A few days later it was all over.
While technically still at war all that was left was the remnants of France, Belgium and The Netherlands to mop up. The commonwealth was still in the war but South Africa, Australia and New Zealand were no real threat. The rump state of the Soviet Union stayed where they were and the Japanese were alllied with the Reich.
A massive victory parade was planned in Berlin. The German people were somewhat sad as news came that the boat traveling from Norway to Germany carrying Himmler and Hitler sank in mysterious circumstances. To popular acclaim Raeder became the new Fuhrer- Heil Kreigsmarine.
Thats more or less it. I will end my AAR here for the time being although it may turn into a world conquest eventually as Japan and the USSR could be dealt with. I wish to start another one and the goal was never a world conquest but to defeat the UK, USSR and USA by 1942/43. In effect the USA was gone by July 42 but I missed the last VP on Attu as the pacific VPs seem random between games. You can aime for a march/april/may Invasion USA and annex within 3-4 months with practice. Essentially the game was won in 1940 with Sealion. Unlike most German games you focus heavily on a strong naval buidup right from the start and use gearing bonuses alot more.
The X6 battleships were still being churned out in 1943, along with the improved destroyers which were ordered in 1937. The 1936 infantry lines also laid down on Jan1st 36 were swiched on and off and the last inf came off them in 42. No submarines were built until late in the game and they're not really needed but i had some great sea wold admirals and alot of IC to build X12 at once. No modern Panzer was constructed as I only built Panzer I and upgraded them a long time later (1939 or so)
The invasion of Poland and France are key as you use the extra IC gained to start preparing for Sealion and a single run of motorised infantry also gives you around 8of them for barbarossa to go with your 17-18 panzers. Between oct39-May41 X12 marines and X12 mountaineers are also builtfor Sealion and Barbarossa. The luftwaffe is heavily neglected, while you will be short on key materials having the bare minimum amount of supplies as all IC is directed to buildng and upgrading your army. By Danzig or War odds are about half of your forces will technically be obsolete. In this game I stayed with Sea Lane Interdiction although you can switch to Fleet in Being. You won't really build carriers as the decent ones don't become available until 39 or so or you can spam out Bismarcks right from day 1.
Italy usually storms the midde east and doesn't suck as much as a regular game. In this game I helped them out to capture Alexandria and to get over the Suez canal. Most of the time they manage that fine by themselves. The Africa Korp was only their for a few weeks in late 1940 in any event. If you dpon't mind a delayed 42 USA invasion you can invade through Persia and advace into Central Asia. Not to hard with your reasonably massive navy togo through Suez. Invading Persia usually gets a DoW form the Soviets. The idea is to liberate Kazakstan and if combined with a Japanese alliance the post bitter peace USSR is missing the eatern territories conceded to Japan along with more or less all of central asia if you liberate the small republics. While you get a massive dissent hit the Bitter peace firing tends to eliminate all of it (liberate when you capture the last BP requirment). An alliance with Japan often means an early war with the USA though which can be annoying during Barbarossa and isn't really needed but its fun to totally truncate the Soviets. On higher difficulty settings you don't have the IC to build everything required so any massive naval force will likely have to be built after you take some countries over.
The Reich in this game.
The Italian Empire. Mostly they done it without my help. We fought totally different campaigns with virtually no co operation. They probably kept the Allies busy for a while though before the USA entered the war. Impressive effort for Italian AI.
And the Japanese who I ignored for the whole game until I needed access to their naval bases to annex the USA. I was intending on DoWing them but can't be bothered.
