Resurgence of the Ottoman East - A HoI3 FTM 3.05 AAR

[Portal]

Wow, you're awesome.

Sorry about no update. ASAP. In gameplay news, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa on May 31. I declared war and pushed into the Caucasus. But it's worse than I anticipated... I could push them further, but the infra is horrible so my forces regain org veeeery slowly. My cav and licensed italian LARM are bogged down, and I can't reallocate them since I can't cover my entire front. My units sometimes run out of supplies, and Russia is bleeding my manpower. Often I have engagements with over 2000 casualties, probably because of my shitty doctrines and techs. Germany is seemingly bogged down in front of Minsk already. The only good news seemingly is that Japan has taken Vladivostock.

 

[TrueCoppa]

Wow, you're awesome.

Sorry about no update. ASAP. In gameplay news, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa on May 31. I declared war and pushed into the Caucasus. But it's worse than I anticipated... I could push them further, but the infra is horrible so my forces regain org veeeery slowly. My cav and licensed italian LARM are bogged down, and I can't reallocate them since I can't cover my entire front. My units sometimes run out of supplies, and Russia is bleeding my manpower. Often I have engagements with over 2000 casualties, probably because of my shitty doctrines and techs. Germany is seemingly bogged down in front of Minsk already. The only good news seemingly is that Japan has taken Vladivostock.

No problem, if it adds more to the AAR I'm up for doing it

 

[Baltasar]

Wow, you're awesome.

Sorry about no update. ASAP. In gameplay news, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa on May 31. I declared war and pushed into the Caucasus. But it's worse than I anticipated... I could push them further, but the infra is horrible so my forces regain org veeeery slowly. My cav and licensed italian LARM are bogged down, and I can't reallocate them since I can't cover my entire front. My units sometimes run out of supplies, and Russia is bleeding my manpower. Often I have engagements with over 2000 casualties, probably because of my shitty doctrines and techs. Germany is seemingly bogged down in front of Minsk already. The only good news seemingly is that Japan has taken Vladivostock.

While you may not win much in the area, the very fact that you're diverting Russian forces does help Germany already.

 

[Portal]

While you may not win much in the area, the very fact that you're diverting Russian forces does help Germany already.

Doesn't the AI have issues with transferring forces between theaters?

I was hoping to outfight Russia, but I can't do it with the doctrines and techs I have, even though I do get a sweet +20% terrain modifier for my MTN (which I think they shouldn't even have...), that's cancelled out by Russia's territorial pride modifier. They have the numbers advantage, too. I guess Germany is doing decently, but they almost never win in FTM. The war will be ended in 42, with one side or the other getting crushed. At latest 43.

 

[Baltasar]

It used to have that, haven't played much recently. Anyway, your forces are a drain on Russian manpower and IC. Every bit helps.

 

[Portal]

I'm going to do a peacetime update from mid 1939 to mid 1941 before I fully cover Barbarossa.

CHAPTER FIVE: Preparation & Peace

It was a quiet few years until Barbarossa. Mostly all the IC I had was dedicated to building Garrisons on my ports, LARM for my cav, and a few MTN brigades to round off my exclusively MTN army. Say what you will, but man the Caucasus is hilly.

Tensions still mounted in the Balkans with Hungary, who recently repossessed North Transylvania from Romania. As part of the pact, Turkey graciously returned Hungary's cores in Yugoslavia. Thanks, TrueCoppa!

You owe me, Hungary.

On 5 July, Italy joined the war against the Allies. I wonder how badly they'll stuff up this time.

And on 20 August, the USSR annexed the Baltic States.

And gained prime... nothings?

And on 26 September, France surrendered to the Axis and Vichy was formed. Oddly, Norway survived until November. Compare historically, France lost on 25 June. German AI sucks.

Then, America used the event 'The Undeclared War,' and started patrolling the Atlantic for submarines.

Next update; Barbarossa.

 

[Portal]

CHAPTER SIX: Operation Barbarossa, 1941, June - September.

On the 31 of May, Germany launched it's surprise attack with the objective to annihilate it's greatest ideological enemy - the USSR. The Bolshevik Menace must be purged!

Progress was slow. In roughly a month our offensive had captured the major city of T'bilisi. This was very slow progress. The first mistake I had made was allocating the majority of my forces on the coast of the Black Sea, but the LARM and CAV rapidly got bogged down and was unable to make any major penetrations. The MTN in the south was going reasonably well, taking several provinces and sustaining an offensive, but lacking enough units to make a major breakthrough to the Baku oilfields.

After one month, progress was slow.

In other theaters, the war was going fairly. In July, Germany had sustained it's offensive long enough for the USSR to fire 'The Great Patriotic War' event. I'm still disappointed with their progress, but it's an AI. Hopefully enough reinforcements will be drawn into the Far East Theater and the Caucasus that Germany will make it to Moscow, after which the USSR should surrender, considering that Vladivostock has a large amount of VP's.

This is srs bizniz.

Speaking of the Far East Theater.

At least there's no legendary Siberian Reserves.

But as the campaign became prolonged, I realized just how terrible the Caucasus was. The infrastructure is universally terrible. The units move very slowly from point to point, so exploitation is difficult, especially because my mobile corps are tied down in Batumi. I attempted to exchange MTN divisions there and free my mobile units, but my forces are getting very stretched. Because of the non-existent infra org regains very slowly, and supply sometimes runs out.

A newly trained corps of MTN is deployed into the fray. Hmmm. I need to allocate a leader there.

Wait, what's this? Wow. Mussolini is doing very well. Not.

WTF?!

Somehow, the ENTIRE ITALIAN ARMY had been encircled by a handful British, French and Iraqi divisions. God... just a few months ago I found them on Alexandria's doorstep...

Oh shit

I wasn't doing much better. My overstretched MTN units were retreating from the numerous Russian divisions, and things were looking down.

TO BE CONTINUED!

 

[McCann1991]

Italy being Italy as always. It wouldn't be an Axis AAR if Mussolini wasn't stuffing something up.

 

[Portal]

I'm actually slowly gaining ground. I broke through at Batumi, but sadly I lost the 4th LARM division in an encirclement. A lot of the next update will be dedicated to the Batumi offensive, aka 'keep attacking so they can't regen org!'

 

[Laexio]

I'm guessing this didn't go too well. I notice you manpower at 50 and then at 20 in the last two screenies. D:

 

[nimrod123]

what buffs do you think that turkey needs? i looked into it a wee bit and turkey has twice the populationof either greece or bulgaria at the time yet still has the same LS and manpower so that the main buff i think it needs (double both)

agree, disagree?

 

[unmerged(245758)]

Always thought Turkey has too low a MP issue. It's a bummer. However I don't think any 'buff' should be implimented into the game at this stage, its not fair on the AI, and to be frank with Turkey as it is at the moment, if you sit up in the mountains on defensive, you 'should' be able to bleed soviet divisions from the German front to yours, aiding them. Critically avoid costly attacks and bide your time without all your division 'at the front' and wait for the soviet to prioritise the German front, then strike to take all the mountains, and Baki, T'blisi etc. and just dig in their and wait for the BP. If Germany starts screwing up....well, that's the nature of the game.

 

[nimrod123]

Always thought Turkey has too low a MP issue. It's a bummer. However I don't think any 'buff' should be implimented into the game at this stage, its not fair on the AI, and to be frank with Turkey as it is at the moment, if you sit up in the mountains on defensive, you 'should' be able to bleed soviet divisions from the German front to yours, aiding them. Critically avoid costly attacks and bide your time without all your division 'at the front' and wait for the soviet to prioritise the German front, then strike to take all the mountains, and Baki, T'blisi etc. and just dig in their and wait for the BP. If Germany starts screwing up....well, that's the nature of the game.

i was thinking more as a mod, i've tried making a sort of rebirth of the ottoman mod, with boasts to MP and LS along with a modded vichy decison that gives turkey syria in exchange for axis memebership (cores included). i also put a decsion for cores in the suroding Balkans (about 7-10 proveicens) around the euro side of the channel.

its actually a easy thing to make, just make a decsion that only the player can use (AI chance = 0) that creates flags for all the rest to fire. it dosn't even require map modding as you just use multiplers of just under 2X for LS and MP.

now i will stop this hijack

 

[Portal]

I'm guessing this didn't go too well. I notice you manpower at 50 and then at 20 in the last two screenies. D:

Actually, I started several runs of GARS and MIL. I actually have a much higher MP income than I need to reinforce.

what buffs do you think that turkey needs? i looked into it a wee bit and turkey has twice the populationof either greece or bulgaria at the time yet still has the same LS and manpower so that the main buff i think it needs (double both)

agree, disagree?

Agreed. All minors in the game are generalized. I think that Turkey at the start of the game only had slightly more than enough MP to mobilize it's units, and I have only around 4 LS to work with.

Always thought Turkey has too low a MP issue. It's a bummer. However I don't think any 'buff' should be implimented into the game at this stage, its not fair on the AI, and to be frank with Turkey as it is at the moment, if you sit up in the mountains on defensive, you 'should' be able to bleed soviet divisions from the German front to yours, aiding them. Critically avoid costly attacks and bide your time without all your division 'at the front' and wait for the soviet to prioritise the German front, then strike to take all the mountains, and Baki, T'blisi etc. and just dig in their and wait for the BP. If Germany starts screwing up....well, that's the nature of the game.

I actually currently am taking rapid ground. I may have no reserves, but I think that the Russians simply have no org left. Sitting units on quiet fronts lets them regen org slowly, but really the key is to just keep draining their org, and constantly attacking. But in my daring I lost a single prided unit of Italian LARM, which I'm replacing. It is actually very sad, and I'm disappointed that in my rush I didn't grab screenshots. But I shall remember him! But tooth for tooth, I also encircled one or two Soviet infantry divisions, which was more by accident than design because of the shitty infra.

i was thinking more as a mod, i've tried making a sort of rebirth of the ottoman mod, with boasts to MP and LS along with a modded vichy decison that gives turkey syria in exchange for axis memebership (cores included). i also put a decsion for cores in the suroding Balkans (about 7-10 proveicens) around the euro side of the channel.

its actually a easy thing to make, just make a decsion that only the player can use (AI chance = 0) that creates flags for all the rest to fire. it dosn't even require map modding as you just use multiplers of just under 2X for LS and MP.

now i will stop this hijack

It's okay xD

Is there any chance to make this like a submod for HPP? I've been playing HPP lately (don't worry, it's not the reason for the lack of updates lately, but I will try and squeeze in one this weekend. School, school, school...) and would enjoy more of an expansion to the Balkans interplay. Of course, the Treaty of Sevres is pretty cool too.

 

[nimrod123]

Is there any chance to make this like a submod for HPP? I've been playing HPP lately (don't worry, it's not the reason for the lack of updates lately, but I will try and squeeze in one this weekend. School, school, school...) and would enjoy more of an expansion to the Balkans interplay. Of course, the Treaty of Sevres is pretty cool too.

its hardly a good mod (min,e not HPP), its all personal stuff so completly unpolished. i have no idea if there is any precendt in histoy for this, and HPP dosn't like tocuhing the map (well apart from the bromgav).

i'm currently comming up to exams so it wont happen any time soon

 

[Portal]

Sigh, I'll try and get an update ASAP. I've been having trouble with my image uploading, as my father seems to have used up our meager internet resources on seven hour video courses for his career (he's a mechanic).

 

[damnt512]

a fresh idea with turkey rather than germany, i like it, i'll follow this one

 

[Portal]

Don't get your hopes up, my plate is rather full. I can garuantee several updates on the holidays, though.

 

[Portal]

I feel very guilty about this guys, especially for damnt, who just started reading, but I'm going to have to red light this.

You may have already guessed by the complete lack of updates, which I am wholly responsible for as I have had other commitments as well as a bit of a problem with procrastination. This was always an experiment for me, taking inspiration from the fabulous AAR writing community here, but the current game seems almost chorelike, in spite of progress on the Eastern Front the German AI seems to have halted entirely, the Italian AI has been annihilated in Africa, and Japan is the only country making any progress, and they're trekking through Siberia. In order for the game to properly end it would probably be grinding up the Caucasus for months until I reach STAVKA Theater, where the AI would actually start allocating more units (the AI seems to have issues moving units from theaters) and start to be pushed back, while I wait for Japan to march on Moscow... which would probably result on Japan enforcing Conquer on Russia and general oddness everywhere (last experiment game, I enforced Acquire Caucasus but Germany didn't enforce Drang Nach Osten, resulting in the Second Great Patriotic War literally a month after the end of the first one, while I was embroiled in war in Iraq...). I cannot update this during the two week break from school, as I am going on a trip to the ACT, which is exciting.

Apologies.

Maybe in the future I'll do another AAR... probably a Crusader Kings II comedy AAR, judging by the hilarity of the homosexual Count and his misadventures.

 

[Judassem]

A good AAR, even though it's left uncompleted. I thought playing with Turkey would be extremely boring.