Fatherland - Deutschland über alles

[Brad1]

I agree with Phoenix Dace that a major overhaul of the AI build files. Here are my suggestions for a few countries.

Petal Throne:
Large amounts of infantry to use up all the manpower it has. Perhaps a little bit of mountain troops for use in all the mountain provinces in Asia. The navy build files from Japan should be good.

US:
The US has a massive IC/manpower advantage compared to most other countries. Thus it should build almost exclusively high IC cost units. The US should build mostly armor and mechanized units. Large amounts of airplanes could also be built.

Soviet Union:
Almost dead so it doesn't really matter at this point

Brazil:
Could use some more capital ships and perhaps some mechanized or armor divisions.

Every country with more than 100 IC after mods:
Perhaps for these countries a copy and paste of a build file that would give them a few more capital ships and a powerful army.

 

[unmerged(59906)]

"And in Gameplay 100-page Germany AAR A Creek without a Paddle by Remble tied for first place with 145-page Germany AAR Fatherland - Deutschland über alles by Kanitatlan at five votes each."

Congratulations. I am sure no one but us noticed we voted for eachother.

 

[Brad1]

Its been a while since you've updated Herr Kanitatilan! Over two weeks! Don't tell me that the AI has gotten the better of you and you don't wish to admit it! (with that implication you can only prove me wrong by updating)

 

[unmerged(62857)]

Brad, I have my doubts that the AI is capable of arresting Herr Kanitatlan's progress, (although I hope some sweet Canadian Violence tm, has been dealt to make it a little more difficult) but rather, he's probably galavanting through the Petal Throne homeland and having to good a time for updatery to occur. Hopefully an update will occur soon!

 

[Kanitatlan]

WhisperingDeath the main drive to capture Bandar Abbas is really just to get the pocket over with so I can do something else.

Phoenix Dace I have a bit of a quandary over the AI settings for the secondary allied powers. Whilst diversifying their builds may be sensible because they have the resources, it is also foolish due to their technology. It is quite apparent that these powers have only kept up in the technologies they already favoured and it may be sensible to let them build the corresponding units. I'm not sure that loads of obsolete tanks and capital ships would be much of an improvement.

On a quick scan of the save file the AI countries seem to have been issued with plenty of blueprints and they may have a good chance of improving their technological position. For most their introduction into the Allied alliance (and hence the supply of blueprints) is relatively recent and for a few the increase in tech slots is also recent. This means, for example, that Brazil is probably researching at three times the rate of a year ago but it will still take time for this progress to have a significant overall impact.

DNG Aalborg was a long shot because the paras are elsewhere. I am quite happy to carry out classic SAS airfield attacks, serves them right for being so careless with airfield security.

Bafflegab Current alliances are Germany,Allies and Comintern covering, between them, all nations in the world. The Petal Throne is a member of the allies and the only weakness lies in the lack of cooperation along the Soviet eastern frontier. I am inclined to leave this for now but may put some military access treaties in place.

Brad1 I don't think the build patterns for any major powers need much interference. The only power whose balance of manpower and industry may have changed significantly is the Petal Throne and the huge chunk of off map IC I gave them probably restored their balance. Admittedly Brazil may have an issue with large increases in IC without large manpower increases.

Remble I thin k it worth remarking that we voted for each other as it is an important example to set in the forums. Paradox forums tend to be very benign and friendly but it does no harm to try and reinforce the principal. If you hadn't voted for me you could have won and I know plenty of people who would have made a point of voting for a non-challenger instead.

Brad1, Bafflegab I appologise for the delay in updates but it is unfortunately being caused by work commitments (13 hours today). I will try to produce some updates over the coming weeks but massive updates may be deferred until late December.

AI Build Scripts

I am quite uncertain what to do in this area and concerned that if I look at it too closely I am going to acquire far too much intelligence about any capability. Therefore I don't propose to make any major changes BUT if anyone else feels they have the skill and time to spend a weekend editing a save file then do let me know.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Oddly enough the AAR has now caught up with the game so it is time for a short pause and a few reports. If anyone wants anymore situation reports then please post and I will collect the data.

First off …

Naval Report​

The naval report is intended to cover the entire period since I last looked at naval losses in any detail which was way back at 1st March 1941. The current save date is 15th October so we have seven and a half months of activity.

The key statistic is of course total enemy naval losses so without further ado here they are …

An Analysis of Enemy Naval Losses from March 1st 1941 to October 15th 1941

474 DD
67 BB
16 SS
141 CL
67 CA
270 TP
20 CV
19 CVL
1074 total

This is rather a significant total of ships lost but it is dominated by the lighter ships especially destroyers and transports. It is unclear what relationship this total ahs to enemy naval production but I do get the feeling that I am holding my own. Obviously the Luftwaffe has accounted for a majority of the losses but it is only a majority and the Kriegsmarine has also contributed a very substantial share.

The period extends back to a point earlier than the summer campaign and I believe includes all losses since the last enemy naval losses report. As a result the period includes the loss of 1 u-boat flotilla already mentioned in the AAR. Personally I am extremely satisfied with the big fat zero friendly naval losses since then.

Current intelligence estimates of total enemy naval forces are

15 BB
83 CV
5 BC
1450 smaller ships

This reveals an excellent position in relation to enemy battleships but a much more concerning position with enemy CVs. If I continue to sink enemy CVs at the current rate then it will take two and a half years to sink all of their units during which time I expect they will build vast numbers more.

German naval forces

36 CV
1 BC
17 CA
16 CL
54 DD
150 SS
80 TP

Except for u-boats I suspect my mix of ships is similar to the enemy but although my CV position doesn’t look too bad the position on “smaller ships” is a little daunting. All I can rely on is the fact that I have sunk vast numbers through the summer. Unfortunately winter will bring a significant reduction in enemy losses due to much shorter days in the northern hemisphere.

The fleet is currently split into 5 operational fleets. These are 3 carrier fleets, 1 cruiser fleet and a home defence odds and ends fleet. I am working towards consigning all oldish ships to the home defence fleet and this is now getting quite close to the truth. The practical situation is that I have 4 ocean going combat fleets although I hesitate to commit my cruisers too far from a safe haven.

I haven’t yet decided what I intend to do next in terms of fleet operations. The choices, in no particular order are as follows.

1) Continue operating in the Indian Ocean theatre with the possibility of amphibious operations against India, Indian Ocean islands and the east coast of Africa. If particularly successful I could look to amphibious operations further east into Southeast Asia or even as far as Australia.

2) Send the fleet through to the South Atlantic. This is an unknown theatre for the moment but opens the opportunity to seriously deplete the South American fleets as well as distant skirmishing with the US home fleet. It opens amphibious opportunities along the West African coast and in South America. These opportunities feel a lot more risky and vulnerable to serious intervention than operations in the western Indian Ocean but the south South Atlantic should be fairly safe anyway.

3) The final alternative is to venture into the North Atlantic and challenge the US fleet. This does give the opportunity to engage the main enemy and promote my position as the world’s leading naval power. However, there are several weaknesses of which the winter weather is probably the most significant. If I want to challenge the US in their home waters then may be this should be done in summer. I think North Atlantic adventures may be worth the odd probe if option (2) is pursued but must be a poor idea compared with may be trying (3) next summer. Given this I am discarding this option for reconsideration later (when I will probably discard it again but for different reasons).

4) This is the not really an alternative option but needs some discussion. Is there anything else that can be sensibly pursued? The primary issue is that naval operations elsewhere require naval bases and given the high density of enemy troops it is unlikely that there are any suitable targets for taking by long range coup de main. It is probably apparent from my loss report earlier (and the manpower analysis for Barbarossa) that I am fanatically opposed to taking losses far beyond the bounds of reasonableness. Therefore I am not at all keen on the idea of ridiculously daring naval operations so option (4) is right out unless we are faced with the submission of some really clever ideas. In truth I am not keen on naval adventures since I don’t believe there is much to be gained.

It is perhaps worth discussing a few Grand Strategic principles in this context. I would look to two key principals as driving the naval strategy

a) Concentration of force.

b) Maximal utilisation of force

What these boil down to is that it is important to try and achieve the highest possible engagement levels for my forces (b) whilst maximising my combat ratio against the enemy (a). This involves making sure that the fleet operates in such a way as to best provide mutual support whilst also making sure that everyone gets in as much combat as possible. This means going somewhere where there are plenty of enemy ships and also it means sending everyone.

Some player would be attracted by the idea of splitting the fleets into different theatres and this might be sensible to promote increased levels of amphibious activity once the enemy navy is suppressed but the intervention by the IPN off the coast of Karachi shows that there is plenty of life left in the AI. In fact, it suggests that any amphibious activity better be very well supported by the Kriegsmarine or “serious trouble” is likely to occur.

The last option, which I suppose I should mention, is the idea of simply setting up a series of booby traps. I could deploy some of my numerous transports as bait and wait for the enemy to come to me. This would likely give opportunity to inflict general mayhem and allow high engagement rates in any theatre but it all seems a little unfair and unrealistic so I am going to resist it. Its not like me to resist exploiting the AI but I don’t think it is a strategy that is badly in need of illustration.

 

[unmerged(61810)]

Holy crap! Do the Allies have enough people to man those ships after you've sunk so many?

 

[Brad1]

474 DD
67 BB
16 SS
141 CL
67 CA
270 TP
20 CV
19 CVL
1074 total

Wow, isn't that about the amount of ships that are made in a normal game by the Allied powers(a little short on CVs)?

Also I would say to deploy the fleet to the Indian Ocean, to attempt to destroy the Petal Throne's navy. You are definately going to need your navy when it comes time to take the Japanese Islands.

 

[unmerged(68789)]

I think adventures into the Atlantic - certainly any beyond the range of your land-based naval bombers - are a gamble we can't really afford to take. Although you'll have to grapple with the US Navy at some point, and it's only going to get better-equipped as the war progresses, I'm not sure it's in as good a position to take advantage of the intervening growth in naval forces as you are. They don't seem likely to abandon their strategy of sending imbalanced (in a capital v. smaller ship sense) fleets well into areas under the umbrella of your air patrols on suicidal, pointless escapades like the recent activity around the Azores, and the number of carriers you can sink as a result of this recklessness seems limited (without wishing to sound too cavalier!) only by how many ships the US sends and how long they stay around Europe.

The only tempting consideration is that with winter weather approaching the US's primarily carrier-based navy is going to be at its weakest tactically until the same time next year. It seems possible that the cruiser fleet, supported by your bombers for a bit of insurance, might claim some pretty decent victories if bad weather persists, and your commanders somehow manage to out-position the Americans' and close within range. However, if you really are committed to force concentration, I don't think re-assigning your own carrier task forces under conditions unfavourable to carrier warfare makes a lot of sense.

I'd vote for sticking in the Indian Ocean.

 

[unmerged(24857)]

Dry the oceans and use your armor instead.

 

[unmerged(62857)]

Dry the oceans and use your armor instead.

Assuming Kanitatlan could do this, as was demonstrated by his ability to create a link betweend the Japanese home islands and the mainland, I don't think that he'd choose this way forward, after all, If you build 3 CTF's and a SAG, you want to use the CTF's and SAG to destroy your enemies fleets, and make them feel shame for thinking they can play in your ocean.

That said, I am pretty sure that Canada is now fielding the new and improved 5 DD fleets. Beware!

 

[TheExecuter]

Oh yes, by all means...have some adventures in the Atlantic! PLEASE!


TheExecuter

 

[Phoenix Dace]

Edit the terrain file and turn all ocean 'provinces' into plains. Let's see the AI handle that.

 

[4th Dimension]

Actually, that might favor the enemy, because it will widen the front, and with a numerically superior enemy you don't want wide fronts.

 

[unmerged(55467)]

Edit the terrain file and turn all ocean 'provinces' into plains. Let's see the AI handle that.

Wait, is that actually possible?

 

[Phoenix Dace]

DCP: Yes it is. And 4th Dimension, maybe that was what I wanted to see: if the AI would actually be competent enough to use that to its advantage and bring its enormous land forces to bear.

 

[4th Dimension]

Actually it might conflict with all those ignore lines made so that AI ignores certain sea regions.

 

[Kanitatlan]

SEG-CISR That's an interesting question although they definitely do. Here are a few facts and figures.

Some Manpower Analysis​

It is difficult to estimate the manpower that enemy naval losses represents, as the manpower cost of ships seems to change significantly between models. Personally I find it a little weird that earlier models represent more manpower efficiency than later models. If naval builds are manpower limited then building old models can be a good plan. For example I am building CA4 because it is significantly more IC efficient than CA5 but both take 1 manpower. CA6, which is a small step up, then takes 2 manpower. It looks to me like this manpower gradient needs a bit of smoothing but hopefully naval demands are sufficiently low that it doesn’t matter too much.

Back to the enemy naval losses. A quick summing of there losses suggests that it represents around 900 manpower but significantly more if you count the cost of replacing one for one with current models of ships. This seems a lot but a quick estimate (this is a bit of a guess) suggests total AI manpower resources may be around 20,000 per year (you better believe it).

Brad1 The situation is worse than you think. I suspect enemy losses already far exceed normal full game builds. Also, the navy will be needed for invading everywhere. In this game the whole of the far-east is going to need major naval support as the normal overland approaches are nigh on invulnerable.

Good Egg The Indian Ocean seems popular.

TheExecuter Agent provocateur - we will deal with you later

Wolfhound, Bafflegab, Phoenix Dace, 4th Dimension, DirtyCommiePuke I'm sure that the oceans can be turned to plains (editing the province file) and this would be interesting but rather weird. It does leave a variety of questions about who owns it and stuff like that. It may be rather a big job and I'm not doing it anyway. That would be just silly and we don't do silly in this AAR ( .

 

[Kanitatlan]

Review of the Land Summer Campaign​

The summer campaign has been moderately successful and achieved the minimum targets that I set. At the start I was hoping that I would be reviewing objectives mid-campaign and setting further targets but this never happened and it has taken until mid October to achieve the objectives I was aiming for. The pocket in Eastern Persia is a bit of a bonus as there was always the possibility of the AI preventing it but it should also be borne in mind that this pocket has yet to be reduced.

A rather mediocre review map​

The map gives a fair indication of the areas were significant pockets occurred. In all cases they have been formed primarily through a process of single envelopment. Complete closure has often required activity from the other flank but the primary action has always been from one side. In the initial two pockets the envelopment was from the south and the later ones were all enveloped from the north. I do have a habit of carrying out single envelopment operations rather than double although I am not sure quite why. I suspect the key reason is my love of overrun attacks and hence a tendency to concentrate into one single massive force.

On the subject of overrun attacks the southern flank of the Urals front lost a fair number of divisions to German overrun although many escaped into the Urals pocket. This campaign has been a poor environment for overrun attacks but I am likely to be achieving greater success in this department in later operations.

I have used a terrain map for the campaign review since terrain played a part in this campaign and, more to the point, will play a greater part in following operations. The biggest issue I am facing is that the majority of my front is in and / or approaching mountains. This sort of terrain is extremely hostile to any sort of mobile campaign and therefore likely to cause severe problems for forthcoming operations.

Briefly, the plan for the winter campaign is to first carry out a major redeployment of forces. This will be followed by major operations in India by the panzerwaffe and infantry attacks in Siberia. I will be making a serious attempt to finish clearing West Africa and pursue further operations down towards South Africa.

Plans for the campaign in India have put me in a bit of a quandary. India is a potential source of significant manpower and represents the bulk of continuing British power. By occupying the whole of India I gain significant advantage in the key ingredients of an industrial war. However, India is also ideal territory on which to fight the enemy and therefore there is a strong urge to sweep through destroying the enemy and then leave it wide open for them to return. Considering that all of the exits from India are mountain or jungle this option is very attractive but, bearing in mind how long Persia took to fill up, possibly a rather slow process.

During the winter campaign there will probably be some attempts to use airmobile operations to capture key mountain provinces “on the cheap” and I may do some pre-campaign range checking for this purpose.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Land Forces Report

The intelligence ministry reports the following figures for worldwide land strengths

2857 Infantry
48 armour

Including

Canada 70 Inf, 22 Armour
USA 780 inf, 23 arm
Petal Throne 1196 inf

German strength

150 Inf
1 Cav
48 armour
48 motorised
6 Fallschirmjäger
4 Marine
12 gebirgsjäger
62 garrison
6 HQ

Or merging categories to match the intelligence report

289 Inf, 48 armour

This leaves us with an interesting question about the exact mix of units within the enemy “infantry” category. It is likely to be a fairly broad mix, probably containing fewer garrisons than I have (as a proportion) but with rather more specialist divisions (especially marines). Overall I am massively outnumbered except in armour. For armour I have the rather excellent position that the enemy is almost entirely concentrated in north America.

The Canadian army seems particularly excellent especially considering that the AI build file doesn’t reflect what they have. On the other hand intelligence is pretty unreliable. The bottom line is 337 divisions versus 2,900.

One aspect of the intelligence, not revealed in the above report, is that the Comintern is down to about 40 divisions making them about equivalent to a typical South American minor power (yes really).

On another note you might like to consider that most of the US army is at home and they have about 30 mainland beach provinces to defend. That sounds like an interesting landing issue to say the least.

Industrial Report

Current German production has been maintained as was prior to the summer campaign with the following modifications

There are …

8 CVL runs
2 SPA run
5 Militia runs
1 Fallschirmjäger (target build 12)
1 Transport (target build 12)
12 Escort fighters

Other build levels of interest (all long runs subject to early cancellation)

12 Tactical Bombers
4 Strategic Bombers
4 Naval Bombers
6 DD
7 CA
14 CV
2 marines
2 garrisons
2 Interceptors

The current air force is significantly deficient in escort fighters (to preserve range) and I have decided that I can build substantial numbers without seriously depleting the reserve of unescorted long range units.

The total budget is now rather high and running a significant supplies deficit. Income is not well illustrated as this is just after a reload but resource income is just fine. The supply stockpile will be OK for a significant period but current builds definitely represent a long-term and persisting deficit that will sooner or later need to be corrected.

Air Power

Intelligence Reports

197 Fighters
52 Bombers

Germany

60 Int, 64 CAS, 12 SB, 80 Tac, 44 Nav

The air balance is quite interesting, as the AI seems to have a much higher preponderance of fighters than I do. This is mainly because the AI forces consist principally of small fighter forces from dozens of countries. Over all this is the one area where I actually have a major advantage.

I intend to cancel NAV production soon as they do seem a little excessive in ability for their role. The main problem is the long range. Unfortunately aggressive enemy naval tactics are close to making CAS more useful than NAVs since they can deal with aggressive in shore fleets just as well and also bomb them after landings. This is a slightly odd situation and there is a temptation to actually boost the CAS fleet. Due to worldwide range and mission flexibility issues I am going to focus on tactical bombers for the foreseeable future.

AI build editing

I have made a few edits to the save file from a quick run through looking at AI manpower availability and checking the AI build profile for the major powers.

UK – lots of surplus manpower, major redirection of resources to infantry. Increased brigades and focused on infantry attachments

France – lots of surplus manpower, major focus on infantry and militia

All countries with one tech slot and less than 100 manpower - +100 manpower (there are quite a few of these)

Petal Throne – lots of surplus manpower - Infantry focus, fewer destroyers, extra mixed brigades

Canada – manpower boost, more brigades (HA/AC), fewer destroyers, more heavy units, +20 IC and +2 manpower per day (takes them to 5 tech slots)

Australia – more cruisers, more brigades HA/AC

US – manpower exhausted, increased by 3 per day and 2000 reserve