Germany constantly getting crushed

[unmerged(794636)]

Hello Forum Goers.
Basically, Here's my issue, Whether i play as Germany herself or an Axis supporter Germany will ALWAYS get defeated and when im playing as another axis nation that means i then have to face the entire Axis / Comintern and die myself. And its just rather annoying. So i decided to play as Germany myself an this is generally how things have happened up to now.

1937 I conquer Austria and Czech because i was bored of peace and wanted some more IC quickly

Late 1939 i conquered France, Denmark, Belgium, Netherland, Luxemburg and Norway.

1940 I succesfully sent an Afrika Corps to push back the brits to the eastern bank of the suez canal

1940 Winter my navy and airforce are all but in ruins after a failed Battle of britain. US then launched bombing campaign and flattens the rhur in about a month

1941 i conquer spain, portugal, hungary, romania, bulgaria, greece, yugo, albania, greece and turkey. (Basically all of continental europe)

1943 I invade USSR via turkey and my Euro border and succesfully push them back to within 4 provinces of moscow and compeltely control caucuses.

1943 winter USSR stalemates me just a single province from moscow and then come spring they counter attack me about 10 provinces along the entire border

1944 summer I loose the caucuses and after trying to defend stalingrad i loose ALOT of troops (About 750,000men / tanks / planes)

1944 winter i dig in at the Germo / Poland border and stop the soviet steamroller dead in its tracks.

Early 1945 Allies invade Calais and storm france in about 4 months as my divisions are all on the east

Summer 1945 i loose about 1 million troops in a constant battle for EVERY french province, US armor constantly encircles me and air attacks wont let me retreat

Winter 1945 I send my final reserves in the west to stop the Allies in Belgium (I push them back to calais but they counterattack HARD and push me to hamburg

On exactly christmas 1945 the sovies bust through my eastern defences and push me all the way to Berlin and Dresden

By new years the Allies storm Dussledorf and Frankfurt.

And this is where i am now, In a desperate attempt to save berlin and make a counter attack somewhere.

I currently only have italy as my only ally (Japan already got invaded by US) and sicily has been invaded. I have about 2 Million men on the east and about 1 million men in the west, I have 6 Panzer divisions on the west and 23 in the East. Luftwaffe is completely destroyed and the navy is non existant. Combine that with i have no fuel as well.

Ive basically accepted this game is a complete fail but i would like some advice on how to play germany. I always seem to reach the verge of defeating moscow and its always a winter that stops me and they counterattack as soon as the weather gets good :/. I just cant seem to storm the soviet fast enough to beat the winter. I thought i had it too because i encircled an absolutely massive ammount of russian troops at lenningrad (About 500,000 troops in like 5 provinces) who i never managed to kill but i thought i would just keep them trapped until i won the war (Which seemed close at the time), I did try to kill them but it was too much of a manpower strain from the actual front. Boy do i regret that, Right now those same troops are knocking at the door of berlin ;P.

If you think i can salavage my current campaign id love to hear how but otherwise i just want just germany advice.

Edit - I continued my campaign and now in the north of germany the Allies and Sovie fronts have met and the same has happened in the south of germany. I now only control Berlin and about 3 provinces in either direction of it. Almost my entire eastern front was surrounded, cut off and destroyed at dresden and now i only have about 1.5 million troops (All of whom are shattered and at breaking point) to defend berlin.

#2 Edit - Just got completely pushed back to berlin as my final remaining province of germany where i held off for about a week. British Armor stormed the capital on February 14th, Thats that campaign done. (Italy fell after me in the space of about 2 weeks lol)

Cheers!
-Mike

 

[ringhloth]

While, I don't have any advice, those are really historical games. It's almost as good as pretty borders in other PDS games.

 

[unmerged(794636)]

I do always try and play historical, I find its more of a case of luck whether the AI cooperates or not. I did try and turn the campaign around near the Kursk region as germany historically attempted, So i built up a large force there and then Russia just attacked through the caucuses near sevastapol and rushed around me (That was when i quickly rushed back to Poland / Germo border.

 

[Jule]

That sounds like a really fun game. Did you let the AI control your troops? How about the difficulty level?

 

[unmerged(794636)]

Normal difficulty and i was very very very small on the ammount of AI i used. All major conflict was controlled by myself. The only things i put under AI was Anti Partisian divisions, The scraps of my navy and air force in the late war and some divisions in italy. But i controlled the entire western and eastern conflict.

 

[Pro_Consul]

I will first try to describe what went wrong on this playthrough, and then will give some suggestions on alternatives to try next time. Sadly, I think at the point described at the end of the narrative, you are already irretrievably doomed, so I have no thoughts on how to salvage that.

So i decided to play as Germany myself an this is generally how things have happened up to now.[/I]

1937 I conquer Austria and Czech because i was bored of peace and wanted some more IC quickly

This is the first big mistake you relate. By doing this you deprived yourself of some very important things. Possibly the most critical is that you could have had cores on all of that territory plus a large chunk of Poland, but because you broke the Munich event chain before it even got started none of those cores were ever awarded to you. As a result, all of that territory suffered the penalties associated with conquered lands instead of being treated as integral parts of Germany. The nuts and bolts cost: a lot less IC, resources, manpower, and leadership that you would otherwise have had.

The second most important problem here is that you are taking very large hits to your threat level very early. This will bring your enemies to full mobilization sooner, which makes them stronger than they should be. It will also cause them to align against you and come after you sooner, which makes them hit you before you are ready for them. More on this below.

Late 1939 i conquered France, Denmark, Belgium, Netherland, Luxemburg and Norway.

Nothing wrong there.

1940 I succesfully sent an Afrika Corps to push back the brits to the eastern bank of the suez canal

Fine, so long as it doesn't interfere with more important matters, which it appears not to have done. Again, nothing wrong here.

1940 Winter my navy and airforce are all but in ruins after a failed Battle of britain. US then launched bombing campaign and flattens the rhur in about a month

Launching the Battle of Britain at all was historically a mistake, and it is equally a mistake to do it in-game. There is nothing tangible to gain from it, and plenty to lose.

And here is where you see the results of having raised your threat too high and too soon. USA should not even be in the war for at least another year at this point, yet here they are, already hammering you. It is just synchronicity that the losses from the failed Battle of Britain should have happened right before the USAAF decided to come after you with hammer and tongs.

1941 i conquer spain, portugal, hungary, romania, bulgaria, greece, yugo, albania, greece and turkey. (Basically all of continental europe)

Too much conquest of areas that have no strategic value, and a couple that are actually liabilities rather than assets. Spain and Portugal in particular are liabilities - they extend the sea front you need to defend against invasion while failing to provide enough IC or resources to justify expanding your defensive burden that much. Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria could have been allied or puppeted instead, thus yielding you extra units instead of costing you units that must be used to garrison them against partisan uprisings. The rest of those conquests: nothing wrong there.

1943 I invade USSR via turkey and my Euro border and succesfully push them back to within 4 provinces of moscow and compeltely control caucuses.

Two very major mistakes here. First off, you waited far too long to attack the Soviets. If Barbarossa is intended, it should begin no later than Spring of 1942 at the very, very latest. 1941 is much better. You need to deny the Soviets all that extra time to build and tech up their army. Remember that they basically have more of everything than you do, including industrial power. So time is your enemy, lest they bring more of that advantage to bear.

The second big mistake was that you pushed the Red Army back. The Red Army must not be pushed back deeper and deeper. It must be destroyed at or near the initial invasion front. They simply have too many divisions and the capability of building too many more. If you push them back, all you are doing is extending your supply lines while giving the Soviets time to turn "not quite enough to stop Germany" into "way too much to for Germany to handle". Destroying the Red Army in place at the outset turns "not quite enough" into "not quite enough headstones", so that the Red Army no longer has the ability to even significantly slow your advance, let alone halt it.

1943 winter USSR stalemates me just a single province from moscow and then come spring they counter attack me about 10 provinces along the entire border

1944 summer I loose the caucuses and after trying to defend stalingrad i loose ALOT of troops (About 750,000men / tanks / planes)

This was basically inevitable due to the two mistakes I outlined above. You did fairly well to slow them, but stopping them was not a realistical possibility at this point.

1944 winter i dig in at the Germo / Poland border and stop the soviet steamroller dead in its tracks.

Not bad. Good job keeping your forces cohesive enough to reestablish a stable front. You still face an impossible situation at this point, but you are doing a good job of trying to hold back the tide as long as possible.

Early 1945 Allies invade Calais and storm france in about 4 months as my divisions are all on the east

And this is why it was such an impossible task. Even with the shortened front in the east, your forces were stretched too thin because of all those unnecessary early conquests which simultaneously increased your defensive burden while reducing the number of units you could field to meet that burden.

((a variety of predictable disasters follow on the heels of those already described))

The end... of the Third Reich.

Sorry, hadda say it.

I think I hit the most important points there, but to summarize:

1. Stick to the historical event chain at least up until the M-R Pact is signed. There are too many cores at stake to break this chain and give them up.

2. Don't attack Spain or Portugal, and don't conquer the historical Axis nations of the Balkans. Note that in the second half of that I said "conquer", not "attack". You can still attack those historical allies if you feel you must, just don't use the conquest wargoal if you do. Puppet them instead. Or ally them. One or the other. They can provide the forces needed to garrison your other conquests in the Balkans, i.e. Greece and Yugo, with more left over to help with garrison needs elsewhere, thus freeing a lot of German divisions for offensive uses.

3. Attack the Soviets as soon as is reasonably possible, though not in winter of course.

4. Use encirclements to destroy the Red Army at or near the starting border front before allowing the front lines to be pushed deep into Soviet territory. When you start pushing to take lots of Soviet territory, it should be because they no longer have the ability to man a battle line to make you even pause and fight, let alone stop and fight.

5. No Battle of Britain. Keep your ground attack air units supporting your ground forces, and keep your air to air assets guarding your industrial base from strat bombers.

7. Profit.

 

[unmerged(794636)]

Ah well, What do ya expect on my first time playing through an entire germany campaign ;P. I appreciate the info guys!, It was a very fun campaign to play. i think i now realise my biggest mistake was not actually destroying many soviet disivions, i only pushed em back. With that in mind, Dont suppose you have any advice for repelling an allied invasion?, Im always an unlucky bastard and get bogged down in winter weather whenever a serious threat presents itself ;P

 

[Pro_Consul]

Dont suppose you have any advice for repelling an allied invasion?

There are different ways to meet that challenge. Here are a few tips, from which you can take whichever ones fit into your larger strategy (a couple of these are mutually exclusive as you will see).

1. Put 2 or 3 MIL divs in each port province. Bear in mind their primary purpose is to act as early warning devices rather than to actually repel invaders, though for small invasions they should be able to hang on til help arrives. Anyway, near behind each sector of the coastline have some small, mobile response force, consisting perhaps of LARM and/or MOT divisions, something that can move fairly quickly to any nearby port that comes under attack. The reason for using MIL instead of GAR in this role is because MIL can survive retreating without much risk of being overrun, while GAR with their movement rate of 1 are very easily overrun.

2. Put 2 or 3 GAR or INF divs in each port province, these divisions to include some ART and if appropriate an AT brigade. Here the purpose is to rely on repelling invaders as the primary defensive measure, with a smaller mobile reserve or with the reserves more widely spaced since the battle on the beach will presumably take longer and allow more time for help to arrive if it's needed at all.

3. Coastal forts. You didn't mention them, but I am sure you already thought of this and perhaps even tried them. No need to max them or anything; just enough to slow the progress of enemy attacks til reinforcements can arrive.

3a. Selective placement of coastal forts, to deter the enemy from attacking tactically exposed and high level ports and induce him to attack the small, crappy ones that are easily reinforced and incapable of keeping his invasion supplied anyway. So in general an exposed port like Brest would get max coastal forts, as would critical high level ports like Wilhemshaven and Hamburg; while dinky level 3's and below would get no forts at all, making them the bait.

4. Keep some air-to-mud assets (CAS and/or TAC) in each sector of the coastline, ready to launch ground attack missions at the invaders the moment they finish unloading from their transports.

5. Keep some air-to-sea assets (NAVs and/or CAS) to reach past the beaches and hit the transports. If you can destroy or drive them off after the ground forces have unloaded, you can deny the invaders an escape route so that they are destroyed outright once you defeat the assault. Also, ships being bombed from the air are automatically intercepted by any naval units you might send to meet them, so it aids with naval interception as well.

 

[unmerged(468253)]

I don't know if you would consider consider it cheating as the AI isn't effective at prioritizing, but submarines and logistical warfare in general is stupidly cost efficient if you pull it off. Last time I played Germany I was able to pretty much destroy the British war effort through a few high tech submarine fleets and it would make any invasion very costly and prone to supply shortages. If you have a developed bomber air force you can concentrate on destroying the French port infrastructure that the Allies are using, which will pretty much instantly halt any invasion if you can do it before they have multiple ports. You can use these delays and org penalties to send in a rapid reaction force to nip the invasion in the bud

 

[Charles Reeps]

You have received excellent advice from others. Pro_Consul's description is by far the best I've seen, but I would modify the following

4. Use encirclements to destroy the Red Army at or near the starting border front before allowing the front lines to be pushed deep into Soviet territory. When you start pushing to take lots of Soviet territory, it should be because they no longer have the ability to man a battle line to make you even pause and fight, let alone stop and fight.

Encirclements take time, extra troops and allow for the very good possibility of encircled units shatterring and living to fight another day. Since the Soviets have more than enough manpower to rebuild these shattered units you wind up facing them again, thus creating the very problem you are trying to avoid; i.e., too many Soviet forces to overcome.

To avoid this you should always strive to overrun enemy units so that they are permanently removed from play. Accomplishing this is quite simple: make sure you have units that can get to the province enemy units are retreating to before they can. Before you have Mechanized the ideal division for this is LT ARM/MOT/AC/AC. This unit is fast enough to overrun retreating infantry by going through its original province to get to the retreat destination, but getting to the target province is best achieved by flanking maneuvers. [TBH I can perform "flanking" overruns using infantry, but this is only in plains.] By doing this you can easily reduce a 1500+ brigade Soviet army to less than 300, using a small German army composed of approximately 400 brigades, in less than four months.

1940 I succesfully sent an Afrika Corps to push back the brits to the eastern bank of the suez canal

This step is not necessary and risks troops being run out-of-supply because you can't rely on Italy to supply them. For the Med my advice is to follow the historical path up to the conquest of France, but do not call Italy to arms. Since the UK won't DOW Italy this leaves your southern strategic flank protected (it actually doesn't exist!). Unless you have created a large German navy that can beat the RN and allow you to take Gibraltar there is nothing in the Med for you to gain. This also removes threat gains on the USA, thus slowing her already improving laws.

If, however, you are bent on putting Italy into play you should wait eight to twelve months to do so. This gives Italy extra time to improve and grow her forces. During this time I advise you use NAVs to convoy raid from western France, thus pulling all but the RNs subs out of the Med. After this time call Italy to arms and immediately place Italian objectives on Alexandria and Romanii. IME Italy has never failed to throw the UK out of N. Africa, the Middle East and Iraq. Nine times out of ten Italy also takes Malta, permanently crippling the UK in the Med.

This is my two cents worth, but I play Germany as a naval power. I normally crush the RN by the end of 1940 and have the run of the map from that point forward. This changes my games dramatically compared to others.

 

[Kadanz]

I think that sounds like a very fun game and close to history as well. I wish some of my games would play out like that. Getting crushed even after I did everything I could, oh boy I would play that game until the very end and enjoy every second of it.