German Naval Adventures
With the server being down and little esle to do I played out the grand part of my German campaign on Har/Furious.
I had overrun almost all of Europe by the end of 1941, I left Switzerland intact (They really don't seem worth the effort and it provides a nice place to store loot
), Finland and Turkey. With the last 2 I built up relations and kept them as neutral buffer states vs. the Soviet Union. With my fortress defences from the Baltic to the Black Sea progressing nicely I had plans for a naval invasion into Canada in late spring 1942. My manpower had reached a rather low level of only 400 and with tons of IC to spare I decided to start building an armada to be finished in early '43. Building 12 type V CVs and 12 type V BBs and a whole bunch of type V CLs and DDs simultaneously took a huge bit of my IC, but I could afford it given the situation in December 1941.
In January things went a bit worse, worried by the huge drain in manpower I relpaced my Prince of Terror minister with a Man of the People. The result was a huge drop in IC and I could barely keep up my production. I managed to make ends meet by delaying several Battleships for a few months and absorbing my supply stockpile.
Besides planning an invasion of Canada, I had a limited number of assets operating in Africa and the Middle East in order to annex Italy and Vichy France. They were quite succesfull in overrunning the North African coast, capturing Egypt and Suez, pushing into Iraq via Syria. An interesting side operation were 3 marine division carrying out landings across the West African coast and using a total of mountain divisions to capture key interior provinces. One of those successes included the conquest of Belgian Congo resulting in their annexation. By Spring 1942 my 3 marine divisions had landed on the South African coast and encountered only light resistance. They managed to conquer all of South Africa and managed to annex them in 2 months time.
However by that time things started to become very interesting. In April that year, the USA declared war upon me, shortly followed by Mexico and Panama. All of them joined the Allies shortly afterwards. Given that my armada wouldn't be finished for almost year and with my main fleet supporting operations along the African coast I decided on taking a huge gamble.
Given that USA had been neutral till sofar and their army being comparatively small I decided to strike at them while they were still weak on the land. My main fleet consisted of only 4 CVs, 3 BBs, 3 BCs, 3 CAs 8 CLs and 5 DDs. And had about 60 divisions immediately available for offensive operations. The risk involved was that Europe would be lightly defended and I had doubts on wether the East Wall would be able to prevent a breach of a concentrated Soviet attack. With most of offensive forces an Ocean and Continent away I might not get back in time to halt a Soviet breakthrough.
For the USA invasion I moved the bulk of my offensive forces towards Spain and quickly pulled the main fleet from Africa back to Europe. Within a month the fleet had set course to capture Bermuda and proceed to attempt a landing on the US East Coast.
Based on my experiences with during the Japan campaign I had some positive feelings on invading a US led by the AI. Since most the US ICs are located on the East Coast I could quickly take out the bulk of their industry. Also my forces had a large component of panzer divisions allowing for a rapid advance once a beachhead was established. The landing site that I picked was Dover near Washington seeing that I could them there for the most ICs early on and taking out their main naval bases on the East Coast. Initially the landing did not go very well. My fleet got constantly harrassed by the Americans and bad weather prevented the effective use of my carriers. My other capital ships managed to save the day and despite sustaining heavy damage I managed to hold off the US fleet long enough to establish a beachhead with losing any ships. My marines used in the assault on the garrison defending the beach suffered heavy losses and I needed to deploy my other forces to break through in the end.
A setback during the invasion of the US was that I also had to face both Mexico and Canada, the latter being a bigger source of resistance than I had anticipated. Due to Canadian Forces I managed only to get as far inland till the Great lakes with the first assault wave. It took several months till enough reinforcements had arrived that I could progress further inland without risking being cut off. Another part of the first wave was sent southwards to Florida and the Misissippi river. They came to a halt in Northern Florida. Faced with same lack of initial troops it took time for me to ship divisions across the Atlantic and continue the advance. After the rest of my army had arrived I could continue a largely unopposed advance, the biggest nuisance encountered was the US airforce that destroyed one HQ division and severly depleted several others.
By the end 1942 nearly all of North America was overrun, thanks to surrounding, cutting off and annihilating enemy armies. The Winter of 1942-1943 was fairly quiet with my forces reaching the Pacific and finishing the conquest of Mexico and Canada.
The next problem was capturing the last US VP locations in the Pacific, I could not attack Panama from the Atlantic sice and had to sail all the way along South America to stage a landing operation. Also Panama was well defended by 3 divisions. The good news was, by that time my armada was ready providing me a huge source of support in invading the Panama Canal. The combined bombardment bonus from my fleets reduced the defenders effectiveness to only 1% allowing my marines to capture the canal. With the Canal secure my Panama itself fell quickly there after and I was ready to invade the Pacific.
Over the next several months the remaining US strategic positions in the Pacific fell easily and the US was finally annexed on June 24th 1943.
Currently I am working on an invasion of New Zealand and Australia, though I need time to ship in reinforcements from America. The annexation of the USA has freed up a lot of my TC and I my armies should operate more effectively now. Also conquest of the USA has yielded a lot of ICs and I have now enough to cover my needs, which include upgrading and reinforcing my entire army, building a nuclear reactor and recruiting a few mechanized divisions. My biggest worry however is my lack of manpower which has just dropped below 200
. For some reason reinforcements seem to take up a lot more then what is mentioned under the IC reinforcement slider tooltip
. It will take at least a year of peace to regain my manpower, peace that I will not as long as the British Empire still exists. The positive prospects are that the Russian are contended by keeping a lot of troops on their side of the border but sofar they only remain at war with Japan, although neither side appears to be making any progress. If things go well enough I can finally annex France and take out Australia, New Zealand and the Phillipines. The British would be more difficult. They still appear to have a lot of divisions and they have taken back huge stretches of territory in Africa, though mostly worthless land. I need to conquer a lot of islands in the Pacific to take out the Allies and conquering India and South-East Asia may prove difficult although I haven't been able to asses allied strength in that area. Even if it will not take manpower I still need a lot of time to capture all that territory.
I just want to know what I should do next, soldier on and take out the allies, perhaps start releasing puppet nations to get rid of partisan activity although I currently have enough TC again and I do not know whom to release. Other possibilities releasing puppets to free up forces to fight on other fronts. African puppets are perhaps the most likely, since I am reluctant to sacrifice IC. Or maybe there are opportunities I have missed somehow.
Note that an alliance with Japan is out of the question due to their war with the Soviet Union, which I cannot win given the current number of troops located in Europe and my manpower reserve.
