"How the heck do you play this game?!" A simple tutorial AAR

[dublish]

Really enjoying the AAR - finding it invaluable as a new player.

One question. Am following everything you've done, but it all goes wrong after Danzig or War. After Poland refuses and I end up at war with them, the Soviets cancel our non-agression pact a few days later. Have re-loaded and tried this 5 or 6 times, but it happens every time. The Soviets then don't invade eastern Poland (have waited 2 months for that to trigger with no success). I end up taking Grodno and Lvov and annexing Poland, but never get the event to return eastern Poland to the Soviets. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestion?

Sounds like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact events didn't fire historically. MRPact fires about a week before the end of August, so reload as close to August 20 or thereabouts as you can.

Alternatively, you could keep playing as is. Just don't be surprised if the Soviets declare war on you while you're knee-deep in France.

 

[Ironhead 5]

We are well into phase two of Operation Barbarossa. Our goals for this phase are to capture Moscow and Leningrad, push to the Don River in the south, and position ourselves for a drive on Baku, Stalingrad, and Sverdlovsk, the final three targets of our invasion.

How will we do this? Encirclements were the key to the first phase of the operation, and if we executed those encirclements well, we will have trapped and destroyed scores of Soviet divisions in the Pripet Marshes, in Bessarabia, and in the Baltic States. In this phase, we can still encircle divisions in the north, but most of our destructive power will come from overrunning Soviet divisions.

What I mean by overrunning is this: when we win a battle, the defeated Soviet divisions start retreating to the next province back. If our forces arrive at that province first, the retreating Soviet units will be destroyed upon arriving (I mentioned this back during our invasion of Belgium, remember?). Our speedy panzer corps will be able to do plenty of overrunning. Our infantry corps will also do their share, as well. This is because most of the remaining Soviet divisions are cheap militia and infantry divisions. The Soviets have mostly the 1939 model of infantry, which has a speed of four. Our 1941 infantry divisions have a speed of five. Our infantry are slightly faster, and over the course of attacking two or three provinces our infantry will eventually overrun their infantry.

We technically could still conduct encirclements in the south, where our panzers are still reigning supreme, but by this point our infantry will be lagging behind, and there is a great risk that a random Soviet division will come out of nowhere to cut our panzers off.

In this lesson, as in the previous one, it is probably impossible for you to follow my battle plan to the letter. There are simply too many variables that could make your game progress vastly different from mine. However, all you have to do is remember the bullets I listed at the beginning of the last lesson, and continue to make steady progress northward and eastward on a broad front. When you encounter a strong Soviet force, try to accrue as many combat bonuses as possible - bomb them from the air, attack from multiple sides, cut them off, etc. If you encounter a battle that you do not have an immediate overwhelming advantage, call off the attack until you can bring more forces to the area and achieve a tactical superiority. Don't let the Soviets bleed the org from your units by long, drawn-out battles.

As we advance, don't forget to strategically redeploy our GARs from Memel to key points in the Soviet interior. Right now every conquered Soviet province has partisan activity around 30%, but once we trigger the Bitter Peace event partisan activity will drop to 2% across the board, so we won't need a GAR in every single province - we just need a GAR to be at least adjacent to every single proivnce. Remember also to wait for the front to push past a province before deploying a GAR there - we wouldn't want one of our GARs to get deployed to the front and suddenyl find themselves being attacked! Here are the provinces I am deploying my GARs to:

When we left off last lesson, we had crossed the Dniepr river in the south and were approaching Moscow in the center and Leningrad in the north. Continue pressing forward in the south. Beware of the urban terrain in Kharkov; if it is well-defended, take Belgorod and Bilovodsk to cut off the city. When you take Rostov, be sure to re-base your southern air forces from Kiev to there.

In the north, continue to press on toward Moscow and Leningrad. Taking Staraya Russa, Novgorod, and Rzhev will be tough, since they are swampy terrain, but it is necessary to shore up the flanks of our larger forces that will engage the defenders in Moscow and Leningrad. TACs are very useful for battles in these provinces, since bringing additional units to envelop these swampy provinces can take forever.

With the strong forces we have in Toropets and Vyazma, attack Mozhaisk. Note that Mozhaisk has land fortifications and rough terrain; it is also usually well-defended. Focus your TACs from Vitebsk on the Moscow region to help you dislodge the defenders in Mozhaisk.

In early July, another airbase is produced. In the north we have a couple of airbases easily within range of our forces at Riga and Vitebsk, and in the south we are about to take the airbases at Rostov and Kharkov, so this airbase isn't particularly necessary just yet. All the same, we don't want to just leave it in our deployment queue - it will use up 100 TC if we do. I recommend that we deploy it to Vitebsk to increase the size of that airbase.

In the center, try to take Noginsk and Tula in force. If you have two Field Marshals and dozens of divisions at Mozhaisk (like I did in my game), you can send one entire Field Marshal with up to eight INF corps to take Noginsk. That way, we can attack Moscow from two directions with two Field Marshals totaling nearly fifty divisions.

In the south, you may start to run into resistance again around the Don River and on the Crimean peninsula. We don't have very strong forces in the Crimean (all our panzers should have bypassed it), and we can only attack Yevpatoriya from one province, so be sure to pound the defenders with TACs before and while sending in ground forces. Once Sevastopol falls, our forces can cross directly from Kerch to Novorossisk, in the Crimean, as long as there are no Soviet fleets in the sea province separating the two land provinces.

Don't let our panzers get ahead of our infantry. The closer we get to Stalingrad, the more likely the AI will send units there to defend it, and panzers suffer terrible penalties in urban terrain. We need infantry support for those tanks!

In the Baltic region, a cut-off enemy force continues to hold out in Narva, but that is okay. They aren't going to be breaking out anytime soon, and our forces were needed a little further to the east, to attack Leningrad. We find that as we got close to Leningrad, the Soviet AI started to move units there - a lot of units. In fact, they are going to keep moving units off of the border with Finland to put in Leningrad. This is fine; let them keep doing that. The more Soviet divisions get to Leningrad, the more Soviet divisions we are going to capture in Leningrad.

When our forces arrive in Noginsk, go ahead and launch an assault on Moscow with as many divisions as we can from Mozhaisk and Noginsk. Include TAC support as well.

We may find that some of our panzer corps are drifting north. However, don't let them get too far north! If we click on the weather map, we see that there are still outbreaks of rain and mud throughout central and northern Russia. Remember, that mud will slow our panzers down and impose combat penalties on them.

In mid-July, it is about time to swoop down on Leningrad. Click on our MTN forces in Mikkeli and manually promote one of our Commando commanders to General (I recommend Schorner). Then have all MTN corps in Helsinki and Mikkeli attack Viipuri. Re-direct some TACs their way if they run into a tough battle.

Meanwhile, our forces should be fighting their way into Moscow now. When they arrive, re-base our air forces from Vitebsk to Moscow, and have our forces continue on through Rybinsk, Vladimir, and Yaroslavl.

When Werner Heisenberg discovers Isotrope Separation Facility, have him start studying the next nuclear tech (Nuclear Fuel Analysis), and then go to the Production folder, click on the Nuclear button, and start production on 1x serial run, 1x production run nuclear reactor (we cannot create a larger run that that because we only have necessary technology for the first level of reactor). This game can easily be played without nukes, but just for fun, it's nice to have nukes available.

Back in the south, our front opens up once we reach Rostov. Suddenly, we have to push east, while also guarding our south (and pushing south a little bit, too). Be sure to send as many INFs as possible south, taking Krasnodar, Tikhoretsk, and Salsk. If you have enough INFs to defend each province on the front, you can push even further south. Don't send panzers, though - note all the mountainous terrain down there. Don't send a weak force of only a few paltry INFs either - the Persians are probably at war with you by this point, and we don't want to finally reach Baku with a tired INF corps only to have the Persian army kick them back out again.

In the north, when our MTNs arrive in Viipuri and Blomberg's INFs arrive in Luga, Leningrad should be cut off (they cannot be supplied by sea since the Baltic Sea is sealed off at the Danish Straits). Deliver a prepatory Interdiction bombing of Leningrad for a few days with our TACs, and then attack with full force from Luga, Kingisepp, and Viipuri. The defenders should quickly fold, since they are utterly cut off, and we will destroy many Soviet divisions this way. One of the HQs can rush in and seize the now-unguarded province; the combat divisions will be needed elsewhere.

With the fall of Leningrad, phase 2 of our operation is complete. We have reached and passed the Don River in the south, we have captured Moscow, and we have captured Leningrad. We are now entering the third and final phase of the invasion. In this phase, we will move forward to seize Stalingrad, and then send INFs south along the Volga River to take Astrakhan and seal off the northern entrance to the Caucasus. Meanwhile, our forces in the north will wheel east, destroying Soviet forces who get pocketed along the border with Finland, and establish a linear front, running from Archangelsk down to Astrakhan (the infamous "A-A" line). From this linear front, we will finish the Soviets off by pushing south down the Caucasus with INFs and capturing Baku, while pressing forward into the Urals with our panzers to take Sverdlovsk.

And the first step of this phase is easily within reach. Our panzers arrive on the outskirts of Stalingrad to find it guarded only by a battered infantry division - but several other Soviet units are nearby and rushing to the province. In this case, even though we only have panzers nearby, we can go ahead and attack, provided we send plenty of TACs on Interdict missions to deal even more damage to the Soviet infantry division (our panzers, with -105% urban terrain penalty, aren't going to deal too much damage to it). After routing the infantry division, our triumphant panzers will take the city. Hold up there and wait for the slower INFs to catch up.

I'm going to stop here, and save the rest of phase three for the next lesson. Save the game, then zoom out to get a comprehensive glimpse of our situation.

Note the absence of defenders in many provinces along the front. It may be tempting to send our panzers racing ahead to grab Sverdlovsk, and it is possible to do so. But beware! Sverdlovsk is still far away, and there are still plenty of places for the Soviets to cut off our panzers. Furthermore, our panzers would need to defend Sverdlovsk until we could also reach down and take Baku.

We don't need to race ahead with our panzers. We are doing really well. We have gone further in a little over two months, than Hitler went in over two years. Three of our five targets have fallen. Most noteworthy, however, is our TC. Right now we should be around 1100 TC, with a maximum allowable TC in the 800s. This means that we are suffering degraded organizational regain, which is bad (not so bad, since we appointed Jodl our Chief of Staff at the beginning of the year). But our TC is supposed to be overloaded - we have our oil- and supply-guzzling units running at full throttle, with oil consuming submarines in the seas and oil consuming airplanes in the skies. Furthermore, we have accrued nearly 150 additional provinces, all with partisan activity rates around 30%, all draining our TC. To have our TC only be at 1100 is a remarkable feat, and attributable to two main factors: (a) we garrisoned our high-partisan activity provinces in Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia, and are fixing to do so in Russia; (b) we only built 8x ARMs and 16x MOTs. As I said in an earlier lesson, a common novice mistake is to build far too many tanks and motorized infantry. It isn't uncommon to hear of someone building ten, or twenty, or thirty armored divisions, and even more motorized or mechanized infantry divisions. As we have seen here, we don't need that many! Sure, having those extra tanks gives you extra firepower, and I'm sure it is just as possible to defeat the Soviet Union. But with sky-high TC, everything moves a little slower, and it would take FOREVER to finally get all the way to Sverdlovsk.

No sir, we are doing just fine as it is. And pretty soon now, we will reach Baku and Sverdlovsk and force Stalin to accept a Bitter Peace.

 

[unmerged(62478)]

You should do the same thing for WIF after you finish this one lol.

 

[sbr]

Looking good. Any idea how many Soviet divisions you have destroyed at this point?

 

[Nathan Madien]

Wow. You make it look...so easy.

 

[Ironhead 5]

Looking good. Any idea how many Soviet divisions you have destroyed at this point?

I will be posting the next update, which ends with Bitter Peace, sometime in the next couple of days. Right before Bitter Peace, I checked my Intelligence folder on the Soviet Union. With only two spies, they were estimating 88 infantry divisions and 5 armored divisions. Compare that to about 250 infantry and 15 armored before the war began.

 

[unmerged(112943)]

so, um, going all the way back to June 1939, Romania were being really stubborn, every time I influenced them it was only 5 or 10 points, and now when I try to bring them to alliance, the chance is 0. I guess one of the events that fired means that they are never going to join; Is there a certain deadline that you have to get them in before? (Glaring lack of historical knowledge

 

[Ironhead 5]

so, um, going all the way back to June 1939, Romania were being really stubborn, every time I influenced them it was only 5 or 10 points, and now when I try to bring them to alliance, the chance is 0. I guess one of the events that fired means that they are never going to join; Is there a certain deadline that you have to get them in before? (Glaring lack of historical knowledge

Romania and Hungary hate each other. If you brought Hungary into the alliance, Romania will refuse to join. In my game I brought Romania in first, then forced Hungary in by event with the "End of Czechoslovakia" event. I don't know if there is a date when Romania will agree to join the Axis again. (possibly after the Soviet Union takes Bessarabia?)

However, don't fret! This can actually be a good thing. When you go to war with Yugoslavia, you can also go to war with Romania. Conquer them (allowing Hungary to take Transylvania and Bulgaria to take Constanta), then go to the Diplomacy folder, click on Germany, and click on "Liberate Nation." Liberate Romania - it becomes your "puppet." Whenever a puppet accumulates more than 1000 of any resource, all extra resources go to their parent state. Romania has a very abundant oil field at Ploesti, creating around 42 oil each day. A puppet Romania will quickly get up to 1000 oil, and then give the rest to you. You will be generating an extra 42 oil each day! This is good

EDIT: The one downside is that Dictatorships hate to liberate nations, and you will incur a 5% dissent hit for doing so. However, for the oil bonus, this 5% dissent is totally worth it. Just make sure you transfer some IC over to consumer goods spending to bring it back down to zero.

 

[unmerged(112943)]

thanks for the advice. Hungary became an ally through one of the events (can't remember which one), before I could get Romania on board. Your post also explains why, when I have tried playing the Doomsday scenario as Romania, Ploesti gets totally hammered by Strat Bombers. Actually all of Romania gets totally bombed to smithereens, that much history I do know, and it happens in the game, which, combined with the fact that Romania does indeed start the DD scenario as a USSR puppet, makes for pretty dull gaming!

Ok- if I had paid more attention to your post, I would know that it was the End of Czech event that brought Hungary in

 

[KLorberau]

Wow!! Do I see that you have gone that far and it is only August 1941?? I usually do pretty well but don't get that far until Fall of 1942 with Baku in my hands (with all of it's oil too).

Are you going to use only Garrison Div's for partisans, or your Axis ally troops as well (I do both-Garrisons in key production centers, resource centers and air bases, and use the minor Axis troops in between as mobile partisan forces). They really cut down on the partisan levels and raise your TC to excellent levels.

Keep up the good work.

KLorberau

 

[Ironhead 5]

Are you going to use only Garrison Div's for partisans, or your Axis ally troops as well (I do both-Garrisons in key production centers, resource centers and air bases, and use the minor Axis troops in between as mobile partisan forces). They really cut down on the partisan levels and raise your TC to excellent levels.

I've got Axis minor forces in the southern area, and GARs interspersed throughout the rest of the area. The north is a bit more contracted, and I've still got those corps in the Baltic regions which could respond to a rebellion. I've actually played this through to BP already - just haven't loaded up the images to photobucket and written the update - and I only had two rebellions, which is pretty good. One was within a week's drive of an idle panzercorps, and another was in a province where I had just put a GAR.

 

[Ironhead 5]

You should do the same thing for WIF after you finish this one lol.

I haven't yet played WIF, but I have heard nothing but good things about it and am looking forward to downoading it when I get home.

 

[zdlugasz]

Rocket test sites in general reduce the need for highly skilled rocket tech teams like von Braun. However, nobody in their right mind would have von Braun research 1943 INF (which has a rocketry component) or similar techs, which require more areas of expertise than most of our best rocketry tech teams specialize in.

As for building factories instead of rocket sites from 1936 to 193X, and then building rocket sites starting in 1939... I can think of many things I would rather be building in 1939 than rocket sites. Panzers or bombers will certainly be needed.

See the wiki for some numbers. I'm sure the rocket test sites have been analyzed in some old HoI2 threads, but I'm not going to go looking for them.

OK, you are right about Infantry but they are 43 and 45 techs and Messerschmitt has rocketry specialty so the difference for the airplanes would be small.
So, IMO you definitively do not need (a lot) rocket facilities before 41-42.
There are also Motorised and Mechanized Infantry (starting since '41) but by that time you should have at least 3 rocket sites (following my plan below).

However regarding starting moment for rocketry sites, you forget that those factories will increase your overall IC, so you may have your "old" IC for upgrades or wahtever in 39 and "extra" IC for rocket facilities.
Assuming you start with 4x3 (or 4x4) IC runs in 36. In January 37 you have 4 IC "free" plus 15% from centralization slider (total 4.6) which almost allows for another factory run (say you borrow lacking IC and will return next year)
In '38 you can push (I usually do) another centralization move and gain 20% bonus (from base 9IC) giving you almost 11 "free" IC (so you can start another "free" factory). Which means that by the second half of 38 you have increased your base IC by 15 (and overall IC by 18) !!!
If you wait with rocket facility runs till second half of 39 or make last centralization move (instead of standing army) in 39 you can have base IC increase between 15 and 22 and overall IC increase in range between 18-27.5 !!!
Which means that your rocket sites production is for free!! you might have even free IC bonus for e.g. SP-ART and ENG brigade production.

If you start rocket facilities in 39 you benefit from your hawk settings (production will be much faster that in 36) and you may be able to churn out 3 or 4 sites before you may need it for those rocketry components in Infantry techs. Additionally, after finishing your rocket site production you have all your "free" IC available for anything else and you receive also TC bonus.

 

[zdlugasz]

I have a question Ironhead 5.
As I understand it you are promoting parallel runs.
Why are you not encouraging new players to make serial runs (ships, garrisons, e.g. DD can be produced very fast) and also to foresee their needs. Were you starting production of e.g. 5 parallel runs of Garrisons at the beginning of year you could deploy them during your offensive (and reduce TC at the same time) and first at all produce them cheaper due to the gearing bonus (event 10% or 20% bonus is worth it, giving you extra IC for upgrades, supplies, even ships/planes or whatever).

EDIT: I haven't notice you starting production of Police. Are you attaching them to GARs?

 

[Ironhead 5]

I have a question Ironhead 5.
As I understand it you are promoting parallel runs.
Why are you not encouraging new players to make serial runs (ships, garrisons, e.g. DD can be produced very fast) and also to foresee their needs. Were you starting production of e.g. 5 parallel runs of Garrisons at the beginning of year you could deploy them during your offensive (and reduce TC at the same time) and first at all produce them cheaper due to the gearing bonus (event 10% or 20% bonus is worth it, giving you extra IC for upgrades, supplies, even ships/planes or whatever).

I usually don't create garrisons in the middle of Barbarossa. I usually wait for BP to fire, then create the GARs, then deploy them immediately to the provinces I need them to go to. Someone (I think it was KLorberau) suggested deploying GARs as I advance deeper into the Soviet Union, and so I threw it in there. It's a good suggestion, even though it entails deploying them to East Prussia or southern Poland and then strat redeploying them into conquered provinces.

However, you're right, to do this efficiently we should have started the GAR run long before now, and done it on a serial run. I will go back and edit it in.

Any other criticism is appreciated, it is too easy to edit.

 

[zdlugasz]

I usually don't create garrisons in the middle of Barbarossa. I usually wait for BP to fire, then create the GARs, then deploy them immediately to the provinces I need them to go to. Someone (I think it was KLorberau) suggested deploying GARs as I advance deeper into the Soviet Union, and so I threw it in there. It's a good suggestion, even though it entails deploying them to East Prussia or southern Poland and then strat redeploying them into conquered provinces.

However, you're right, to do this efficiently we should have started the GAR run long before now, and done it on a serial run. I will go back and edit it in.

Any other criticism is appreciated, it is too easy to edit.

I have added question about Police brigades later. They are extremely useful in high partisan provinces. I do not remember if you are using them in Yugoslavia etc, however I agree that in the long term (Bitter Peace) they are not needed in Russia.
On the other hand you can detach them after bitter peace and attach them to the garrisons in Middle East (IIRC Persia and Iraq are partisan territory) and in other places.

 

[Ironhead 5]

I have added question about Police brigades later. They are extremely useful in high partisan provinces. I do not remember if you are using them in Yugoslavia etc, however I agree that in the long term (Bitter Peace) they are not needed in Russia.
On the other hand you can detach them after bitter peace and attach them to the garrisons in Middle East (IIRC Persia and Iraq are partisan territory) and in other places.

As long as a garrisoned province touches at least three other garrisoned provinces, the spillover effect will eliminate any need for a police brigade in Poland, Norway, and Yugoslavia. However, there are some provinces that only touch one or two other provinces, and they do need police brigades. I have annotated which provinces these are in the corresponding update.

 

[zdlugasz]

As long as a garrisoned province touches at least three other garrisoned provinces, the spillover effect will eliminate any need for a police brigade in Poland, Norway, and Yugoslavia. However, there are some provinces that only touch one or two other provinces, and they do need police brigades. I have annotated which provinces these are in the corresponding update.

I forgot that you are placing garrisons every province while I do it only every second (in high partisan territory).

In my HoI2 1.3:
GAR + POL gives me -24 partisans in the province where are located and -6 in adjacent ones while
GAR alone gives only -19 partisans in the province and -5 in adjacent ones

 

[Enewald]

Yeh, everyone hates partisans. And usually beating AI russia is one of the games most delicous events, it is easy, yet hard.

 

[Ironhead 5]

If you haven't experienced a revolt yet, count yourself lucky. You will, though, sooner or later. With so many Soviet provinces at 30% partisan activity, it is only a matter of time.

When a revolt breaks out, immediately move a unit to re-take the province from the rebels. If any provinces are still held by rebels when the Bitter Peace event fires, those provinces will be stuck with sky-high 30% partisan acitivity, instead of the 2% partisan activity the Bitter Peace event gives the rest of the provinces.

Continue moving toward Astrakhan to seal off the Caucasus and position your units for simultaneous drives on Baku and Sverdlovsk. Don't use INFs to take the provinces of Enotoevka and Elista though; they have desert terrain, and it will take weeks to move INF into them. Use panzers to take those provinces, and re-route your nearby INFs down to Grozny. When you finally reduce the pockets in the Baltic region, strategically redeploy those INFs down to Grozny or Bashanta as well.

As we discover techs during this phase of the invasion, assign the following research teams to work on the following techs, in this order:

• Blohm & Voss to work on Advanced Destroyer
• Hermann Goering to work on Carousel Bombardment Doctrine
• I.G. Farben to work on Frontline Supply Service
• Kriegsmarinewerft to work on Improved Light Carrier

When we finally seal off the Caucasus, start positioning all INFs on the southern front. Leave at least 2x INF corps in each province on the Volga, and send the rest to Grozny. Meanwhile, move the INFs that we used to take out Moscow, Yaroslavl, and Gorkij down to cover the rest of the Volga line, from Saratov north to Cheboksary, while simulataneously using the MTNs to drive up toward Murmansk and Blomberg's forces to take Mezel.

In September, our run of destroyers is created. Deploy them to the Kriegsmarine fleet at Wilhelmshafen, but do nothing else. A few destroyers isn't enough to give the fleet enough power to compete with the British. When Advanced Battleship is researched, though, start a run of 2x serial run, 18x parallel run battleships (BB-5). These take a long time to produce (having the Ship Assembly Line tech shaves a few weeks off). They will be worth the investment, though.

When everyone is in position (but no later than 1 October), give the entire front orders for a massive offensive, with the target of Sverdlovsk (circled on the map below):

See how the entire front surges forward, thus protecting the flanks of the units that actually take Sverdlovsk? Meanwhile, in the Caucasus, give similar orders, but have your INFs go past Baku and reach the border with Persia. These INFs will be well positioned to continue the war into the Middle East after the Soviets sue for peace.

Around this time, I happened to receive a revolt in the province of Tarnopol - which was one of the provinces we had stationed a GAR at! The GAR immediately engages the rebels, and will handily defeat them. Be sure that as your GARs are arriving at the interior Soviet provinces, you are renaming them and clicking the Do Not Upgrade button for all of them.

A few weeks after you start your offensives toward Sverdlovsk and Baku, you should capture them. Baku you will take on a pretty even front, because we've got an all-infantry force crossing those mountains. Sverdlovsk, however, will be taken by panzers first. Although it's bad to have a salient poking out of the front like this, we're well protected because we have a couple of panzer corps in Ufa and Chkalov, protecting the flank and rear of the units leading the way into Sverdlovsk:

After Baku and Sverdlovsk fall, all we have to do is sit on them. The Bitter Peace event will eventually trigger, but it may take quite a while. Meanwhile, the weather in the Soviet Union will turn very, very cold, and our forces will start to suffer attrition. If you aren't close to Sverdlovsk in your game, you might want to consider stopping your offensive and consolidating your gains when the winter weather arrives, and saving your strength for a spring offensive. It is tough to maintain momentum in the teeth of the Russian winter.

In my game, the Bitter Peace event fired on 2 November 1941.

And even though our allies, the Japanese, did next to nothing to help us, they certainly help themselves to a large chunk of eastern Russia!

So here we are. The Soviets have been tamed, we have dozens of divisions on the Persian border ready to unleash hell into the Middle East, and our TC has dropped nearly a thousand points as all those provinces which previously had 30% partisan activity drop to 2% partisan activity. Life is good, and the rest of the game will be a piece of cake.

I mean that - the rest of the game will be much easier now that we have defeated the Soviets. With all those extra divisions we have, we could do just about anything, and the world is truly your oyster. Do you want to march your infantry through Persia and India, and then help the Japanese take out China? Do you want to send your panzers through the Middle East and corner the British in North Africa? Do you want to stab your allies in the back by banning them from the Axis alliance, and then declaring war on them and annexing them? Do you want to do all of the above?

It will be too easy, and I could end this tutorial here. But we are missing one final challenge. While the rest of Europe, Asia, and Africa can be steam-rolled by our great army, the British Islands will be a tougher nut to crack. So we will continue for a couple more lessons, to learn how to prepare for an invasion of the British Islands, how to conduct naval warfare with a proud fleet of battleships, and how to conquer Great Britain (and, what the hell, Ireland too) by landing troops and tanks amongst those plucky, pesky Brits. And after we cover naval warfare and amphibious assaults, you will have all the tools necessary to conquer the last power that stands in the way between you and world domination: the United States.

Or, if you don't want to conquer the United States, you could just nuke 'em.