Continuing with the same handsoff game I've been posting about:
1. Germany never managed to get Moscow, and never eliminated the Soviet salient created when the USSR counterattacked across the Dnepr. The line remained fairly static at this point, but it was pretty clear that each year Germany had less and less to throw at the troops facing them.
2. The US at some earlier date did Operation Torch and established itself in northwest Africa, but didn't really have much to do except conquer a handful of provinces. Then at some point in 1944, the US invaded France. I say 'at some point' because I was so focused on the Russian front that I missed it, I first noticed the US invasion in Sept 1944 when they'd already liberated about 66% of France. Germany had left a tissue-paper defense, there was really nothing to slow the US down, it rolled eastward and captured Berlin in early Dec 1944. It continued eastward until it met the Soviets at a more or less north-south line with Danzig as the northernmost point.
3. Germany finally surrended in mid-Feb 1945. Then the creation of the new Europe began. The Soviets only got 2 puppets out of it (Bulgaria and Romania), probably because the US had occupied all the others (I've read where some people complained that the US pushing far east wasn't being honored by the surrender triggers, in this game it definitely was). In a very odd event, because the US occupied the lands for East Germany, no East Germany was formed, instead it still remains in the hands of the US. All other countries were recreated as expected. IMO, this needs to be fixed, it just looks wrong and is extremely ahistorical, my suggestion would be that if the US owns the East Germany provinces that they either be given to West Germany outright or given to Poland, or somehow split between the two. But the US should not have territory in Europe after VE day.
4. This left Finland and Italy to clean up. Russia conquered and annexed Finland, no surprises there. But once again, the bug that keeps a country from attacking has risen its ugly head. The US has about 100 divisions in Italy and it won't do a thing with them. Now that I've seen this bug twice, I can say that it's created by surrender events in some way. In my first game the US and its allies became impotent to attack Japan when Nat China surrendered to Japan (status quo), in this game the US and allies became impotent to attack Italy when Germany surrendered. It's a strange bug, in some ways the US knows it's still at war (it will continue to gather troops in the right provinces, for instance), yet it can't act on that knowledge correctly. It's been partially peaced.
5. The US is still bug-free in the Pacific theatre, the Manchukuo landing is definitely a scripted event, no way it randomly happened twice in back to back games. The US had a harder time this time around because its naval power is weaker than last time, but it still pulled it off, Manchukuo is annexed as of the Spring of 1945, now the US needs to gather enough troops to liberate Korea and China.
6. The US use of subs is bugged. 172 of their 180 subs are permanently station in the ports of San Diego and San Francisco. I'm not the only person who has seen this problem, so something is keeping the AI from deploying them, at least under some circumstances. I know the AI -can- deploy subs correctly, I've seen the both the US and Germany use them in exactly the right way, so it's not a global bug but a situation-specific one. In the game where it did deploy them the US had a strong surface fleet, in this game where they didn't deploy them the US fleet had been almost eliminated. Is sub deployment somehow fleet related for the US? It's not for Germany, they had all their subs out trying to interdict the US transports headed for France (nice job, AI, but not enough subs to pull it off *comfort*), and Germany has all but lost all its surface ships.
