How do you break France as Germany?

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TalyonUngol

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Jul 7, 2019
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Take Netherlands, Take Belgium, but get halted at the Belgium French border. Cant push. No matter what I do. No matter the template, no matter what I do. I obviously cant get air superiority due to not being able to produce planes like britain or france can, but I forgot to make AA guns. Is the AA guns my problem?

Also supply is pretty gnarly there, but not much I can do without sitting on the border for months. How do you guys break into France? I build quite a bit of tanks though they aren't of great quality due to being the early game.... but I never had this issue back in MTG. Would steamroll through France but now I cant do a darn thing.

So, whats the strat? Is my 9/1 templates just trash?

Tanks just bad?
 
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Is this in vanilla SP? It's hard to know without more info like screenshots or a save. I don't think AI France builds any forts on the northern border on historical. Maybe they go the army reform path that spawns like level 2 forts? I've never noticed. Might be because I do Around Maginot immediately after Danzig or War and cap them before they get there. Still, the actual border is mostly planes and AI France just frankly doesn't have great divisions. Even with British air support, which it definitely is doable to compete with, albeit hard in '39 when also focusing on tanks, they shouldn't be able to stop you.

I responded to a similar thread a while back showing how I opened the 1939 bookmark and rapidly killed France with no micro and no air support, so it's definitely doable. Supply also really shouldn't be an issue in Western Europe, esp. with motorization enabled, unless you're somehow stacking like 150 divisions in Belgium alone.

 
Also supply is pretty gnarly there
Is supply set to fully motorized?
Maybe you should pull back most of your infantry
Maybe screenshot, because supply should be an issue in Europe


In General:
Declare on the Netherlands
Go the 3 tiles to Amsterdam and the 2 tiles to Rotterdam
Netherlands should cap within 1 or 2 days
THEN (not before) declare immediately on belgium.
Pin all belgian troops on the german border
Go into belgium fully in the west with fast divisions (tanks, motorised)
reach france (full in the west) almost unopposed
snake to paris (dunkerque and amies) almost unopposed
france should cap before belgium because you have 2 (or even 3) collaboration governments on them

This way you are so fast you dont care about the allied air, because you dont fight. you just take empty tiles and push maybe 1 small division out of paris.

If you were not that fast and got stuck:
pull away air, pull away tanks to where they can resupply
choose a tile you want to take
when the tanks are ready go for it full supplied an with air up
infantry can be thin (doesnt matter if they push you a bit, if they do your tanks will roll then unentrenched)
 
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Is this in vanilla SP? It's hard to know without more info like screenshots or a save. I don't think AI France builds any forts on the northern border on historical. Maybe they go the army reform path that spawns like level 2 forts? I've never noticed. Might be because I do Around Maginot immediately after Danzig or War and cap them before they get there. Still, the actual border is mostly planes and AI France just frankly doesn't have great divisions. Even with British air support, which it definitely is doable to compete with, albeit hard in '39 when also focusing on tanks, they shouldn't be able to stop you.

I responded to a similar thread a while back showing how I opened the 1939 bookmark and rapidly killed France with no micro and no air support, so it's definitely doable. Supply also really shouldn't be an issue in Western Europe, esp. with motorization enabled, unless you're somehow stacking like 150 divisions in Belgium alone.


I can try to show some screens but what do you want to see?
 
Is supply set to fully motorized?
Maybe you should pull back most of your infantry
Maybe screenshot, because supply should be an issue in Europe


In General:
Declare on the Netherlands
Go the 3 or 4 tiles to Amsterdam and the 3 or 4 tiles to the Hague
Netherlands should cap within 1 or 2 days
THEN (not before) declare immediately on belgium.
Pin all belgian troops on the german border
Go into belgium fully in the west with fast divisions (tanks, motorised)
reach france (full in the west) almost unopposed
snake to paris (dunkerque and amies) almost unopposed
france should cap before belgium because you have 2 (or even 3) collaboration governments on them

This way you are so fast you dont care about the allied air, because you dont fight. you just take empty tiles and push maybe 1 small division out of paris.

If you were not that fast and got stuck:
pull away air, pull away tanks to where they can resupply
choose a tile you want to take
when the tanks are ready go for it full supplied an with air up
infantry can be thin (doesnt matter if they push you a bit, if they do your tanks will roll then unentrenched)

Ah this might be it. I declared on both Belgium and Netherlands at the same time, and I dont use motorized since I dont find them useful by themselves. I just put them with tanks.
 
Like this:
1658560377259.png


Don't go to Eindhoven but directly to Rotterdam. And don’t cross rivers, it’s not needed.
 
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I'm just playing this so here are some screenshots:


Start: 12.07.1939 10:00
I declare on the netherlands
I have 4 Tanks that should do the work and 96 Infantry to hold the maginot, pin belgium(later), follow up and fill holes
Air just 600 CAS over Benelux to be green and have air support for the first few hours
1658564424528.png

14.07.1939 07:00
Amsterdam and Rotterdam are ours, Netherlands will cap at the end of the day
Yellow air now, cause Alllies have arrived (this is +5 buffed UK and +5 buffed France so they have A LOT of Air)
1658564898135.png

14.07.1939 12:00
Arriving at belgian border, declaring war, tanks moving in
Infantry (the brown army) pinning blgian army
1658565113588.png

16.07.1939 21:00
Reaching France, putting CAS over France
1658565415140.png

21.07.1939 00:00
France capitulates after I took Paris and Lille.
1658565678053.png

This time I went more through "the middle" cause a belgian division stopped me some days in Gent.
But I think get the idea of the "Blitzkrieg"... The french divisions are still almost all at the Maginot.
 
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If you exploit the AI like this, isn't a +5 France a buff to yourself? Since no matter how much they produce you simply go around their divisions either way amd you then capture all their equipment when snaking towards Paris.
 
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If you exploit the AI like this, isn't a +5 France a buff to yourself? Since no matter how much they produce you simply go around their divisions either way amd you then capture all their equipment when snaking towards Paris.
Good point.
I've been thinking about this in the past, but it's not clear for me what is harder.
I play +5 SOV, +5 UK, +5 USA, no Sealion until Sov caps and historical wars and Africa campaign.
So with +5 on France I capture more stuff and get more buildings, but the war of France is much more risky and Africa and the Med is harder...
 
You dont really need to do much in Vanilla the Standard inf Template at the start is good enough for infantry. Tanks you can just have 5 divs of 7 tank 5 Mot and even then you might not need to as long as tech is up to date.

Are you building enough of an air force Fighters and CAS can do most of the Heavy Lifting..

I usually just declare on Netherlands pushing straight through to Amsterdam and Rotterdam then get my armies on the Belgian border declare, let it tick once to allow Belgium into the Allies then draw the spear head plan through Paris. as long as you snag Calais on the way its pretty much it.
 
Before the war with France. Your border infrastructure ... in the future and in the Benelux should be connected to the 5th level with the infrastructure of the capital. Your frontier hubs should also be upgraded with a capital. That is, a level 5 railway + level 5 infrastructure is connected to your capital. This may not help due to the bombing of logistics. So you will also need transport aircraft, improved air defense in the regions. You will need railway guns, you will need heavy tanks with maximum armor and all the best upgrades. Your tanks will destroy bunkers and divisions even without air. This is my option without air for Germany.
 
Upgraded heavy tanks are 100% not necessary and almost certainly counter productive. In vanilla, France will have effectively no armor, all you need is soft attack. The best all around way is to make either medium SPGs or medium tanks with howitzers (though you can put the close support gun into production until you get the medium howitzer 1). It's also 100% doable with just infantry or motorized with artillery.

Level 5 railway is definitely not necessary. Hubs are very dense in Western Europe, you just need motorized supply. Green air is hugely helpful of course, especially with CAS, but again not necessary. In that post I linked, I capped them with no air up whatsoever and no support AA.
 
Whats a good template? Im trying the 9/1 with just Arty support companies so I get that great Org... but it doesn't really seem that effective. CONSTANTLY im getting Red battles. is the 9/1 just meant for defense?

Whats the offensive infantry template?
 
Air superiority is vital, you should out-produce planes to the Allied in the early years and just the forward air bases to your advantage.
 
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Whats a good template? Im trying the 9/1 with just Arty support companies so I get that great Org... but it doesn't really seem that effective. CONSTANTLY im getting Red battles. is the 9/1 just meant for defense?

Whats the offensive infantry template?
9/1 is the best all-around infantry template currently. A more offensive focused template would just adding more line artillery. 9/3 is another width sweet spot, you can use sorta whatever amount of artillery you can afford.
 
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9/1 is the best all-around infantry template currently. A more offensive focused template would just adding more line artillery. 9/3 is another width sweet spot, you can use sorta whatever amount of artillery you can afford.

So 9/1 is generally to hold the line. I'm assuming just use support arty and eng? Game has drastically changed since mtg lmao.
 
So 9/1 is generally to hold the line. I'm assuming just use support arty and eng? Game has drastically changed since mtg lmao.
Also support AA. It's difficult to avoid at least contested air, even against the AI.

In fact, with a 9/1 or 9/3 I'd prioritize support AA over support ART.
 
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