse, but alas, this was only realized when the equipment arrived. So yes, my 'masterplan' for finally breaking the fort cities of Leningrad and Moscow were those 10x 2inf+AT(AA)+Art+Eng divisions. And as you can see, the soviet armor around Moscow, has managed to push me back off, I would eventually fall back all the way to the riverline again, but as far as I remember, they didn't actually succeed in pocketing any of those divisions falling back, while it looks awfully bad in that picture (might be wrong and lost division or two, but nothing major anyways).
And to south, the pocket failed to close, Romanians were pushed back, but managed to stabilize the front as soviets were forced to swing north, smaller pocket to engulf the divisions there is tried, but despite hard trying, it would fail to completely close, soviet divisions did occasionally run out of supply and did take a heavy beating and losses there, but none were outright destroyed this time, a bit closer look here, it would have been decisive, but it was also an overreach, didn't have the troops to close it, forced the eventual fallback from moscow, stretching things that thin.
Chapter Twelve
Early June '41
After nationalists switched sides, it was inevitable the Allied would turn to north and strike to France, while it was uncertain if they would respects Vichy's neutrality, Germany could hardly affect that, and chose to only take advantage of the fact, that for time beeing, they seemed to be happy to leave it alone.
Thus 3 of Germany's brand new panzer divisions, with the double motorized infantry section, were sent to hold the passes in Pyrenees, the command in France was sure they would be enough, to hold the Americans there to infinity, with backup from the VIII. Armeekorps holding ports of Bordeaux and La Rochelle, as well as providing second line of defence, should the Pyrenees defence fail...
Alas, British were not quite happy to duke it out on those Pyrenian slopes, instead, they staged a landing south of Bordeaux, swiftly cutting the german divisions to south out of supply and taking port of Bordeaux from the single division defending it.
Now this was highly worrisome turn of events, and required drastic action, which was unfortunately slightly delayed, as the initial thought was that they would not be able to take the port, by the time they did, plans were drafted to get a second line of defence to barricade them from entering france, and to somehow extricate my divisions from south.
First was to send the single Luftwaffe transport wing in existence to fly airdrop missions to the troops cut off. Secondly divisions defending coast of English channel and few from Brest were dispatched to south, in hopes they could reach North side of Charente, or at very least, banks of Loire.
The divisions retreating from pyrenees were harassed by chasing Americans, and eventually failed to push through to north to connect with rest of the army, and transport wing got shot down, after succesfully supplying them for a month, all this had done, was delay the inevitable. On north, things were slightly better, the divisions managed to put up a shake line on Charente, and at least slow down the british, alas, they are sneaky people those british, and staged yet another landing, behind this defence line aswell, and forced a retreat to Loire, fighting retreat, certainly, retreat nonetheless.
At this point, I was starting to catch up on the british tactics, but there was no force in France that I could use to push back the invasion force landing behind lines, or if there was one, it was the one encircled in Champagne.
On July 6th, the situation was approaching serious in west front;
As you can see, the Line at Loire is not ready, and will almost inevitably get encircled, and it would, forcing a fast paced retreat all the way to Seine, this line of defence was better prepared, having some actual fresh divisions raised to from french volunteers to boost up the line, and and infantry corp was expected to manage redeployment from east in time to support this line, after all, there would be only the Maginot line left before German proper should this fall.
So, what's going on in east then, with all this distraction going on in west?
Alot, so let's start from north, Leningrad, is now surrounded, few infantry divisions having finally circled lake Ladoga. And yes, all those engineer brigades are heading there, to bust that fort...
...alone? no, but their counterpart reinforced infantry divisions are not quite ready yet, and they were built separate since the doctrine for having five brigades to a division was still considered too unorthodox. There had also been small lapse in the equipment list for those divisions, somewhere along the requisition list, the 88mm AT guns had turned into 88mm AA guns, which in the armor rich east front was serious lapse, but alas, this was only realized when the equipment arrived. So yes, my 'masterplan' for finally breaking the fort cities of Leningrad and Moscow were those 10x 2inf+AT(AA)+Art+Eng divisions. And as you can see, the soviet armor around Moscow, has managed to push me back off, I would eventually fall back all the way to the riverline again, but as far as I remember, they didn't actually succeed in pocketing any of those divisions falling back, while it looks awfully bad in that picture (might be wrong and lost division or two, but nothing major anyways).
And to south, the pocket failed to close, Romanians were pushed back, but managed to stabilize the front as soviets were forced to swing north, smaller pocket to engulf the divisions there is tried, but despite hard trying, it would fail to completely close, soviet divisions did occasionally run out of supply and did take a heavy beating and losses there, but none were outright destroyed this time, a bit closer look here, it would have been decisive, but it was also an overreach, didn't have the troops to close it, forced the eventual fallback from moscow, stretching things that thin.
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What is Soviet's national unity at this point? Or does it make a difference in MP? I should assume that the Japanese are taking a lot of the Siberian VP's?
Their national unity is still 80%, there has been no major bombing campaigns or spy action to reduce it, Surrender progress is only 37% (they retook Stalingrad and... well...) What comes to Far east, yes, it's progressing, however, there are not that many VP's there, yet my thinking at this point is that should I get Leningrad and Moscow, I could probably get them to fold.
Edit; slight missreading, yes it does matter.
Edit; slight missreading, yes it does matter.
Surrender progress was the thing I was actually interested in
Knocking out SU (for a while anyway) would definetly improve your situation in Iberian peninsula, and even give Italy a second chance in Africa, with your help.
Maybe Japan would be more inclined to join the war effort too, if it didn't have to worry about defending itself against SU anymore.
Knocking out SU (for a while anyway) would definetly improve your situation in Iberian peninsula, and even give Italy a second chance in Africa, with your help.
Maybe Japan would be more inclined to join the war effort too, if it didn't have to worry about defending itself against SU anymore.
The situation in Far east, as far as I know, was at this point such that japan started pulling back units from there, as there was no resistance and supply situation was getting terrible. So they are not really defending themselves, advancing to void is closer to thruth.
And while I pushed forth that 'join the war against allies' thing few times, this was the point where those missed sessions happened, I think new one started on early June that he was actually present on, having missed the previous (leaving all the divisions redeploying all accross china from burmese front to siberia...) which meant it took him most of this session to get the stuff back in order.
And while I pushed forth that 'join the war against allies' thing few times, this was the point where those missed sessions happened, I think new one started on early June that he was actually present on, having missed the previous (leaving all the divisions redeploying all accross china from burmese front to siberia...) which meant it took him most of this session to get the stuff back in order.
This game looks fantastic, can't wait for the next one which I just put my name down for
Looking forward to the next updates.
Looking forward to the next updates.
Nice AAR Forgiven!
The British forces in France and Spain came directly from North Africa and the factories back home. The race to liberate France and put pressure on the western front was really exciting.
The British forces in France and Spain came directly from North Africa and the factories back home. The race to liberate France and put pressure on the western front was really exciting.