This is all based on the 1.02 patch using 2.04f.
OK I finished my game by defeating UK and SU by February 1942. First a quick timeline of the major events then some analysis. Republican Spain won the SCW in 1937. On July 14th 1939 I DOW's Poland. Ten days later Poland went GIE. I DOW'd Low Countries on September 3rd 1939. I stuck to historic path in attacking them and France. Five weeks later Paris fell and Vichy event fired. On November 11th I DOW'd Spain. They went GIE in December and Gilbralter fell shortly thereafter. I used mountain troops with fortress buster commanders throughout the whole chain of command.
I conducted an intensive sub war with 2 costal, 6 medium and 9 long range subs, plus the six Italian ones. By mid to late 1940 UK was out of convoys and the Italians easily captured NA because of this. The Italians also took over the middle east as no supplies were getting to the UK troops. In early March I DOW'd Yougoslavia (Greece was already Allied) and attacked from Italian provinces to give them the territory. Both countries were defeated in about a month and I moved all available units to SU border.
On May 5th 1941 I DOW'd SU. On June 22nd Moscow fell. In early August Stalingrad fell and in late August Lenningrad fell. After finally getting to places like Saratov and Baki etc I got the bitter peace event. This happened in late September 1941, after about 4 and a half months of fighting. Supply generation wasn't an issue but units not receiving supply or fuel was an issue for about 35% of my army. I then moved the troops to capture Malta and the UK home land. I stopped the game after helping Japan defeat China (they were still fighting in 1941 and while making some progress it was a slow fight for them.
Analysis:
The sub war against the UK is too easy because no to only a couple of subs are ever actually sunk. In about 28 months of sub warfare I think I the subs were attacked a total of 6 times. Maybe this was due to other factors but even early on (1939/1940) I was attacked maybe 3 or 4 times. Losing subs would make it much better. I think the best solution is to up the visibility with techs lowering it. This way you can research better stealthy subs but early on you don't KO UK due to sinking all their convoys.
France just doesn't seem to have enough ground troops. The fight was good but it would have been great if they had another 15 to 25 divisions.
My fight on the UK home lands was too easy, but this was due to no supplies and when I checked they had no energy so their factories were barely working. I think it would have been much harder IF they were supplied due to the bonus you gave them (territorial bonus). And my landing was not contested but again that is due to the supply/sub/convoy issue. So for the UK fight the verdict is incomplete.
China and Japan was a real interesting fight. I only did the supplies to China support and just till the war started. But China in the early stages pushed Japan back to Korea after an initial thrust by Japan. I though China might actually win but slowly Japan fought back. In late 1940 Japan seemed to be breaking through but then stalled. In late 1941 Japan seemed like they would eventually win but I sent some troops to help them win faster.
Gilbralter was a nice fight. Level 10 forts are a pain to crack. You MUST use lots of fortress buster commanders and TAC air power. But I noticed that after just two days of bombings the TAC's were near zero organization and at 60% strength. They did lower the defenders org some but not sure how good air power is against level 10 forts. The fight lasted 21 days and seemd right considering the defenders and attackers.
Now for the big one the SU fight. The red army had LOTS of troops and the AI seemed to be moving them all the time. This turned out to be good for their defense. I was constanly being hindered in making clear cut breakthroughs in the north and south. All those HQ units are also a pain since they force the attack delay on even their 2 hour battles. But once I did gain a gap things fell into place pretty fast for my customary encirclement and defat of the SU. Lenningrad took way longer for me to capture but that was due to my mistakes. I did not reassign fortress buster commanders (didn't know at the time it was a level 10 fort there) and my units were held up in cutting the city off. But once I cut it off I eventually wore down the defenders. Once again TAC is OK but after 2 days you lose 40-50% of their strength. Moscow was much easier and Stalingrad had a single garrison division there which was good as 3 of my 4 divisions next to it lost supplies/fuel and couldn't participate in the attack.
On a real bad note I noticed the AI placing newly built units in Moscow and Lenningrad while being attacked. I doubt you can fix this but these are zero org units and it's just dumb since they can't gain org while being attacked and do nothing for the defense because they have zero orgainzation. And they even end up hurting due to stacking issues. This is a MAJOR flaw and I think only PI can fix it. But if you can fix it it would go a LONG way to making the fights harder. Either give the units 25% organization when built or place them in a place that is not in combat. The AI must have wasted 20+ divisions doing this.
Another real bad thing I noticed is that the AI built way too many ships as the SU. They had 48 ships (not counting subs) in the Baltic Sea alone. And the production queue had at least 10-15 more being built. Don't let the SU build any ships after January 1st 1940. Or maybe only 5% of IC at the most. The air force was also pretty big but the key is air bases. What good is 50 interceptors if you only have a half dozen airbases in range? lLnd units are the key here. And the SU AI just wasn't building enough to offset their losses.
After I finally defeated the fornt line border troops the SU never again had a substantial army to face me. At the time of the BP they had about 50 divisions on the entire front. And this was probably due to me not attacking anymore except in the Caucasus region to get the last couple of VP's needed to win.
I also learned that the supply tax due to revot risk really messes you up as Germany. To be honest if I had to survive the winter and fight in 1942 I'm not sure I could have in my current game. In the future I will build 1xMIL, 2/3xPOL units by the masses to lower revot risk. It's not that there were many partisians (heck only 4 ever poped up in SU) its due to no fuel or supplies getting to troops that far east. Since I took Gilbralter I created some manual convoys to Rostov, Sevestapol and other Black Sea ports. This helped keep some of the fighting units in the Caucasus region going. And I'm glad I never called Romania to arms to fight. I only called Finland. this way only a few Italian divisions ever showed up to eat my supplies and they eventually went north to help Finland in the Kola area.
To sum up the fight was disappointing in many respects but not sure what can be done. If you can give new units say 25% org or place them where they don't die the next day it should go a long way in helping. Plus the SU needs to devote mroe IC to actual land combat units after 1940 and especailly in 1941 on.
Because I tried to play historically I didn't notice an bugs with events or decisions, but will say this. That Goering is a real tard.
