Germany Tutorial: Take 2.

[Rensslaer]

Great tutorial, MisterBean! Incredible detail -- great stuff.

Going back a couple of pages, some of you were asking why there would be a stacking improvement if you include interceptors on a ground attack mission.

Now, it's been 4 years, I think, since the Beta (or 6?? - am I that old?), but as I recall the rationale was to give the interceptors a "pass" -- you could include them on the mission to protect the FBs or CAS or TACs from enemy fighters without having them add to the stacking because they're not contributing a whole lot anyway. Otherwise, it would be more difficult to "escort" the ground attack mission. As a more real-world example, this would be because the ground attack mission is at the ground, where the stacking penalty is really critical, while the interceptors fly high cover.

I may have forgotten alot of stuff, so if for some reason my explanation doesn't make sense maybe my guess/remembrance is wrong. But that's what I'd guess as a reason. Otherwise, the mission gets penalized because it has escorting fighters, which wouldn't be very realistic.

Looking forward to the battle!

Rensslaer

 

[misterbean]

Rensslaer! Welcome! Glad to see you enjoy it.
I learned a lot from your strategy guides. without them, I think I'd given up on HOI3 around version 1.3 or so (and yes, we ARE getting old). I just hope to pass some of the lessons on to new players who are now where I was back then.

and just so you know, I'm thinking of renaming next chapter into "Encirclement 101".

edit: just finished writing up the next chapter, detailing Fall Weiss from start to finish. it has turned into a 25 KB extravaganza (words only), so I may have to split it in two.

 

[nimrod123]

adding fighters to a stack of bombers (be it FTR or INT being added to CAG or TAC) has more affect then just stacking penalties, it also affects how the units acts in diffrent situations.

if for example a stack of pure bombers is jumped by some fighters, they break off as soon as possible, reducing the damage. BUT if even one FTR or INT is attached that almost pure bomber stack hangs around to fight (and they all fight) so your bombers take far more damage.

the same applies if you attach a bomber to a FTR or INT stack adn do ground attacks, it hangs around longer then it otherwise would.

thats the main reason most people refuse to mix and match, it just causes the wing to be the worst of both worlds, with little to no increase in ability

 

[misterbean]

Chapter 23: Fall Weiss.

As if the past wasn’t hectic enough at times, now we are going to have to keep doing everything we did before, while also waging war on manual control. Once you get the hang of it, though, it will soon become second nature to multitask your attention. We have a strong army, more than capable of taking Poland by storm. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Pause the game at 5 o’clock on the morning of september, 1st 1939. A few preparations have to be made before we kick this into gear.

Go to the production screen and end ALL trades with any nation outside of Europe. These all require convoys, which we would not be able to protect. The Royal Navy would have a field day, at the expense of our National Unity. Due to a quirk in the game engine, we can still safely trade with Ireland (which happens to be an island, but is part of Europe, so we don’t need convoys to reach them). I always do this first because I have a tendency to forget in the ensueing flurry of activity.

Secondly, go to the Diplomacy screen and click the “Danzig or War” decision, putting us at war with the Allies.
We can now “vote in” a few new laws in the politics screen.

As conscription law, select “service by requirement” to increase our MP gain.
As economic law, select “total economic mobilisation” to increase our IC.
As industrial law, select heavy industry emphasis.
You will notice the immediate effect on our CG slider (dissent has turned red). Go to the production screen, switch slider control back to manual control and immediately switch it back to “prioritise reinforcements” to adjust the sliders.
Note that we could enact “blitzkrieg” decision as well. However, we will wait until Warsaw is about to fall to make the effect last as long as possible, preferably until after we have overrun the Low Countries next year.

Next up are our U-boats, which have been in position for some time now. Select each one in turn and right-click the sea zone they are in. Select “convoy raiding” as mission. At the bottom of the mission screen, choose “passive stance”, making them try to avoid any and all fights. Their purpose, after all, is not to engage the Royal Navy, but to sink their merchant navy.

This is what it looks like on the naval map mode. Note that the I. Unterseebootflotte is outside our view, with a mission to raid convoys in the Red Sea area.

Finally, we are going to give our planes their starting missions as well. We’ll start on the Polish front.

Select the interceptors in Köningsberg and give them a mission of air superiority over Danzig. We can choose between 4 types of area selection:
Single-province: they will stay above 1 province until we give them another mission or they get chased off by enemy planes.
Area select: they will patrol a wider area of about 4 to 5 provinces. Interesting if we are short on fighters on a wide front, but it means they will fly the same pattern all the time. Sometimes they will be on the other side of their pattern when enemy planes try to cross or attack.
Cone: if you know what the general direction of their aerial advance will be, you can use this to intercept them on the way.
Circle: exactly what the name says. They will try to protect a circle of provinces centered on the one of your choosing.
The sliders right below the area selection allow us to alter the parameters of their mission: a wider cone or a bigger circle, for instance.

In this case, we know the airbase in Danzig is manned because it is white. We are therefor going to select single-province as our area selection, making sure to engage any planes taking off from there.
Leave the stance at aggressive (this allows us to decide how much of a punishment they will get before running).
We can also choose daytime missions, nighttime missions or both by clicking the correct checkbox. In this case, we want them there fulltime, both day and night.
Leave the “continuous” checkbox marked. If we unmark this, they will perform their mission once and then return to base. Interesting if you want to test an enemy’s defenses, for instance.

The Interceptor wing in Berlin will receive similar orders: air superiority over Poznan, but this time we will select “area” so that includes the other airbase close by as well.

The interceptor wing in Breslau will fly air superiority mission over Krakow, single-province.

Staying with fighters, let’s organise our western defenses as well, shall we?

Select the interceptor based in Praha (Prague), and give it an air superiority mission over Leipzig (single province). For some reason, the UK likes to send its strategic bombers to Leipzig.

The ones in Wilhelmshaven go on air superiority over the Frisian Coast (single province), because its where the strategic bombers mentioned earlier pass through on their way to Leipzig and back. This way, we can give them three bloody noses every time they try it, forcing them to stay grounded and repairing longer in between missions.

The Interceptors in Kassel will start air superiority over Dortmund (single province), the UK’s second most favorite target.

Finally, the MR wing will start air superiority over Düsseldorf (area selection) and its surrounding industrial centers.
Of course, it you notice that the defenders on the Siegfriedline are being pummeled, there’s no reason to keep defending Dortmund, for instance. You may have to intercede from time to time as the AI looks for targets with less of a bite.

Now, our bombers.
Send the Stuka wing stationed in East Prussia on ground attack mission against the Polish province of Przasnysz (just across the border) (area selection to include the province behind it). Ground attack will be used to support ground combat.

The Stukas in Breslau will fly ground attack missions (area), centered on Radomsko.

The Luftflotte in Stettin will use “interdiction” (area), centered on Bydgoszcz, to support the panzers in their encirclement. Interdiction, BTW, should target moving ground targets first, targets in combat second and stationary targets last. So it’s a good way of slowing enemy movement down.

The Luftflotte from Berlin will use the same mission type (also area), centered on Sieradz while the last one will center its (area) interdiction on Nowy Targ (targeting almost all Polish forces between Slovakia and Krakow).

Before we start moving troops, make sure message settings are set to pop-up and pauze when:
-one of our land units arrives at its destination (nothing worse than loosing two days because we forgot and watching all those divisions slip out of the noose)
-we are being bombed. (in case they change their tactics)
-a land battle is over. (to see in what state our divisions are)
-one of our navies is under attack. (to retreat at first sign)
-a naval battle is over. (to rebase them to repair)
-an air battle is over. (to make sure our planes can continue their mission)
When this is all set, you may want to save the game, just in case things go horribly wrong.

The actual invasion.

First of all, give the baltische Flotte a “move” order to Danzig bay. They will intercept any Polish ships that try to escape, but, even more importantly, they will remain stationary in front of Danzig. This will automatically begin their shore bombardment, adding to our chances of a swift takeover of the city.

We’re staying in East Prussia for now. I’m going to give marching orders for our troops, starting in the easternmost province on the frontline, Goldap, and working my way down to krakow. (in HOI3 moving equals attacking). Note that the Polish AI in your game may have its divisions set up differently from my game. You’re going to have to use your own instincts here.

The division in Goldap will move into Suwalki, denying the Poles yet another airbase to use against us.
The infantry in Lyck will move into Osowiec, the ones in Johannisburg march into Lomza and the ones in Sensburg will attack Przasnysz.

Next, select the infantry in Sensburg. Keep the CTRL- key pressed and right-click Przasnysz. This will open a “battle menu” where we can choose between attacking, supporting attack and strategically redeploying (the last one can’t be used to redeploy troops into enemy territory).
Select “support attack”. This mission type will make them join the battle, but after the battle, win or loose, they will stay right where they are. Perfect for when you want a division to join a battle but don’t want them to give up defensive positions afterwards.

The first 3 divisions will act as our screen, as discussed in the previous chapter, threatening any Polish reinforcements coming from the Soviet border.

The division in osterode will stay right where it is, acting to pin down the 2 divisions it is facing across the border. Any movement on their part should be countered by an attack against that province. Normally, they shouldn’t move, thinking they have ME pinned down.
Note that if you are forced to attack either of them, make sure to cancel the order afer a won battle; we don’t want them moving out of position.
The division in Marienburg will attack Grudziadz, acting as the eastern arm of the buffer between Danzig and the rest of Poland.

Moving over to Lauenburg, in mainland Germany. The division there will attack Danzig, while the Infantry in Stolp will attack Koscierzyna, acting as the western arm of the Danzig encirclement.

Now we are going to stage our first breakthrough of the war.
A breakthrough is an attempt to break through the enemy lines into his (hopefully weakly protected) rear and is a necessary first step in most encirclements. Whenever you try this, make sure to concentrate as much firepower as needed to achieve a quick result. You must, however, keep enough (and the right kind of) divisions out of the fight to exploit the breakthrough. If you use them all, they will all suffer from Attack Delay. Keeping some divisions out of the initial battle will keep them fresh to pour through the open gap in the enemy’s defenses and wreak havoc there. You must also make sure to engage enemy divisions in all provinces bordering the breakthrough province (this is your “Schwerpunkt”; the focus of your attack.) to prevent counterattacks.

Use the Infantry in Schneidmuhl to attack Wronki.

Now things get a little complicated.
First, drag a box around the divisions in Neustettin, thereby selecing any and all land forces present there.
Click “x” next to the I. panzerkorps’ HQ to deselect it (HQs don’t fight, remember?).
Attack Tuchola with the rest of the forces there.
Now click the “x” next to the infantry division, deselecting it and leaving it with orders to attack Tuchola.
This leaves us with the divisions belonging to the I. Panzerkorps. Attack Wagrowiec with them.
Using the method described above, deselect the 2 panzer divisions. They will now attack Wagrowiec, leaving us with 1 Leichte Division and 1 motorised division. Right-click Neustettin itself. This will cancel their orders and leave them doing absolutely nothing.

See how we’re doing this? We’re making a breakthrough in Wagrowiec using the sheer power of our panzers, while pinning down the enemy divisions to the left and the right of them, and keeping 2 fast divisions on standby to exploit the gap.

In my game, the Polish AI left a frontline province, Szamotuly, empty. This province has 2 German divisions facing it. BIG MISTAKE! (against human players, this might actually be a trap, but the AI is not smart enough to do this on purpose). I choose to send the division from Landsberg into Szamotuly with no other purpose than to break up the cohesion of their frontline. Depending on what I find on arrival, I may send in the second division as well. For now, I’m keeping it back as strategic reserve in case of Polish counterattack.

Time to set up the southern arm of our encirclement.

Select the division in Militsch and set it to attack Rawicz, pinning them down.

Drag a box around the divisions in Oels. We are going to do something like before.
Deselect the HQ.
Attack Wielun with the rest of the forces and deselect 1 infantry division to keep it with those orders, while we strike down the middle.
Attack Ostrow Wielkopolski. Deselect the 2nd infantry and 1 panzer.
The rest (1 panzer, a Leichte Division and a motorised division) will be our exploit force. Right-click Oels to cancel their orders.
Why we leave a panzer sitting around doing nothing? Simple. These guys will have to join up eventually with the divisions coming from Neustettin, while moving on Lodz at the same time. This requires at least 3 fast divisions.

Now, for the southern part of our invasion

First, select 1 infantry in Kreuzburg to move into Lubliniec, while the other one attacks Czestochowa.

Drag a box around the stack of divisions in Beuthen and deselect the HQ.
Attack Katowice and deselect both infantry divisions. Katowice is an urban province, very hard to take and very easy to hold.
With the rest selected, right-click Lubliniec and shift-right click Zawiercie, thereby ordering all of them to head straight for Zawiercie (the infantry division coming up behind them will secure the gate behind them). Deselect the panzer.
Shift-right click Miechow and deselect a motorised division.
Shift-right click Chrzanow and deselect the other mot.
This leaves us with the Leichte Division. WITHOUT HOLDING THE SHIFT-KEY(!!!!!!!), give it orders to head straight for Busko Zdroj (on the far side of Krakow).

Use one division from Gleiwitz to also attack Katowice. Like I said, urban warfare is hell and the more firepower involved on our side, the better.

The other divisions in Germany proper will be on standby to engage the Poles facing them as soon as the encirclements close.

Moving into Slovakia, send the infantry in Zilina to attack Cieszyn.

Drag a box around the divisions in Martin. Deselect the HQ and attack Nowy Targ.
Deselect the mountain division.
Attack Bielsko Biala. Deselect the Panzer.
Right-click Martin to cancel the Leichte and 2 Motorised divisions’ orders.

The mountaineers in Spisska Nova Ves will move into Nowy Sacz. Feel free to add “support attack” from the mountaineer division next to them if they face stiff opposition, but I’d rather keep them back as strategic reserve for later. You know what you’re facing in your game. You decide.

Before we unpauze, remember: no battleplan survives enemy contact! Things may evolve differently on your end. All you have to do is stick to the plan:
Tactical objectives: encircle as many of Poland’s western defenders as possible, while cutting Danzig off from the rest of Poland.
Strategic objectives: Danzig, Lodz, Krakow and Warsaw. Everything else is of secondary concern.
And the best friend you have in an emergency is the pause-button. Take the time to see what went wrong, decide how to straighten things out, finding idle or less-important units nearby, and where to send them.

When you’re ready, unpause the game and let it run as fast or as slow as you feel comfortable with. Especially for players who have never faced war on manual control, speed 2 would be plenty, I think.

After 1 hour, we are inundated with pop-ups as all our orders take effect at the same time. Fighting breaks out all across the Polish front. If you select one, you can see in what stage of readiness the enemy is. They have a strength ratio of about 75%, meaning they are either half-mobilised or under 3-year duty law. (the latter is the more probable)
The also have an organisation of about 25, which is half of our organisation. This matters even more than strength. It means we should be able to win most, if not all, fights.

You will notice that all combats can be seen in the OOB browser on your right. Ground combat will always be at the top, while air and naval combat will be at the bottom, including bombing runs against us. In order to have them all in one view, just click the icons at the top of the browser titled “land units”, “air units” and “naval units” (the ones I circled in red). They are no longer shown until you click them again.
All combat results are now at our fingertips.

What’s important is the encirclements. They should advance pretty rapidly. If they are taking too long, consider sending in a bomber unit to add more destruction in our enemy’s ranks and speed up their defeat.
Within a matter of hours, the Soviet Union will start the Winter War against Finland, while the USA will start gearing up for war (don’t worry, they are nowhere near interventionist enough to interfere).

Before too long, you will get messages of battles being won. All we can do now is wait until the divisions have reached their destination.

On the 2nd of september, pause the game.

Our resources are re-calculated. As you can see, we are now suffering from a shortage of rares. This will stay with us for the remainder of the game, but due to our hamstering we will be about 4 years before things will get critical. If you look at the capitals (and their stockpiles we will plunder), we can easily last until the end if we must.
What is also re-calculated is our IC total. What is most important, right now, in terms of production, are infantry. We are going to need a hell of a lot more troops than we have right now. Start a new production of infantry: 2 serial, 18 parallell.
Yes, serial. This is simply to make sure we will have what we need by about april 1940 to deal with France and the Low countries, while also maintaining forces in Denmark. At the very least, 36 more infantry will do nicely.
You can use the red double arrows pointing down to put the tactical bomber, MR and ships at the bottom of the queu, along with the airbase in Wuppertal.
Leave the transport planes at the top, though. They will be done before the month is over and free up a lot of IC, which will be needed to upgrade the army.

What happens next depends on the game. It is impossible to determine when things will take place in your game. Just refer to what I do, regardless of the date, and act accordingly.

First off, when Polish fighters intercept your bombers, rebase them and replace them with interceptors of your own until the fight in the air is won before sending the bombers back in.

As soon as the panzers arrive in Wagrowiec, go to Neustettin. Select the motorised and Leichte Divisions and right-click Gniezno. Deselect the motorised division (which is the slower of the two) and shift-right click Inowroclaw, giving the Larm division orders to keep moving and end the northern pincer of our encirclement.

It now becomes important to see how much of an Attack Delay we suffer. In FtM, units under Attack Delay have a yellow corner on their counter. Those of you using SF, selecting a unit will show you a small red “x” on their unit card. Mousing over this “X” will give you a tooltip telling you when they can start moving again.

My infantry arrives in the empty province of Szamotuly. The next province is empty, so I send the idle division from Schwiebus to take Poznan, allowing the first one to start digging in.

Attack Koscian and Leszno with 1 division each the moment you see any movement there. The object is not to defeat them, but to slow them down enough to allow our pincers to close behind them.

When the panzer arrives at Ostrow Wielkopolski, send the Leichte Division to Jarocin, closing the trap. The other two divisions receive orders to head for Lodz, using the shortest route possible.

Within a couple of days, your subs will come under attack. Even at passive stance, it will take a couple of hours before they can disengage. Select the naval battle and slow the game speed down to 1 (slowest). After about 3 hours, the “retreat” icon will light up in the upper left corner of the battle card. Pause the game at once and click the icon. And then pray. In the next hour or two, the subs will try to get out of the fight. Any survivors will undoubtedly be badly damaged. Rebase them to Wilhelmshaven for repairs. The I. Unterseebootflotte, however, would be send all around Africa. Much better to just let it rebase is Italian east Africa.
A few weeks later, the repaired subs can be send back to duty, raiding convoys. For a dedicated convy raiding strategy, you would need a minimum of about 29 subs by the time war starts, preferably all of them the long-range Type IX. This will allow you to field 7 submarine fleets of 3 units each and fully encircle the UK from Iceland and Newfoundland all the way to the coast of Morocco.

When the panzer arroves at Bielsko Biala, send the Leichte Division with its greater speed and river-crossing engineer brigade to Chrzanow. The 2 motorised infantry divisions will assault Krakow.

When the mountaineers arrive at Nowy Targ, we can send the mountaineers from Kezmarek to Bochnia.
This should screen Krakow off from reinforcements.

Around the 4th or the 5th, depending on your game, the panzers from the I. Panzerkorps will come out of Attack Delay. Use one of them to attack Plock, again making it harder for the Poles to move around, while sending the other one to attack Warsaw.

When Katowice comes under our control, we will send the divisions in Gleiwitz to attack Krakow, the ones in Ratibor to attack Rybnik and the infantry in Opava to attack Povaska Bystrika.

When the infantry in Prasnysz is ready for new orders, send it straight on to Warsaw. This way, if they get into a fight along the way, they will have an Attack Delay, but will move on to the next leg of their attack afterwards without needing our further supervision.
As provinces get absorbed into the Reich, our LS will go up. We will also get some new bomber techs done. End the research, as always, but transfer the wasted LS to officer training. Remember to keep spy production at 2.11 and diplomacy at 2.05.

When a pocket is closed, there is only one thing left to do: attack with as many infantry as you can muster to occupy every province inside the pocket as fast as possible. When that happens, the enemy has nowhere left to run and will be destroyed.
When Danzig is taken, cancel the last 2 convoys we had going. Now that we have a land connection to East Prussia, it is only a matter of time before supplies start pouring in through the supply network.
Keep the division in Danzig, for security reasons, and send the divisions from Koscierzyna and Grudniadz to attack Brodnica and Rypin. When the fight starts in Rypin, use the division from Osterode to attack Dzialdowo and the one in Allenstein to attack Mlawa.

Krakow gets conquered and a whole bunch of troops get freed up.
Firstly, send the mtn from Nowy Targ to Krakow to provide protection. Send the panzer from Zawiercie to attack Warsaw, cutting a line across Poland in the process. The panzer in Bielsko Biala can be send to Busho Zdroj, along with the mountaineer from Bochnia. Send the last mountaineer to Tarnow to guard against Poles trying to slip in south of our forces.

Lodz gets captured. Send an idle infantry there to stand guard. When it arrives, send all mobile forces on to Warsaw, normally the last strategic objective of the campaign. Use a tac wing and a stuka to help tearing the defenders to shreds and enact the “Blitzkrieg” decision as soon as the combat % starts rising above 50%. This should last into late June or early July.

The two transport planes get done around this same time. Base them in Kassel, attach them to Heeresgruppe B and give them somebody like Göring to command (he’s actually still a level-3 commander!). rename them Kampfgruppe zbV1.

When all 4 provinces (Danzig, Lodz, krakow and Warsaw) are ours, check the Polish surrender progress in the diplomacy screen. It should be 100%. All we have to do now is wait until the next morning, when they give up and one of two things will happen, determined randomly. They will either form a Government in Exile (Gie) in London (capital of the faction leader) or they will give up completely. In the first case, we simply occupy Poland, as signified by red-and-grey stripes. In the second, we will annex Poland.

I will discuss the various occupation regimes and the consquences in the next chapter. For now, sit back and relish your first military victory!

See you in a few days!

 

[Vetr]

Nicely done. The Poles are no match.
To bad those subs get spotted so fast: you warned us, but I didn't expect it to be this fast. I conquered Poland on day 13 in my game. I wonder how much troops you put on guard near the Soviet border when you attack the West.

Just wondering, isn't it more profitable to use the Blitzkrieg decision when you start Barbarossa?

Oh and justleroy thanks for the answers.

 

[misterbean]

Nicely done. The Poles are no match.
To bad those subs get spotted so fast: you warned us, but I didn't expect it to be this fast. I conquered Poland on day 13 in my game. I wonder how much troops you put on guard near the Soviet border when you attack the West.

Just wondering, isn't it more profitable to use the Blitzkrieg decision when you start Barbarossa?

Oh and justleroy thanks for the answers.

in 3.05 the decision is only available until the fall of Poland. In 3.06, the decision is available until the fall of France.
don't worry, though, we'll get another decision (and an even better one) for Barbarossa.

 

[SSmith]

So what exactly does the Blitzkrieg decision give you? Some combat bonuses presumably.

 

[misterbean]

the decision gives you 20% bonus to soft attack and 20% bonus to combat movement (reaching the newly conquered province 20% faster than normal). Added with Chief of Staff Beck's combat movement bonus (in the politics screen) THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HEER, this makes a ton of difference.

 

[WhAcKeD_OuT]

Not sure how you have the time or ambition to do this but we are all thankful.
Greatly appreciated!!!!

 

[misterbean]

Not sure how you have the time or ambition to do this but we are all thankful.
Greatly appreciated!!!!

you're welcome.

 

[bitwiseDK]

When did you mobilize? I must have missed that part.

Great with some action now.

 

[Vetr]

When did you mobilize? I must have missed that part.

Around 5 august. Not that I'm an expert but I think that the later the better since other nations see it as an act of agression (threat rises) and start mobilizing themselves as well. However mobilization isn't finished in a day or so, so the first week of August was what Misterbean recommended.

 

[misterbean]

Around 5 august. Not that I'm an expert but I think that the later the better since other nations see it as an act of agression (threat rises) and start mobilizing themselves as well. However mobilization isn't finished in a day or so, so the first week of August was what Misterbean recommended.

exactly. for an army the size of the Wehrmacht, with the available IC in Germany, you're looking at about 2 to 3 weeks to fully mobilize. the ratio will change, of course, depending on both the army size and the nation's IC. For most majors, I'd say 3 weeks is a good, educated guess.

 

[Davy]

Won the war with Poland exact like you explained. Is fun playing!!!

 

[Rensslaer]

In my game, the Polish AI left a frontline province, Szamotuly, empty. This province has 2 German divisions facing it. BIG MISTAKE! (against human players, this might actually be a trap, but the AI is not smart enough to do this on purpose).

I think Human HOI 3 players, who have been trained, and are on the ball, are unlikely to make such a mistake. However, human generals, with dozens of years of training HAVE been known to make such mistakes!

Great start! Love the detail.

Renss

 

[misterbean]

I think Human HOI 3 players, who have been trained, and are on the ball, are unlikely to make such a mistake. However, human generals, with dozens of years of training HAVE been known to make such mistakes!

Great start! Love the detail.

Renss

thanks for the compliment.

 

[Tavs]

I have just started reading this, and I must say I am picking up so much I overlooked in my past play throughs. I subscribed immediately ! Thank you for this huge effort .

 

[Noble713]

This thread has been an immense help, I was frustrated before with my poor performance in HoI3 despite playing HoI 1 and 2. This helped show me all the things I'm doing wrong and teach me a great deal about the game mechanics that I wasn't paying enough attention to. Thanks!

 

[misterbean]

Chapter 24: Sitzkrieg.
I’m going to start this chapter with a discussion about a tiny little thing called “Occupation Policy”.

Whenever you occupy a nation where the government goes into exile, and we don’t annex the nation outright, you can set how harsh you want to treat your new subjects and resources.
The harsher the occupation policy, the more resources and IC we extract from the provinces, but the less Manpower and Leadership we get.
From top to bottom these are:

Collaboration Government: this simulates having locals run the day-to-day internal affairs, and is the closest thing you have to making them a puppet. When we use this, the resources we get are:
MP: 35% (best Mp gain)
IC: 5%
Res: 25%
LS: 30% (best LS gain)
Revolt risk: +1.5 (best revolt risk)
Ratio IC/ Resources: +20%

Let me start by explaining the last one. Every point of IC needs 2 energy, 1 metal, ½ rare materials.
Your IC total in this case rises by 5%, but you “mine” 25% of the target’s resources. In other words, you gain more resources than IC. This is important for any nation with an inherent deficit in one or more resources. Conquering a resource-rich neighbour could allow you to go for the occupation policy that gains the most “unspend” resources. I may not be entirely accurate, by my formula is simply resources-IC=resource gain.

Military Government: the occupying army runs the whole show, and they typically think only of the army’s needs. As long as those are met, and everything is peacful, the rest is up to the locals (a mayor could still run the townhall’s business, for instance).
MP: 30%
IC: 20%
Resources: 50% (best Resource gain)
LS: 20%
Revolt risk: +7
Ratio IC/ Resources: +30% (best ratio gain)

Full Occupation: Here, you have everything run by politicians and army from the conquering nation (think police state).
MP: 15%
IC: 40%
Resources: 65%
LS: 10%
Revolt risk: +11
Ratio IC/resources: +25%

Note that this entry has neither good nor bad results and will mostly leave you with a little of everything.

Total Exploitation: People don’t have rights. The conquered nation is just a tool to enrich the fatherland. Period. It borders on things I can’t talk about due to strict forum rules.
MP: 5% (worst Mp gain)
IC: 60% (best IC gain)
Resources: 75% (best resource gain, but see ratio)
LS: 1% (worst LS gain)
Revolt risk: +19 (worst revolt risk)
Ratio IC/ resources: +15% (worst ratio, not counting annexation)

Annexed non-core territory: annexing a province that doesn’t historically belong to you (you don’t have a “core” on it), regardless of what anyone else says or thinks.
MP:25% (second best)
IC: 50% (second best)
Resources: 50% (second best)
LS: 20% (second best)
Revolt risk: 6% (additionally, it can’t be decreased by the suppression ability of your troops, and the game files seem to indicate the risk rises dramatically over time; expect an armed revolt every couple of weeks or months; without a doubt the worst result in terms of revolt risk).
Ratio IC/ Resources: 0% (good averages all round but worst ratio; absolutely zero gain in the ratio to acquire better resource gains)

Conclusion: if you’re nice to the locals, they like you better and more people would be willing to join the army of the new overlord, but they expect to maintain a certain standard of living and you can’t use as many factories for producing ammo and other things that go “boom”. However, the stricter you are, the more they hide what they have from you and conspire to revolt (ungrateful lot…). What you do in your own games largely depends on both your own nation’s economy and the target’s economy. Short on MP but get hold of an MP-rich nation? Go for the occupation policy that offers the most MP. Need more IC to build up your forces but you have a large surpluss of resources? Bingo!

So, what do we need most? For any German campaign, Manpower is the really limiting factor. If Germany looses too much MP, especially against France, they will run out before reaching Moscow. Game over.
Considering that we have an army about half the size we really need against the SU, what we need are two things: Manpower to fuel the expansion of our army, and Leadership to train the officers needed in that expanded army. Even our rares stockpile is high enough to last us a couple of years before things turn critical (and this does not even take into account that every capital we conquer will add their stockpile to ours).
By this reckoning, looking over the occupation policies, staying at the default Occupation Policy of Collaboration Government seems the wisest course of action.
When you start your own campaign, your reasoning may be very different and require a different occupation strategy and you may want to write the best and worst gains down for future reference, but for now we will keep things the way they are.
Occupation Policies, by the way, are in the Politics screen, under the ministers and next to the laws. They work the same way that laws do and can be set differently for every occupied nation.

Enough theory. Back to the game!

First thing we are going to do is detach 1 infantry division (I would suggest one with a level-3 or 2 major general) and attach it directly to the OKH.
Send it to Warsaw. Right now, the Soviets are least likely to be in an aggressive mood, but we might need it in case of an uprising in one of our new provinces. If this happens, move or Strategically Redeploy it (depending on how far away it happens) to engage the revolting province. When the fight is over, send the division back to Warsaw.

Detach Heeresgruppe A and attach it to the OKW in stead. Send the whole kit and kaboodle to Siegen, near the French border. A simple move order will suffice, since we’re in no real hurry right now. Besides, its easier on our supply network than Strategic Redeployment (the troops move faster than the network can respond; the equivalent of sending about 40 to 50 divisions to the other side of the country on trains).
Rebase the Baltische Flotte in Danzig and attach it directly to the OKH for now. Make sure you have ended every convoy in the production screen.
Rebase both the Erkundungsflotte and Weserflotte to Kiel, for use in our eventual assault on Denmark.
We will also reorganise the Luftwaffe.
Rebase the Fliegerkorps in Breslau to Stuttgart, the one from Köningsberg to Wuppertal and the one in Berlin to Bitburg.

Rebase the Luftflotte from Berlin to Kiel, the one in Breslau to Frankfurt Am Main, and the one in Stettin to Hannover.
Stuka 1 and 2 will both go to Bitburg, where their limited range will do the most good once the fight for France starts.

Rebase Zerstörergruppe 1 to Warsaw and attach it to the OKH for now.

Wait a few days until the Soviets come asking for their share in the spoils. You could refuse, but that would likely result in a very grumpy Stalin. Not something we want to contemplate at this point. Much safer to “honour the pact”.

Wait until midnight the following day, when the game has recalculated for losing half of Poland. Go to the research screen.
We are building 36 infantry divisions right now, along with 6 mobile artillery brigades. While Manpower is deducted from the pool when you start training (building) the division, officer ratio is deducted at the end, when the unit is deployed on the map. We don’t want to find ourselves with an officer ratio below 100% come april, do we?

To stay positive, here are the adjustments we need to make to our sliders:
Research: 20.01
Espionage: 0.31 (going from the assumption that we still have a large enough reserve of spies available; if not keep espionage at 2.11 and lower research accordingly)
Diplomacy: 2.05
Officer training: 13.24 (we will need a daily gain of at least 78 officers to break even)

Let the game run until you get an opening in your research queu, which should be around the 4th of October. Keep an eye out for any strategic bombing runs by the Royal Air Force and engage them if they deviate from Leipzig or Dortmund.
Watch your subs and pull them out of every fight at the earliest convenience, rebasing them in Wilhelmshaven for repairs. After a few weeks you could reorganise them so you have 3-unit submarine fleets again and send them back out. Or not. Your choice. Every convoy sunk without retaliation will lower the nation’s National Unity, so it would not be completely pointless.

On the 4th, you can start 1940 research:
Infantry: small arms, infantry support weapons, light artillery, infantry anti-tank weapons. (assault weapons and bridging equipment would make our engineers deadlier, but we have to cut corners somewhere).
Armour: all 4 Larm techs, all 4 Arm techs, both artillery techs.
Escorts: all 4 CL techs.
Capitals: all 4 CV techs.
Industry: agriculture, industrial efficiency, mechanical computing machine, decryption machine, encryption machine, supply production, nuclear research.
Theory: suppy transportation, supply organisation.
Land: mobile warfare, operational level command structure, elastic defense, blitzkrieg, infantry warfare, special forces, assault concentration.
Air: fighter pilot training, fighter ground crew training, interception tactics, fighter ground control, CAS pilot training, CAS ground crew training, ground attack tactics, Tac pilot training, tac ground crew training, interdiction tactics, tactical air command, all naval air techs.

Total: 75 projects. We may not be able to finish all of them before the end of 1940, but you never know.

I neglected to take a screenshot, but at some point, if it hasn’t allready in your game, there’s an event where Hitler orders the forts of the Sudetenland scrapped.

When KMS Dresden is finished, assign it to the Kriegsmarine.
On the 28th, radar research is finished. This opens the following techs that should be added to the queu:
Fighters: advanced aircraft design.
Naval: radar training.
Escorts: small warship radar, small warship ASW (we’re not the only nation in the game with subs).
Capitals: large warship radar.

Go to the production screen and start building 10 radar. Prioritise them. They will not be finished in time for the start of the campaign against France, but they will help tremendously with those pesky Allied bombers throughout the war.
Change the automation of our production sliders to prioritise production to keep as much IC as possible on production.

The beginning of november will see the birth of a new MR wing. Deploy it in Berlin and rename it “Zerstörergruppe 2”, attaching it to OKH. (I’m using both of them as emergency back-ups, just in case). I assigned Klepke to command the new wing.
Two days later, KMS Tirpitz is commisioned. Add it to the Kriegsmarine’s roster.
A couple of days later, we get our (temporarily) last MR wing. Add it to Zerstörergruppe 2.
Eventually, an event will appear called “the Fate of France”, giving us a choice between the historical path and an alternative of our own choosing. Since we are going historical, select “sounds like a good idea”. When we attack France later on, the French surrender will start Vichy France.

On the 13th of December, we get a whole bunch of infantry divisions. Begin by making sure every Armeekorps in Heeresgruppe A has 4 divisions, including the I. Gebirgsjägerkorps. You should know how to do this by now without needing me to hold your hand.
Keep the game paused. Time to make a few changes in the Heer.
Detach the Armeekorps from the 2. Armee that is watching Belgium, Luxemburg and southern Netherlands and give it a new army: 5. Armee.
Add this new army to Heeresgruppe A.They will eventually move into France in the wake of the 1. Panzerarmee.
Use the rest of the new infantry divisions to give the 5. Armee a total of 5 Armeekorps, each with 4 infantry divisions to command. Select level-3 guys to command. Note that we are actually coming up short 1 division to have a complete army.
Find Von Küchler (if you followed my OOB, he should be in command of the I. Armeekorps, part of 3. Armee. Promote him to general and give him command of the 3. Armee. Don’t forget to replace him with another lieutenant general!!)
Von Witzleben will command 5. Armee instead.

When the last tactical bomber gets finished, add it to Luftflotte IV. We are still under automated sliders, so the IC should be used for something else right away without our interference.

Around the 18th, we get the Self-Propelled Artillery brigades. Attach them to each of our 6 medium armour divisions (the Panzer divisions).
Sometime later, we get the 3 airborne divisions. Deploy them in Kassel, where we have our transport planes, and attach them directly to the OKW so you can find them more easily later.
Go to the I. Gebirgsjägerkorps and replace Student with Ringel, a new excellent commando leader. Student will command 1. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Assign other commando leaders to the other 2 para divisions.
At the start of February, it’s time to start setting things up.

Move 2. Armee to Neumünster, the Armeekorps with 4 divisions to Kiel (including the actual divisions) and the one with 5 to Heide. Send 2 of its divisions to Flensburg and 3 to Leck (the 2 provinces bordering Denmark).

On the 13th, we develop a rocket engine. However, we are still very far away from jet fighters and ICBMs. What it does, is open 2 new research projects:
Industry: theoretical jet engine
Secret: strategic rocket development.
As I write this, I can’t help but wonder: has anyone of my more experienced readers ever seen the AI develop jetplanes on its own?

Not much left to do now but wait until the rest of our infantry gets finished.

Give the 5. Armee its last division.

Find the infantry we left in Warsaw and give it an Armeekorps, an army (6. Armee) and an army group (Heeresgruppe C). Send the division and armeekorps to the southernmost province bordering Soviet Union.

Line the rest of the new divisions along the border from south to north, 1 division per province. Organise the lot of them along the same lines we are used to: 4 divs per corps, all corps attached to the 6. Armee.
Attach the Baltische Flotte and our 2 MR wings to Heeresgruppe C as well.

Assign the following generals:
Find Dollmann in the 1. Armee. Promote him to general and give him command of 1. Armee. Don’t forget to replace him with someone suitable if he was commanding an armeekorps (a defender or a fortress buster)!!

Promote Von Leeb to Field Marshall and give him command of Heeresgruppe C.

A new major general can be found in the list, called Höhne. He’s a skill-3 logistics wizard/defensive expert. Excellent! Promote him to general and give him command of 6. Armee.

We now have the troops to take down France, and at least a token resistance against any possible Soviet aggression. I would really like to continue building our infantry, but other things take precedence: like security inside Poland and our still-behind-schedule upgrades.

Send the whole 3. Armee to Münster.
Send the 4. Armee and the 1. Panzerarmee to Düren (right behind Bitburg).
Send the 5. Armee to Trier.

Wait about 2 weeks, until everybody is in place and make the final adjustments:

3. Armee.
Send one Armeekorps to cover Emden, Papenburg, Meppen and Nordhorn with 1 division each.
Another Armeekorps will cover Bocholt and Kleve with 2 divisions each.
Send an entire armeekorps to Krefeld and the last one to München Gladbach (on the Dutch border, not to be confused with the capital of Bavaria).

4. Armee.
Send 3 full armeekorps to Aachen and 2 to Bitburg. Make sure the I. Gebirgsjägerkorps is send to Bitburg.

5. Armee.
Send 3 full armeekorps to Bitburg and 2 to Saarlouis.

Send the complete 1. Panzerarmee to Bitburg.
They should all be in place by the start of May at the latest.

Start building 5 garrison divisions, each consisting of 2 gar/1 MP. These will be our stationary defense of important locations in Poland.

On the 31st of March, KMS Graf Zeppelin is ready. Attach it to the Kriegsmarine.
Find the 2-wing cag (which should be in Rostock) and right-click Wilhelmshaven. In the mission window, select “Rebase to Carrier” as mission. When they arrive, they will automatically start defending the fleet from aerial attacks.

In its stead, start building 3 cavalry divisions, each consisting 2 cavalry brigades. These guys will be our rapid intervention squads in case of an uprising in Poland.

When that’s done, save the game. When we return, the Sitzkrieg is over!

 

[Davy]

Hi Misterbean,

you speak of the Erkundungsflotte but I don't find anything back of it. Wich ships are included in that one and witch commander?


Greets