Annals of the OKW- A 1936 Germany AAR

[Chilango2]

I am playing vanilla, yes. Since the goal is to test the AI as most players will experience it, I felt it wouldn't be right to install a mod, altough when this AAR is over I fully intend to install some sort of mod that makes the AI smarter and a map mod.

The nice thing about this is that since the land war is 90% of our concern, and since we're mainly testing to see how the AI reacts when given particular commands, the buggy production AI won't matter too much.

 

[notger.heinz]

...
Play with the AI. I'll happily read through several conquests of Poland using differing AI control setups: AI at army level, AI at army group level, whether it makes a difference if the AI controlled units are attached to a theatre command. Anything you can think of.

...

So try something else, such as following the plan you outlined (In the south, pick the orange or yellow arrow as you please).

Or give the entire attack to army group or even theatre AI, see what happens. I'd really like to read your analysis of that.

PS: I also wish to know how you manage air and naval forces assigned to the Polish campaign.
Edit: Grr, emu'ed as usual...I'll let it stand unchanged anyway.

I second that.

The beauty of this AAR is the use of the AI, so I too would rather see different AI-using-strats and the management of air and naval forces in conjunction with the battle AI.

 

[d@rkWolf]

If this is vanilla 1.2 I will predict :
- The UK have 250 transports and build little else, that is at least 225 too many. You will have to hack production AI (or use Reisenders's) to change this and find out what you want to do with the 200 transports (the last are really cheap).
- It will be near impossible to do any trades after Poland as your threat makes trade impossible. (well You might not really care
- No one has anywhere near enough convoys as they haven't build any, this will be the end of the UK as they won't build any new when you sink those they have.
- Japan is in economic ruin (at least if the convoys haven't been fixed), they have near zero of some of their resources including oil, fuel and are producing at 50-75% of max. (possibly Italy too soon after Danzig).

Yeah, you are right, my UK had around 220-250 transports around years 39-40, not sure when I looked on em, also Japan, Italy and probably other Axis members are economic ruins, only my Germany is owning totally with resources.

I still have some pretty good contacts, like US, where Im using influence for several years and I can easilly trade with em at start of year 43:rofl:, they are somewhat in the middle of triangle, still moving a bit to Axis(not much cause of threat Germany has after all the war declarations, annexations etc.), or Persia, but I had all resources at 99999 before start of the war with Poland(both crude oil and fuel also), so even with build factories(not sure how many, probably around 30+ in years 36 and 37), I have enough resources for many years of fighting(I´m now actually only loosing some rares, cause USA have nothing more to sell right now).

 

[Baltasar]

Chilango2, I've adopted your way of building infantry divisions, but I tend to use 2 arm brig + 1 mot brig for tank divisions, later it may switch to 1 arm +1 mech +1 sp art. For Garrisons, I only use 1 gar + 2 mp brigades, that seems to be reasonably given the sheer number of garrisons one needs.

On which level do you attach your planes? I attach CAS and int / multi to corps level when it's a mechanised / panzer corps, otherwise they're attached at army level. I've not dared to attach my fleet yet, when I did once, the AI split up the fleet and made a fleet out of every single ship.

A side note: When I attacked Yougoslavia and annexed them, I later established Croatia. However, I couldn't supply a single divison in Serbia because I somehow didn't have a connection there, although both Croatia and Hungary were members of the Axis. It seems that anything beyound the reach of ones allies isn't in supply range, even though it's your territory. May be I'v got to annex Italy as well, so I get a sea connection to Serbia

I've also tried not to dow BeNeLux and march right through the French defenses, but that's a no go. Losses are way too high and the Germans don't make any progress, regardless whether or not I assign every single plane for ground attack or not. That seems to be fairly good balanced though, because the French AI doesn't make any progress either, their attack units are being bombed as soon as they leave their positions.

In another game, I did invade France successfully and got the Vichy event, but then the British seemed keen in overcrowding their Channel Islands with some 50,000+ troops. They tried to get more room on the French coast, but given their penalities, they just stumbled over each other and were repeatedly beaten back with a loss ration of about 1:10. I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of them, because they're simply annoying, not a danger. However, apart from that there're no other landings as of yet, may be the AI only want's one amphibious operation at any given time?

PS.: The Russian army surely scares the hell out of me. Waiting for my panzers to be completed and then we'll see how good the AI is when it faces player controled panzer korps.

 

[Chilango2]

Baltasar- Funnly enough in my second game that's what my arm divisions look like, 2 arm 1 mot: slightly higher IC costs, but the same amount of time and lower MP cost. I don't remember why exactly I built 1 arm 2 mot my first game, maybe trying to squeeze more out of my IC on the fly, maybe. I know that by 1940 I was building arm brigades by themselves with the plan of converting my 1 arm 2 mot divisions into 2 arm 1 mot divisions.

As for planes, last game I had 1 tac, 1 int and 1 CAS all attached at the army level. That seemed to work well overall, but it definitely lead to overstacking issues.

This time I have 8 tac wings instead of 6 and no CAS, as well as 5 Int wings in the east. I've attached 2 tac wings to each panzerarmy, that choice is easy enough, I then proceeded to attach tac wings to whichever army I felt needed it (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th). I'm still debating what to do with my int wings. I'm currently thinking perhaps attach one to 4th and 8th armies, and then just leave the other three attached at the theatre level under human control and have them just run AS. Air missions, once you figure out how to set the area, are relatively painless to leave under human control, its basically automated just like HOI2, just with better control over what area the plane deals with.

I really like the way that forts are handled in HOI3 over HOI2. In HOI2 they added to the defenders defense efficency, in HOI3 they subtract from the attackers attack efficiency. It sounds like a small enough change, but it definitely seems to mechanically work better to me and lead to more realistic results. And yes, maginot is not to be fooled with. Whereas in the previous game with a proper bombing procreational you could overwhelm the maginot line, here you really should go around it.

--
Got a little bit of play time in yesterday and should be able to finish playing through Poland today, that'll probably mean an update on Friday or Saturday, Thursday if we're lucky.

 

[Dakk]

I really like the way that forts are handled in HOI3 over HOI2. In HOI2 they added to the defenders defense efficency, in HOI3 they subtract from the attackers attack efficiency. It sounds like a small enough change, but it definitely seems to mechanically work better to me and lead to more realistic results. And yes, maginot is not to be fooled with. Whereas in the previous game with a proper bombing procreational you could overwhelm the maginot line, here you really should go around it.

I did not know that about HOI3, nice touch!

I does indeed make a big difference, for example let´s take 2 divisions defending and 5 attacking, with a nominal "strength" of 10 and lvl 10 land forts giving a 70% bonus/malus:

Given a 70% bonus to defenders
2 divisions defending, 20*1.7 = [B]34 [/B]strength
5 divisions attacking, 50 = [B]50 [/B]strength
= huge attacker advantage

Given a 70% malus to attackers
2 divisions defending, 20 = [B]20 [/B]strength
5 divisions attacking, 50*0.3 = [B]15 [/B]strength
= significant defender advantage

Big difference!
(all values above for comparison only, and not taking into effect ORG and the like)

 

[Gankenstein]

Maginot is not impregnable though.
- When playing the demo I set the Bitburg AI to defensive, objectives Mulhouse & Strasbourg during the Polish campaign, then left the west to the AI. The AI actually took Mulhouse.
- In 1.1c and 1.2 both I've seen the AI breach the Maginot line. In these cases Italy had occupied sizable bits of France so I believe forces had been moved away from Maginot to try and deal with Italy.

 

[d@rkWolf]

Maginot is not impregnable though.
- When playing the demo I set the Bitburg AI to defensive, objectives Mulhouse & Strasbourg during the Polish campaign, then left the west to the AI. The AI actually took Mulhouse.
- In 1.1c and 1.2 both I've seen the AI breach the Maginot line. In these cases Italy had occupied sizable bits of France so I believe forces had been moved away from Maginot to try and deal with Italy.

ok-every fortress can fall...for example when defenders run away...so yes, even AI sometimes go through the Maginot line, but thats because defenders moved away, otherwise, you need very strong offensive power to seize em, I was able to push Russians through Finnish Fortress line north of Lenningrad, but only because they had mobile infantry almost out of org while I was pursuing em with 2 armor divisions with 3x Arm + 2x S-P Art and thats a huge overkill with all that Combined Arms bonus

As for planes, last game I had 1 tac, 1 int and 1 CAS all attached at the army level. That seemed to work well overall, but it definitely lead to overstacking issues.

This time I have 8 tac wings instead of 6 and no CAS, as well as 5 Int wings in the east. I've attached 2 tac wings to each panzerarmy, that choice is easy enough, I then proceeded to attach tac wings to whichever army I felt needed it (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th). I'm still debating what to do with my int wings. I'm currently thinking perhaps attach one to 4th and 8th armies, and then just leave the other three attached at the theatre level under human control and have them just run AS. Air missions, once you figure out how to set the area, are relatively painless to leave under human control, its basically automated just like HOI2, just with better control over what area the plane deals with.

AI and human control tends to overstack Air units. I was not able to find out, how to effectively fight with planes. Soviets are attacking with stacks of 20+ planes(lve looked on em, they have 80+ air units, around 50 interceptors) and even with their huge stacking penalty, my stacks of 2 Interceptors with superior tech are not able to do anything to them while their stacks seems to be pretty effective, at least bombers, cause they already almost KOed several of my units, not menstion few HQs(these are down pretty fast attacked with 10+ bombers at once)

 

[Pier]

The Germans took Eben Emael with not even 100 paratroopers...

Forts can be taken.

 

[Chilango2]

The Germans took Eben Emael with not even 100 paratroopers...

Forts can be taken.

Yes, forts can be taken. Nobody debates this. But the strategic question is *should* forts be taken? The answer, as a general rule, is no. The wise player should, when possible, go *around* forts. The whole point of mobile modern warfare is to hit the enemy not where they are strong, but where they are weak.

I could take Maginot, but why on earth should I when I have the means to get around it fairly easily?

 

[unmerged(25169)]

Firstly i must congratulate Chilango2 on a very enjoyable and informative AAR.

Pier; The Germans took Eben Emael with not even 100 paratroopers...

Forts can be taken.

QUOTE Chilango2 Yes, forts can be taken. Nobody debates this. But the strategic question is *should* forts be taken? The answer, as a general rule, is no. The wise player should, when possible, go *around* forts. The whole point of mobile modern warfare is to hit the enemy not where they are strong, but where they are weak.

I could take Maginot, but why on earth should I when I have the means to get around it fairly easily?[/QUOTE]

I agree to both and in the case of Eben Emael it was taken to facilitate the kind of mobile warfare which nullified the more major Maginot Line along the French boarder

 

[Gankenstein]

Well, speaking of mobile warfare I really wished I'd had some panzer corps nearby back in the demo when the AI breached the Maginot for me

I agree it's better to circumvent them fortresses, however I had an 1.1c game where Belgium & Luxemburg went and joined the Comintern which sort of limited my options.

 

[SFJackBauer]

But the strategic question is *should* forts be taken?

Just to corroborate this, from Sun Tzu "Art of War":

3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans;
the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces;
the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

 

[Chilango2]

Okay, no update today, and probably no update tomorrow either, which probably means no update this week.

You can blame the worst time BSOD, which triggered *right* as I finished reorganizing all my leaders for every division, and has robbed my will to live.

As for the BSOD: probably not paradox's fault, I probably need to update y video card drivers.

 

[unmerged(156111)]

You can blame the worst time BSOD, which triggered *right* as I finished reorganizing all my leaders for every division, and has robbed my will to live.

I have also been plagued with crashes the last week.... it is sucking the life out of me too
Got an updated video driver and at least I have been able to save the games the last few days witout any BSOD.

DON'T GIVE UP YET - There is too much potential in this game to give up!

I hope to finally start my Barbarossa this weekend. Still waiting for your Barbarossa

 

[unmerged(152826)]

Great to see this AAR up and running again

 

[Chilango2]

Don't worry, I'm not giving up.

 

[d@rkWolf]

thats still good, only tons of leaders...I´ve kinda lost my saves, they totally corrupted itself, my last save is over 100MB, the one before it(just 2 days of ingame time) was 62MB, the one before 40MB, these 3 from today, while the end one from yesterday was 29MB, the big ones are filling with cloned lines, there is like 1 milliard of lines with Italian Annexation of Albania event...they keep adding and the game tends to be totally unplayable after loading these saves , I´ll probably try to manually repair, but if it fails, I´m going to wait till next patch with playing...

 

[Jorath13]

Interestingly I've had the same issues when I played CORE HoI 1, I'd have a CTD if I tried placing tons of units on the map. Hopefully you didn't lose quite so much work that can't be replaced...

 

[nessin]

With regards to Eben Emael is, like most other references, supporting an idea on the exception rather than the rule. For one, it was pretty big surprise out of nowhere. Of course the Belgians knew it could be coming anytime, it still was a shocker. Not to mention the operation was planned with a lot of training on a full scale model of the fort and used new methods of warfare (hollow charges) to achieve their success.