THIRD REICH AoD MOD

[MagooNZ]

This could be my problem, trying to maintain a continuous front rather than creating gaps to entice the AI to advance & be encircled. The AI is not very good at covering the flanks & rear of its advances. Still its more challenging if one tries to prevent the AI from doing dumb things (that a good human player wouldn't do).
Gringo, there is a SOV province just north of Vlad.... that doesn't change hands to the JAP when the bitter peace is achieved. Think it is a 2 worded province? I'll add the province details when I can. So the entire area of old SOV provinces become JAP, except this one inland province.

Province is Spassk-Dalnij, #1373, this remains SOV after bitter peace with GER/JAP; playing 1.084 TRM. Ah... , this province is in the Bitter peace event, but it didn't change hands because pre Bitter peace it was the only starting SOV province that was controlled by Manchukuo on the day before bitter peace triggered. I don't know why the province control didn't go to the puppet master (JAP) when the Axis first took the province.

 

[MagooNZ]

USA appears to obtain nukes earlier than historical in 1.08.4. I recall the first nuke was dropped around beginning of 1945. Will look up & post the exact date.

USA dropped its first nuke 29 Jan 45, second one Dec 45.

 

[Gringoesteban]

Yeah, January 1945 is a bit early.

Maybe the US sped up its tech research because it is not researching 1941 heavy cruiser or 1945(?) heavy and light cruiser techs any more in v1.08.4.

But since the USA dropped two nukes in August 1945 IRL, then maybe one in January and one in December evens out okay.

 

[LimaTango]

My thanks again to you for my favorite mod of my favorite game. The AAR is complete but I'll be playing again in the shadows very soon.

 

[MagooNZ]

This strategy allows GER interc/fighters to dominate the WAllies airforces. Build level 10 AA from Kiel all along the coast down to Brest apart from the no AA coastal province adjacent Lillie. Here, and in the no AA province adjacent to Paris build (eventually) level 10 Radar. Lillie needs increased AA level too. Base 2 or 3 groups of interceptors at these two existing level 10 airfields. 1 group at each location will have a night fighter leader and only fly at night. The other groups fly at day, except when filling in while a night fighter group repairs. They all get the close base combat bonus, and at night the radar combat bonus. Night fighter leaders also get the night fighter combat bonus at night, which is better than Superior Tactician. Also fly additional fighter & interceptor air groups, based at other airfields, to the two radar provinces, mostly at day. With these measures interceptions eliminate whole WAllied strat, tact, interc, and fighter squadrons. They are gone for good. WAllied planes have to fly across the two radar provinces in series in order to get to Cologne etc, so at least one good interception is guaranteed. If anyone tries this, will be interested to hear how you get on.

 

[MagooNZ]

Gringo, if you do another update. It would be good to have the option of playing past Dec 1946. I'm just not a good enough player to be able to defeat the USA by this time.

 

[Pioniere]

Hi Gringosebastin, if you like I could send you the Azad Hind nation I made. Might be something for Japan.

 

[Gringoesteban]

My thanks again to you for my favorite mod of my favorite game. The AAR is complete but I'll be playing again in the shadows very soon.

You're welcome. I enjoyed reading your AAR.

Gringo, if you do another update. It would be good to have the option of playing past Dec 1946. I'm just not a good enough player to be able to defeat the USA by this time.

The next time you load TRM, instead of clicking on the Start button on the right, click on the Options button on the left. One of the options is end date where can choose which year you want the Scenario to end. If you then load and save the mod, your save game file will include the new scenario end year and that will override TRM's December 1946 default end date.

USA appears to obtain nukes earlier than historical in 1.08.4.... USA dropped its first nuke 29 Jan 45, second one Dec 45.

Good to know. If (when?) I update TRM again, I will make the following two changes:
- Nuclear waste bomb tech 7170 double vanilla research cost in all categories because the Americans were dropping nukes too soon
- USA receives no nuke blueprints after 1944 nuclear waste bomb

Hi Gringosebastin, if you like I could send you the Azad Hind nation I made. Might be something for Japan.

Yes, please send it to me. If I ever do a 1.08.5 release, it will include Reichskommisariat nations representing the New Order East. Having something for puppeted India as well would be great.

 

[MagooNZ]

Thanks Gringo,
for some reason I couldn't select a new end date for a game already underway (using the options selection box). I edited the saved game file and edited some other file to give me the 1964 end year, so I'm back on track with more time to continue the struggle.
There is a minor error that I noted in the vanilla AoD108 bugs, concerning sea invasion of a small island province in the Fiji group. This needs changing in TRM because the invasion fleet goes to the wrong sea zone. Check out the historical AoD108 bugs thread for more details.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/invasion-of-taveuni-province.739212/

 

[Gringoesteban]

You can download the new beta version of TRM at the link below. I have not tested it as extensively as I tested prior releases, so I am calling it a 'beta' even though everything is complete and the Mod should run fine.

You do not need a dropbox account to download the file; just close the box that tries to get you to register and then you can immediately download TRM.

The file will unzip/extract into a new folder named TRM v1.08.5 YGFB. You need to manuallly copy the two application files aodgame.exe and arsenal.exe from elsewhere on your computer into the new folder before TRM can run. You do not need to extract this version of TRM over a clean version of AoD 1.08 like you did with prior releases. (However, if you do not want to manually copy the two exe files, go ahead and extract 1.08.5 over your existing 1.08.4 game folder or else over a clean version of AoD 1.08).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ece2q4nf65trzc7/TRM v1.08.5 YGFB.rar?dl=0

Ignore the save game files because they are not compatible with this new release. I forgot to clean out the save folder before zipping and uploading everything.

The detailed change control log is attached to this post in pdf format.

I will not be updating TRM for AoD 1.09 Make sure the aodgame.exe and arsenal.exe files you copy into the TRM folder are from AoD 1.08. (I do not know whether or not either of those files were changed for AoD 1.09)

 

[MagooNZ]

Thanks Gringo. I don't know whether I want a tougher game, 1.084 is significantly more difficult than earlier versions. After I annexed UK, USA launched sequential invasions of ENG & Ireland. 15 arm divs got ashore in ENG, and a similar number of mar/mech in Ireland. After dealing with them, USA has just launched two simultaneous invasions of Congo and Brazil, each with 6 mixed divs. The Brazil one will be easily dwelt with, but I have nothing close by for the Congo. I still don't have air or naval supremacy yet. I am going to try for air supremacy over the Caribbean before launching an invasion of USA. Just lost a couple of divs in the latest Nuke attack, down to 2 weak marine divs.
This time I haven't tried to delay the USA's research effort since the AI doesn't know how to cope with this. This costs $'s which I'm mainly using for infrastructure construction to maintain resource production. The risky strategy would be to maximise the military for a quick victory & hope for success otherwise the economy will implode.

 

[MagooNZ]

One point that has been a pain in TRM 1.084. I took MC of JAP in order to help them survive and to take the pressure off GER. For survival, JAP needs peace with CHI while army resources are directed at SOV. Every 2 years or so when the peace treaty with CHI expires, JAP immediately goes ahead and DOWs CHI. I then have to rush JAP troops in to stabilise the CHI front, before CHI offers a white peace. It would be good to have an event where JAP ask GER for permission to DOW CHI, rather than JAP just doing it.

 

[Gringoesteban]

Thanks Gringo. I don't know whether I want a tougher game, 1.084 is significantly more difficult than earlier versions.

Yeah, 1.08.5 is even tougher than previous versions. To be honest, it does not have too many new events or all that much extra flavor than 1.08.4, so you could stick with 1.08.4 for your next game and not lose out on anything.

After I annexed UK, USA launched sequential invasions of ENG & Ireland. 15 arm divs got ashore in ENG, and a similar number of mar/mech in Ireland. After dealing with them, USA has just launched two simultaneous invasions of Congo and Brazil, each with 6 mixed divs. The Brazil one will be easily dwelt with, but I have nothing close by for the Congo. I still don't have air or naval supremacy yet. I am going to try for air supremacy over the Caribbean before launching an invasion of USA. Just lost a couple of divs in the latest Nuke attack, down to 2 weak marine divs.

Good to see that the USA AI is putting up a fight. I myself rarely play past Bitter Peace and the UK surrender events.

If you take both Washington DC and Denver then the USA will lose its 270 free offmap IC.

Also, if you take Los Alamos, you will overrun the nuclear research facility and they will never pop a nuke on you again. If you have troops to spare, you could land several armor divisions in southwest Texas and have them make a suicide charge on Los Alamos.

 

[Gringoesteban]

....JAP needs peace with CHI while army resources are directed at SOV. Every 2 years or so when the peace treaty with CHI expires, JAP immediately goes ahead and DOWs CHI.... It would be good to have an event where JAP ask GER for permission to DOW CHI, rather than JAP just doing it.

Peace treaties in HOI2 are hardcoded to last only 18 months IIRC. To accomplish what you are trying to do, I suggest manually editing your save file by locating the JAP-CHI peace treaty and changing its expiration date to a day way out in the future (but no later than 30 December 1999).

 

[MagooNZ]

So that was what the USA industry in ruins (or similar named) event did; it sure plummeted their IC. Their capital was in Denver, not sure if that moved from Washington sometime.

So I probably cant do an event to stop that recurring JAP to CHI dow.

In the very last USA nuke attack, I lost 2 mech divs, leaving 1 mech at around 5% strength. 3 armoured divs were reduced to similar low strength, 4 fighter wings were lost, another 4 fighter wings were reduced to low strength, and a 30 ship fleet was reduced to 21, all remaining at low strength. That was a big hit. Fortunately, the USA mostly wastes its nukes. Otherwise there would be no chance to stay in the game.

A few months after I had taken the USA mainland, I noticed that at one of the USA's new South American allied airbase, the USA still had 52 air wings left. Even though I got a few more of their planes during the USA mainland invasion.

The invasion was a little touch and go at first. USA had very few land divs left. The invasion came down to how quickly I could take new provinces before the USA air force could drop that newly taken province down to 1%-3% infrastructure. Once I had surrounded a small pocket of four USA divs north of Miami, that was the turning point.

Canada took over the Royal Navy after I annexed ENG, so even that fleet didn't disappear.

For some reason, Dnepropetrovsk (#235) ended up with its infrastructure at a multiple of 5%, so I could only increase its infrastructure back up to 195%.

I just tried to abandon the GER navy doctrine to switch to Base Strike, but for some reason I was unable to completely roll back to start BS. The Abandon button just disappeared, after I had got rid of about half the already researched doctrines.

The USA didn't build a rocket test site. Building that would further help their research effort, but wasn't historical. Their Los Alamos nuclear reactor was, of course, at level 10.

This game was an enormous task, and took a lot of playing time. Thanks Gringo for such a massive challenge.

A couple of other points:
Making a suicide dash with a single Arm Div for Los Alamos wouldn't work because Los Alamos is protected by what looks like a stack of 3 locked garrison divs.
I could update interceptors to the 2nd level of turbojet (or perhaps only first level, but I think it was the second), but it seems that the last 2 turbojet levels cannot be upgraded to; so it looks like I will have to build replacement interceptors if I want to obtain the most advanced model. Appears to be no problem upgrading Fighters to the next turbojet model.

 

[Gringoesteban]

So that was what the USA industry in ruins (or similar named) event did; it sure plummeted their IC. Their capital was in Denver, not sure if that moved from Washington sometime..

The USA capital relocates to Denver if the USA loses any land province adjacent to Washington D.C.

So I probably cant do an event to stop that recurring JAP to CHI dow..

Not easily. Maybe a new AI switch file that changes Japan's likelihood to declare war, or reduces its claims on China. Or maybe you could create multiple events, each firing one year after the other, that makes peace between JAP and CHI and that would extend the peace treaty for another 18 months. But a single simple event, no, not possible.

....Fortunately, the USA mostly wastes its nukes.

AI nuke targeting is hardcoded, but at least the AI is much better in 1.08 than it was in prior versions of AoD. Although the Americans still never seem to drop a nuke where it would have the most impact....

Canada took over the Royal Navy after I annexed ENG, so even that fleet didn't disappear.

The entire Royal Navy gets scrapped in the UK Surrender event series. However, if you annex England instead of accepting its surrender then I do not know what happens.

For some reason, Dnepropetrovsk (#235) ended up with its infrastructure at a multiple of 5%, so I could only increase its infrastructure back up to 195%.

There is a SOV event to destroy a dam or something in that province which takes the infra down from 20 to 15. Therefore, the max you can build it up to is 195, as you said.

I just tried to abandon the GER navy doctrine to switch to Base Strike, but for some reason I was unable to completely roll back to start BS. The Abandon button just disappeared, after I had got rid of about half the already researched doctrines.

I have never tried to abandon a naval doctrine in HOI/AoD/TRM so I am not sure about this.

This game was an enormous task, and took a lot of playing time. Thanks Gringo for such a massive challenge.

Glad you enjoyed it.

....Making a suicide dash with a single Arm Div for Los Alamos wouldn't work because Los Alamos is protected by what looks like a stack of 3 locked garrison divs.

Yeah, I added the New Mexico National Guard (three locked garrison divisions) after Kilolima(?) reported on the forum that he used a suicide cavalry(?) group to destroy the Los Alamos facility. Two panzer divisions could probably overrun them before American reinforcements showed up.

I could update interceptors to the 2nd level of turbojet (or perhaps only first level, but I think it was the second), but it seems that the last 2 turbojet levels cannot be upgraded to; so it looks like I will have to build replacement interceptors if I want to obtain the most advanced model.

TRM interceptors may not be upgraded beyond Turbojet 1946 interceptors (which is not normally an issue because the Scenario typically ends in Dec 1946 ). If you want a more advanced interceptor model, the as you said, you will have to build new ones. In vanilla AoD, I believe that the 1943(?) interceptors may not be upgraded, so in TRM you get two additional models in your upgrade path before being required to build new units. The reason for this strange upgrade path has to do with where the rocket interceptor models are located in the division/interceptor file. It is theoretically fixable but it would be a huge pain.

 

[MagooNZ]

Next game. Because the USA still had 90 divs (mostly arm & mech & some marine) available for the defence of mainland USA, I needed to win the air war before attempting an invasion. I built level 10 airbases and AA guns on the 6 islands off Florida. Also in Bermuda and New Foundland. I had a high quantity of spies in place.
Started the air war, while still building up these airbases, on June 1, 1948 the USA has 47F & 86B. At first I could only make less than 1 in 5 interceptions, then things slowly improved.
July 8, 1948: USA has 47F & 77B
Aug 2, 1948: USA has 47F & 69B
Sept 11, 1948: USA has 44F & 63B
Oct 26, 1948: USA has 34F & 52B
Dec 4, 1948: USA has 30F & 40B
Jan 2, 1949: USA has 29F & 28B
Feb 1, 1949: USA has 25F & 19B
Mar 1, 1949: USA has 17F & 16B
Apr 15, 1949: USA has 8F & 8B

So it took about 10-11 months. When the USAF stopped its offensive, GER began bombing their closest airfields (Miami etc). I took losses but replaced them at a faster rate and so GER's fighter numbers, which started off at 40, increased to well above 50. I also upgraded some interceptors and moved them to Bermuda so more fighters could move to the 6 islands. Ended up with 40 fighters on the islands close to Florida. Also had fighters on Puerto Rico & New Foundland because the USAF was also bombing my airbase & troops there as well. I used ITA MTN divs as island garrison troops since they were the only ones with AA brigades.

 

[MagooNZ]

The USA mainland invasion is working out well. I have MC of JAP. I got JAP to launch a west coast diversionary invasion, the USA had next to no divs guarding the west coast beaches. The USA stripped their 2-3-4 divs per east coast province down to minimum & counterattacked the JAP invasion. Then I launched the real USA invasion on the east coast using GER & ITA troops. My plan was always to evacuate the west coast once the east coast invasion had got firmly ashore, but the USA AI was very aggressive and 4 JAP and 3 CHI divs were overrun so didn't make it back on to troop transports. By shear luck, I recaptured the empty LA province with retreating troops and so avoided the loss of another 3 JAP divs. USA divs had been redeploying to the east coast to meet the invasion there. So fairly good performance by the AI, they really hit the JAPs hard. The west coast invasion was only about 30 or so divisions.

 

[Commander666]

You can download the new beta version of TRM at the link below.... However, if you do not want to manually copy the two exe files, go ahead and extract 1.08.5 over your existing 1.08.4 game folder or else over a clean version of AoD 1.08).

Doing that I got "Fatal error: Could not initialize Video! If you are running in windowed mode, please make sure you are running in 16 bit color."

Sorry I am not sure if I am running 16 or 32 bit color and - before I start mucking with my laptop settings - like to check I did correctly the basic installation. This is what I did exactly:

Installed out-of-program-files a clean v1.08 and tested it. Works fine.
Downloaded TRM 1.08.5 into separate folder, and there unzipped it. Then I copied all the files in the TRM folder, and pasted them into my v1.08 folder, letting all overwrite. So I did not exactly "extract 1.08.5 over the existing clean version of AoD 1.08" I think. Rather I think I simply patched TRM over a clean 1.08. Probably it is the same thing - in which case I guess I got a color problem.

But as I kinda primitive doing these operations anyway, thought I would check with you before I get out the hammer to adjust my color settings. I see I have a program called Adobe gamma (32-bit). Is there no way to run TRM using that Windows 7 setting? Thanks!

 

[Gringoesteban]

Doing that I got "Fatal error: Could not initialize Video! If you are running in windowed mode, please make sure you are running in 16 bit color."

I think the error has to do with the settings in the arsenal.exe file. Manually launch the file by double clicking on it, then uncheck the windowed mode option.