France is in trouble. MUSSOLINI continues northward.
However, even in such a dark hour, there is hope, as Italian forces have been driven from North Africa.
After the initial battle, it was mainly a matter of shift-clicking.
Note France has grabbed part of it. I have to wonder what happens when Vichy pops--I imagine Italy gets it back. Considering I even trashed their theatre HQ, it shouldn't be hard to get it back.
Italy's German allies continue to contribute ineffectually to the main war effort.
Incidentally, the transport got away. The stacking penalty is a pain, at ~40 percent with ~20 ships. I have a few more modern BBs coming off the line in 1940. I'm thinking putting my modern ships together, in one group, will maximize lethality. Incidentally, something has done a number on the Carrier CAGs, and I sent them back to the Home Islands to regroup. CAGs seem to dramatically decrease the efficiency of Naval Bombers, as they're often somewhat disorganized by the time they get through.
France continues to fight against MUSSOLINI, even as the situation worsens. (In Hoi2, they'd give up right about now.)
I notice a bunch of Italian port strikes going on in Portsmouth. No doubt MUSSOLINI is preparing air superiority, in the hopes of eventual invasion of Britain.
(ok, that battle took place over France...I'm really surprised they keep Port Striking Portsmouth with seemingly little damage; I've scrambled fighters, and there's a pile of AA guns there from the start of the game.)
British 8th Army, in North Africa, has emerged a strong force, with 11 divisions and 3 armoured divisions. (I can already hear the German/USSR players laughing at me...) Since I can't just let it sit there I'm moving to Benghazi to Invade Sicily. Who knows, I might even rescue France :rofl:. I'm going after Sicily because I can cross into Italy if I control the strait, and if things go horribly wrong, I can keep control of the strait and still hold Sicily.
I took a corps out of BEF to go help 8th Army. And it hasn't actually "expeditioned" anywhere. It's sitting on 5 infantry and 3 mountain divisions. I'm debating if I should expand it to another army and send it into the Italian operation, or deal with this nonsense:
I'm debating when to deal with this nonsense:
The East African theater is like flossing and eating your vegetables: It's probably good for you, but that doesn't mean you want to do it.
The longer I wait, the longer it'll take for me to deal with it. But there's NOTHING THERE worth defending. They're not even trying to move North, to Alexandria. In Hoi1 my colonials could take it out. It's probably doing better because Ethiopia is a puppet; I'd be surprised if Italy, on its own, would put many troops there.
Also--a SUBMARINE? Your orders are to hold one land province, and you need a SUBMARINE? (That's the lost joke I'm having at the theater HQ's expense. Honest.)
Territorial Army I buffed up a bit, and it's sitting on three full corps for 15 infantry divisions. I'm going to resist the temptation to shrink it--I've done a good job catching transports, but I haven't actually sunk all that many.
My production has increased a lot:
You can see my radar stations are pretty cheap. I'm hopeful that they'll give me good intelligence gathering and help me out in air battles. (Also, they're thematic!)
Technology:
You can see I've backed off my "leadeship blitz", and in fact, I'm sitting on 103 percent leadership. There's not benefit for this, except if I grow too quickly I'll be able to know. I'm wondering how much I need to put into tech to "catch up" (and hopefully, maybe even out-tech). I'm researching Air Combat doctrines here, because with a pile of Air Combat experience (which is very easy to get) they research pretty quickly.
One area where I know I have no hope whatsoever is Armor Practical. Look at the screenshot closely. "But ComTrav," you say, "You have 10 Armor Practical. It's one of your higher values. Isn't that quite good?"
I have all of 7 armoured brigades in my army. Armor Practical is stupidly easy to build up; they're somewhat expensive, but they do seem to build very fast for amount of practical they give you. I can only imagine how much Armor Practical Germany is sitting on. (Or USSR, who in the '36 start starts with 20 armor practical. And they did Embargo me earlier. Also, "Winter War" came in July this year, just like Christmas.)
Also, I really want to focus on Espionage a little more, but it feels like the rate of spies for a leadership point is kinda low. I might ditch my diplomacy points once I get all the historical allies. Although espionage, to raise Germany's Threat, might do more good. Also, Ireland joined!
So:
France is in trouble. MUSSOLINI continues northward.
However, even in such a dark hour, there is hope, as Italian forces have been driven from North Africa.
After the initial battle, it was mainly a matter of shift-clicking.
Note France has grabbed part of it. I have to wonder what happens when Vichy pops--I imagine Italy gets it back. Considering I even trashed their theatre HQ, it shouldn't be hard to get it back.
Italy's German allies continue to contribute ineffectually to the main war effort.
Incidentally, the transport got away. The stacking penalty is a pain, at ~40 percent with ~20 ships. I have a few more modern BBs coming off the line in 1940. I'm thinking putting my modern ships together, in one group, will maximize lethality. Incidentally, something has done a number on the Carrier CAGs, and I sent them back to the Home Islands to regroup. CAGs seem to dramatically decrease the efficiency of Naval Bombers, as they're often somewhat disorganized by the time they get through.
France continues to fight against MUSSOLINI, even as the situation worsens. (In Hoi2, they'd give up right about now.)
I notice a bunch of Italian port strikes going on in Portsmouth. No doubt MUSSOLINI is preparing air superiority, in the hopes of eventual invasion of Britain.
(ok, that battle took place over France...I'm really surprised they keep Port Striking Portsmouth with seemingly little damage; I've scrambled fighters, and there's a pile of AA guns there from the start of the game.)
British 8th Army, in North Africa, has emerged a strong force, with 11 divisions and 3 armoured divisions. (I can already hear the German/USSR players laughing at me...) Since I can't just let it sit there I'm moving to Benghazi to Invade Sicily. Who knows, I might even rescue France :rofl:. I'm going after Sicily because I can cross into Italy if I control the strait, and if things go horribly wrong, I can keep control of the strait and still hold Sicily.
I took a corps out of BEF to go help 8th Army. And it hasn't actually "expeditioned" anywhere. It's sitting on 5 infantry and 3 mountain divisions. I'm debating if I should expand it to another army and send it into the Italian operation, or deal with this nonsense:
I'm debating when to deal with this nonsense:
The East African theater is like flossing and eating your vegetables: It's probably good for you, but that doesn't mean you want to do it.
The longer I wait, the longer it'll take for me to deal with it. But there's NOTHING THERE worth defending. They're not even trying to move North, to Alexandria. In Hoi1 my colonials could take it out. It's probably doing better because Ethiopia is a puppet; I'd be surprised if Italy, on its own, would put many troops there.
Also--a SUBMARINE? Your orders are to hold one land province, and you need a SUBMARINE? (That's the lost joke I'm having at the theater HQ's expense. Honest.)
Territorial Army I buffed up a bit, and it's sitting on three full corps for 15 infantry divisions. I'm going to resist the temptation to shrink it--I've done a good job catching transports, but I haven't actually sunk all that many.
My production has increased a lot:
You can see my radar stations are pretty cheap. I'm hopeful that they'll give me good intelligence gathering and help me out in air battles. (Also, they're thematic!)
Technology:
You can see I've backed off my "leadeship blitz", and in fact, I'm sitting on 103 percent leadership. There's not benefit for this, except if I grow too quickly I'll be able to know. I'm wondering how much I need to put into tech to "catch up" (and hopefully, maybe even out-tech). I'm researching Air Combat doctrines here, because with a pile of Air Combat experience (which is very easy to get) they research pretty quickly.
One area where I know I have no hope whatsoever is Armor Practical. Look at the screenshot closely. "But ComTrav," you say, "You have 10 Armor Practical. It's one of your higher values. Isn't that quite good?"
I have all of 7 armoured brigades in my army. Armor Practical is stupidly easy to build up; they're somewhat expensive, but they do seem to build very fast for amount of practical they give you. I can only imagine how much Armor Practical Germany is sitting on. (Or USSR, who in the '36 start starts with 20 armor practical. And they did Embargo me earlier. Also, "Winter War" came in July this year, just like Christmas.)
Also, I really want to focus on Espionage a little more, but it feels like the rate of spies for a leadership point is kinda low. I might ditch my diplomacy points once I get all the historical allies. Although espionage, to raise Germany's Threat, might do more good in terms of building the Alliance. The US neutrality is too high. Belgium/Netherlands are close to me; I considered inviting them in in a an attempt to save France, but they'll probably just get steamrolled by Germany and I this is a good way to deny the MUSSOLINI wannabee who runs that country some IC.
Also, Ireland joined the allies!
So:
With the luck of the Irish, we can't be beaten! (Really, I'm just hopeful that if some Axis bit player like Ethiopia lands in Northern Ireland with one div, I won't have to worry.)