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wanted to ask : what do your forces look like when you kick off barbarossa? considering all the SS units you get what do you build? do you build any naval units since you also get a lot of ships through events? or is it a better strategy to conserve resources and not build a lot anything beside infantry and garrisons?
 
Only thing I can think of is that MP costs are deducted at the start of a serial run of builds, IIRC, so maybe the AI starts some insane series of INF builds or something ? Does seem odd !

Tim

Then counting MP for AI would be different from human player. When you start a serial run of INF only MP for the first unit is deducted.
 
It seems I can´t upgrade Reserve Div (with additional Eng brigade) in my production queue from 1935 tech to 1939. There is no problem, however, doing so for GAR with Eng brigade.
 
Okay, so I now played 1936-1941 with the newest CORE version as Germany.

Everything up to the war went as usual. I cancelled the marine program including the subs since they do nothing (see other thread). All the events triggered as intended an so in Sept 1939 it was time for war.
Poland was quickly overrun by my armored forces. Simultaneously I attacked the Netherlands (but not Belgium) with some infantry to get an optimal position against France. Denmark was also conquered in the first days of September. After I redeployed west, I attacked Belgium and France and triggered Vichy in late October 1939.
Italy joined the Axis later but did nothing the whole game. Not a single province conquered in Greece or Africa although especially at the Egyptian border, there are 30 Italian divisions total versus 3 British.
In the winter, I conquered and puppeted Spain to get Gibraltar. Worked without problems.
On 17. April 1940, I launched Barbarossa. In the swampy and forested area in the North, I only progressed slowly. I used my armored and motorized divisions to rush through the Steppe, then some units north to Moscow. A big pocked with 100 Russian divisions was the result. In the winter 40/41, there were the only drawbacks in my advance. Some provinces were lost to the Red Army, but after the snow and mud was gone, I had no problems getting bitter peace.

It's summer of 1941 now, I am preparing for England, mainly focussing on paratroopers. I sent 9 divisions to Africa and drove the Brits out of Egypt. Italy does nothing. USA is still neutral.

I think there are too many useless researchs. Why should anyone research heavy tanks or infantry tanks? The whole tree to the right of the armored techs seems useless. In the middle, you gain the important armored divisions and enough brigades. Anything else is not needed. In fact, the research of heavy tanks makes you armored divisions even worse! (more expensive etc.)
 
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Played a hands off game as Costa Rica. I am in mid 1942.

Pre-war everything seemed to go well. SCW ended in December 1938 with NatSpa victory. Japan invaded China, and struggled mightily for most of the time. Took until 1938 to get Shanxi annexed by NatChi. No seaborne landings. Then Japan rushed forward to the first major (Yellow?) river line. Then an amphibious landing in Shanghai which was expanded fairly well and eventually linked up with the main invasion. Later an invasion of Hainan which eventually expanded to join the rest (after a few years). China is still alive in 1942, and is in apparent near-stalemate. Japan keeps trying to cut off the Burma Road from the Chinese side (mostly succeeding). They did get Indochina from Vichy, but apparently refused to garrison it, as NatChi took it over as fast as they could push troops into it. They are currently just about stuck with a province somtimes bordering Chongqing, sometimes not.

Germany took its sweet time in invading Poland, taking a week just to get out of starting positions. Eventually finished Poland within a month. Finland was beaten by the Soviets in January (got "what they asked for"). Denmark fell quick and easy. Then troubles started. Germany failed to invade Norway before they DOWed the Benelux countries in April 1940, took Netherlands by end of month, stuck in Belgium, managed to take Reims and go behind the front lines and got capitulations of Belgium and France nearly at the same time. A few seconds after Paris was occupied the second time, Italy joined the Axis. Vichy went off without a hitch. THEN they went back to invading Norway, helped by a suddenly Axis Finland, who took provinces all the way to Narvik. Then war at sea and the Balkans in 1941. This is where it went REALLY awry. Germany DOWed Yugo in March 1941, beat them in a month with a little help from their friends Rom, Hung, and Bulg., Italy was a fail. But then Italy DOWed Greece. Even with Germany's help, Greece lasted until almost October 1941. They eventually died, but Barbarossa was a fail for 1941, and the USSR had time to get itself a couple of "Panic Build" events, along with other Gearing up for War events. When Germany finally invaded in May 1942, they got maybe a province or two into the USSR and then standstill. Most attacks seem to center on the Pripet Marsh region.

Japan was an Epic Fail in the Pacific. They DOWed everybody (US and the Allies) in August 1941. Surprise attack netted them Guam, and a couple of footholds in the Phillipines. That's all they had 2 months later with "Offensive Winds Down" event occurred. They got beaten in battle after battle in the seas around the Phillippines and couldn't land anything significant. Where I am in 1942, Guam, Eniwetok, Wake, Marcus, and Midway are changing hands back and forth. The Japanese have about half of Borneo, most of the Phillippines (keeps losing at Manila, though), has a toehold on New Guinea, and has managed to pressure Siam into the war, and together took back Indochina. No attempts to land in Malaya, Singapore, or the rest of the East Indies. Looks like basically a stalemate until the US overwhelms them.

Italy first advanced a few provinces into Egypt but now has lost most of Libya, all of bribed Haile Selassie-led Ethiopia (as expected), and the Allies DOWed Vichy through event and UK landed in West Africa and is slowly making their way across North Africa to meet the forces in Libya. Looks like a done deal in Africa. Strangely, the US took both Corsica and Sardinia long before the DOW on Vichy (strange because in OTL, the US would not have invaded islands in the Med without securing north Africa first) and doesn't otherwise seem to be participating in Europe, for now.

Hope all this helps.

I must comment that I love CORE and where it's going. KUTW.

A couple of observations if I may (sorry to wall of text you): the US gets too much IC too early and it seems to have greatly hampered the Japanese advance too quickly, even with surprise attack. Likewise, the USSR may get a bit too powerful too early. Also, SOMEthing is wrong with Germany in that it should not take 6 months for it to conquer Greece, delaying Barbarossa until May 1942, and it stalled trying to take the Low Countries, only getting through by managing to catch the French napping at Reims. It took 3-4 months of hard combat to get Vichy from the start of Benelux hostilities, most of it dealing with Belgium. Is Germany too militarily weak, or is it an across-the board issue with all powers too weak on the offense?

I'll continue my game, or load as other countries if anyone wants me to.
 
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Playing as Germany, Game progressed historically for the most part, Nationalist Spain won the civil war near the end of '38. Italy joined the Axis after the fall of Paris in june 1940. Italy does not attack Egypt at all (Just stacks units on the Libyan border)however and does not invade Greece. Finland joined the Axis before Barbarossa but did not make peace with the Western Allies. Japan controls much of the Chinese coast and advanded to Changsa and Hankou. don't seem to fire, SS creation events seem to be hit and miss, so I save and load the game then they usually fire. Is there a Barbarossa surprise bonus to the Axis or penalty to the USSR? Didn't get an event for that. Convoy raiding is awful, doesn't sink more then 8 ships a month with roughly 100 u-boats convoy raiding. U-boats have sunk many british warships however and seem overpowered in that regard. Nationalist China annexed Communist China after Japan conquered Yanan, Nat. China shouldn't be able to do that.
 
Allow me to add to my last post. I loaded up as the major powers and had some interesting observations. Germany was building one series of mech, one of mot, and one of arm. There were a few security (garrison) and reserve (militia) series as well. The vast majority of production was being devoted to subs. This is while heavily engaged with the USSR. They have about 200 divisions with 84 being Inf, 30+ mot, 10+ mech, and 20+ arm. The reason they stalled above seems to be that they are switching forces south to try to drive to Odessa after they failed to advance towards Minsk and Smolensk, but the USSR is mirroring those moves.

Speaking of the USSR, they and Nat Chi seem to have some issues. The USSR built 130+ subs (!) and 50+ DDs, and only have about 305 divisions, They have some more navy in queue (level 10 BBs), and do have a bunch of reserve and lt arm queued as well. Barbarossa needs to run a bit longer for me to draw more conclusions about Ger/USSR comparisons. It's still June 27, 1942, only a few months after Ger DOWed them. It certainly will be a slugging match for either side. The USSR does have massive numbers of upgrades to do (200+ divisions, 150+ brigades).

Nationalist China is in absolutely dire straits. They have an incredible 95.3% dissent. If Japan got off its collective arse it should find only the terrain and the occasional partisan to be the biggest obstacle to winning there. China only has 14 effective IC and can only afford to work on less than one reserve division series at a time. They do have 150+ divisions but all are reserves, and with that much dissent they will soon start losing to the partisans that will pop up in their own provinces. All this despite having 4945 manpower in reserve.

Japan, however, I didn't do justice to. I hadn't noticed they had landed at Columbo, and will take the other province (Trincomalee) in the Indian Ocean if they just push forward with their 4 divisions. They are about to complete the ejection of the British in Borneo, and most of the Dutch East Indies are ripe for the plucking if they move on them. The Phillippines and Hong Kong will be a very tough nut to crack though due to US land reinforcement there. They are also about to receive a wave of 50+ British/Indian divisions on their Southeast Asian front and will likely be overrun there. China needs to be finished quick. Worse is what the US will do to them. The US build queue with 700+ effective IC overall has the proverbial metric f***tons of BBs and CVs being built. Not too much else, though. At least by comparison. They WILL destroy the Japanese fleet and the cowering German fleet. They aren't poised to make more than shoestring land grabs with more than a few divisions, though. They have barely over 100 total divisions.

No side has lost much in terms of capital ships, but there have been massive losses of DDs and SSs (UK has 300+ ships, US 290+ ships). Most majors' research was about where I expected to be, and looks good. Most majors also had almost no escorts (even negative numbers for some) but massive numbers of convoys (many hundreds, or even thousands)--WAD?

A couple of quirks I was wondering about, the AI does NO intelligence gathering, does it already know the full makeup of everybody's forces? Also there are a bunch of units in queues that could be updated but haven't been. Is this WAD?
 
Thanks a lot for your observations.

A few answers:
Germany is programmed to aim for a 300 sub fleet. Whether this is wise is a different matter, but it is historical. We have just cut Germany down from having 100 subs pre-war.

Good points about Soviets, we have not looked at them in a long time and naval overbuilding may be a problem.

The 95.3 % dissent hit - as far aw we know - for NAT CHI is a consequence of "the cause is lost" events kicking in. We may have to change the triggers for China there (from 80% lost provinces to 90%).

We have overshot the target with Japan regarding invasion distances and will cut this down.

100 land divisions is historical for the US, AFAIK.
 
I installed this version of CORE onto 1.06B2A, loaded up the game, got the right checksum but when it loads up a scenario, it says that China's national culture thing cannot be found or does not exist or something. :S
 
A sure sign of a bad install ....

Make a fresh install of 1.06b2 and install CORE, read all the messages and make sure all the paths are correct.
 
I created a new 1.06B2a, then reinstalled this CORE version and now I got event command problems
Meh, the Third Reich Mod works just fine so I'll just go back to that :)
 
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I purchased AoD yesterday, and today I got to play it. I also installed the 1.06b2 patch, CORE, the graphics pack for CORE and the virtual world tour. The game was fun, until it crashed a few times... Overall it seems like a nice new challenge and I like all the new features of AoD and CORE.

Some things I noticed:
- the naval brigades Germany start with have no name once they are finished it's just "... can be deployed".
- A man called Baade died about ten times on 8 july 1937, this is of course quite painful, but a few months later he died again several times.
- When paratroopers are attacked they showed the graphics as if they were parachuting, quite odd but I guess not CORE-related.
- Seelöwe is actually challenging! I failed several times because I got decimated while landing, because I got intercepted or because my transports were sunk along with my Marines. Eventually the Kriegsmarine unleashed a massive shore bombardment, 4 divisions paratroopers landed and 6 (maximum) marine divisions landed ashore. Once the Royal Navy came to the scene I had transported 9 divisions
- My game crashed at the beginning of August 1941. The only cheat I used thusfar was "no fog" to see the Spanish Civil War. All I can say is it happened in the week I declared war on Rep. Spain (and successfully invited Nat. Spain to join), annexed Sweden and had Marines occupy London. I rebooted and there was no problem.
- My game crashed again at 2300hrs, 30th of September , 1941. I restarted the game three times and I had to same problem. Nothing special was going on, my troops are moving up north encircling British defenses. I rebooted and immediately got the “Experience of the Spanish Civil War” event, meanwhile the game is continuing as it is and the problem seems to be solved.

The 36-39 Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine didn't happen. I find it a shame there are no events covering this time. Thousands died or were wounded during the revolt (thousands of Arabs, hundreds of British troops and hundreds of Jews) and tens of thousands of combat forces were involved. Surely this should have its impact on Great Britain, it had IRL.

Looking good so far despite the crashes. Will report again after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Thanks for the fun.
 
Whenever you encounter crashes, try moving through the time period at slow games speed.

Any crashes related to the SCW are hopefully gone in 0.50.19.

The Baade stuff is an AoD problem and apparently fixed in 1.06b3, but B-L are holding this back to tease us.

And I may give a hint here: there is a fairly good chance that we can release a Beta 3 late Sunday night ....
 
Great, yet more work... :rolleyes:

Anyway, good to hear you like AoD and what we added to it with CORE, Unit101! Hopefully we can add to that as we move along.
 
September 13, 1941: Bitter Peace fired sooner than I had expected. I hadn't reached Murmansk or Baku and my forces were barely east of Moscow and Stalingrad. The Soviets lost at least 1.150.000 men in the last months. I noticed an enormous amount of ships as I approached Alexandria from Suez (Italians weren't going fast enough, but did go on the offensive once Egypt joined Britain). So I quickly checked the situation: 232 British naval divisions (and one Canadian) are now stuck in the Med. Sea.

September 27, 1941: Japan declared war on the Netherlands, USA and UK. I wonder how they will do but I'm not sure if I will continue playing this weekend.

Some issues:
- In case Lithuania refuses to cede Memel to Germany it will cause conflict with the Bitter Peace event: Memel returns to the Soviet Union as the game expects Germany to have it before the war.
- In case Germany declares war on Republican Spain before asking Nationalist Spain to join them (which they won't otherwise), the Allies declare a separate war on Nationalist Spain. This means that when Iraq is couped and leaves the Allies, it signs a peace treaty with the Axis but continues to be at war with Nationalist Spain - together with the allies - despite the fact Nationalist Spain is now in the Axis. So Iraq cannot be invited to the Axis.
 
With the US when Malin Craig retires, communist afro-american ministers take power in military cabinet positions. One has to switch manually to historical alternatives such as McArthur and Marshall.
 
Update to my German campaign (1936-1941 explained before):

As written, I prepared for the invasion of England. For this purpose, I built another 3 paratrooper divisions and transports. So far, I only had 3 paratrooper divisions, but they were very valuable in the war against the SU as ultra-mobile reserve. 12 transport ships were also built. My Kriegsmarine (with 5 BB-1941) was transporting troops in the Mediterrean (since I occupied Gibraltar) until spring of 1942. My armored and mechanized divisions rushed through Egypt and occupied Suez. The Italians followed, but never attacked themselves. I also helped those lazy bastards in Greece (Yugoslavia is still independent, it doesn't make sense to attack it).
In 1942, the Kriegsmarine returned to Normandy. My experienced armored, motorized and mechanized forces under the command of Guderian and Rommel waited on the transport ships, when the paratroopers (1940 model) attacked Plymouth. They met some resistance there, but the 3 British divisions were beaten and the heavy ground forces disembarked. The rest was easy. Although there were 5 armored divisions in Britain, they were no match for my army of 30 mobile divisions shipped in the course of the invasion.

Japan declared war to the Western Allies in fall of 1941 and I invited them to my alliance. There is a stalemate in central China and Japan is slowly invading the Phillipines and Indonesia. Maybe I'll send some forces to India, but my motivation is low. I don't think, that I will play this campaign any further.

I think I played very effectively, focussing only on mobile divisions, completely ignoring airforce except for fighters and abandoning the submarine building program. Romania and Bulgaria never joined the Axis.
 
Something I noticed in the game:

Finland is eager to join the Axis at the start of 1941, for obvious territorial reasons. But this isn't always the right decision. For instance, if Germany declares war on Norway in 1940 but fails to invade it there's a direct land connection for the Allies to invade and annex Finland. This provides the Soviet Union with a more quiet border (they move all divisions except for one in each border province). If used effectively by both a human and computer-played Axis, Finland is a great partner, but in this scenario it becomes a rather annoying one. An allied naval blockade between Norway and Denmark will prevent the invasion of Norway.

Question: would it be realistic to have an easier recruitment for SS-Division "Wiking" if Sweden is either under German occupation or a German puppet? Also what about Swedish volunteers in the Continuation War?

Am I correct to say the Cossacks are wholly ignored in the Waffen-SS events? Or because it initially wasn't a Waffen-SS unit? I guess same goes for Spanish "Blue Division", Kalmykians and Indians?