I don't know what happened, but I lost

[misterbean]

I started a game as Germany using the new patch. went historical. took out Poland in juli '39. posted a single inf div on every border province with the SU. you know, the usual.
went about my business, taking Denmark for a swim (I checked; not a single RN ship in the entire Baltic-nice! very long time since that happened).
conquered the Low countries and France. Vichy fired after about 2 months. UK did only one invasion, but it was a doozy. six or so divisions land in St Malo, another ten or so land in the province between St. Malo and Cherbourg.
if the Sealion task force hadn't been standing right there at the time, I could have been in trouble. took them out, landed in the UK.
and while I was minding my own beeswax, all of a sudden the SU declared war on me, with my best panzers and about 20 or so of my best generals somewhere between Birmingham and Sheffield...
It is exactly what I would have done had I been playing SU. very nice. I just wonder what triggered it?
at any rate, Toto, I can safely say we're not in Kansas anymore. thanks, PI, for the best surprise in this game ever (even though they proved too much for me so soon after Vichy).

 

[marginoferror]

Great! I love stories like these. The game is maturing =)

 

[misterbean]

I think accepting Romania in the Axis might have done it as it is what I did about a week before the DoW. they had about 100 more brigades and 4 times my MP. I loaded as SU to an old save after defeat was a foregone conclusion. they had 37 int (!) and 20 CAS(!). their land research was up-to-date.

 

[unmerged(304296)]

misterbean, you have mis-titled this thread. It is obvious from your original post you DO know what happened.

 

[unmerged(229769)]

This is very encouraging. Thanks for posting it.

 

[misterbean]

I'm just not sure. They had more divisions on the border than me, so that could have been it as well. or did my invasion of the UK threw too much threat their way ? I know, far-fetched, but still, you wonder just what happened.

 

[SAS]

One division in a province? If I had been the SOV I would have invaded also!

 

[comsubpac]

did you make the molotov-ribbentrob pact?

 

[unmerged(304296)]

I'm just not sure. They had more divisions on the border than me, so that could have been it as well. or did my invasion of the UK threw too much threat their way ? I know, far-fetched, but still, you wonder just what happened.

I seem to remember a post that said that there is no chance the SU will DoW Germany unless it has at least a 2 to 1 advantage over the Axis in brigade strength along the border. The odds of a Dow occurring increase as the ratio increases. Since over time time the SU builds up some pretty hefty stacks along the border you were probably healthily outnumbered. I have also seen a post that claimed that building fortifications along the border decreased the chance of the SU DoWing.

 

[misterbean]

@comsubpac: yeah, I did. heck, I did everything like on SF. there lies my problem. it's a whole new game.
@SAS: never needed more on SF. didn't think the changes would be so drastic. (in vanilla HOI3, I didn't even do that and was just fine)
lesson learned. don't let up your guard.

edit: I even made sure to keep relations above 150, just in case

 

[unmerged(54975)]

One division in a province? If I had been the SOV I would have invaded also!

Ever since HoI2 I have never even bothered leaving 1 division on the border and I have never had any problems.

 

[podcat]

thanks, PI, for the best surprise in this game ever (even though they proved too much for me so soon after Vichy).

Changelog:

------------------------------
- AI Improvements
------------------------------
- some extra hidden gems you will have to find while playing

was waiting for the first "oh no my sealion" thread

 

[Syphus]

Haha. If I could give a +1 to that post I would.

 

[Thracian]

was waiting for the first "oh no my sealion" thread

is that mean su alyaws declares war in that case?

 

[Jazumir]

You obviously can prevent that, by staying within the NAP-forcelimits with the soviets. Pull it off early, and you can do it with less troops in the east - do it later and you need to have it more garrisoned...

 

[RELee]

is that mean su alyaws declares war in that case?

The mysteries that are HOI must remain hidden.

 

[dsteve3]

Hmmm, ... I could probably get away with a Sealion of 1 Marine corps, 1 Inf Armee, 1 Panzer corps and a couple Fallschirm, ...

Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[plasticpanzers]

You have to balance what you put on the border with the USSR. too much
(like piling up troops prior to Barbarossa) and they will declare "For the Motherland"
and attack or too few and they might take advantage tho in about half a dozen
games i have left sometimes less than 1 unit per area watching the border (about
120,000 troops total) and nothing happened. I now leave the token force (120,000)
at the border and start piling up troops a few regions back. When ready then i move
their theatre control up to the border and move them forward.

 

[misterbean]

o well, at least I got a smile out of Podcat.

 

[TheBromgrev]

I just had this happen to me. And that was the first and last mistake the Soviets made in that game

As Germany, I started the war in October '39, beat Poland and Denmark in under 3 weeks, and France fell in January '40. I had taken London by March '40 (the UK *really* needs to garrison all of its home ports; the Channel ports were completely undefended), and moved 2 of my 3 army groups to the USSR/German border. In April, I had finished overrunning the UK's defenses and was in the process of packing up my last AG to head home so my 4 mountain divisions could finish up the occupation when the USSR declared war on me. Bad move

By that point, since I had taken London, I had Portugal, Nat. Spain, Argentina, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Brazil in the Axis, along with the usual suspects of Italy+puppets, Japan+puppets, Hungary, and Slovakia. It's now July 1940, and Italy has lost Albania and has been staring at Alexandria since February despite having about 100 brigades in Italy itself, Ethiopia is doing surprisingly well and conquered Somalia, Spain has taken Gibraltar, Nigeria, and Cameroon, the UK's capital is based out of Bengladesh, and Japan's stalemate near Beiping has ended and Japan has pushed almost to Nanjing and is advancing deep into Siberia (my god, the overstacking in China must've been atrocious; any chance of adding an AI-only port supply bonus to encourage amphibious invasions? That would stop the "the 2 militia in Shanghai are scary, better instead send troops to Beiping to join the 180+ brigades already there..." stuff).

Oh, and I'm using AI control for the airforce and all ground units except special forces, in case that matters. I controlled the initial steps of Sealion myself, but after the entire AG was in Britain I handed control over to the AI. Also, I literally overran the Red Army troops along the border. In case anyone's not familiar with how that works in HOI3, there are two ways to eradicate a ground unit: creating a pocket and clearing it, or overrunning the defenders. To overrun, you need to take the province the defender is retreating to before the defender reaches it. With a max officer ratio and rushing the attack delay tech, you can achieve this easily. To put what happened into perspective, the USSR had over 1,200 brigades when they declared war on me, most of which were infantry and heavy armor. Within 4 months I had reduced their total ground strength to 520 brigades by overrunning, and the USSR literally has no units between me and Moscow, save for a few HQs.

The army composition I'm using is 3 AGs of 3 armies each. 2 armies are composed of 3 corps of 2 divisions of 3xinf+art and 1 division of 3xinf+AA. The third is composed of two corps with a total of 2 3xMOT+AC, 2 2xLarm+1xMOT+1xENG, and 4 1xARM+2xMOT+1xSP-Art. I had planned to add an additional 3 corps of 4 3xMOT+1xTD and 6 divisions of 3xinf+1xRArt, but it seems I don't need to. I have a total of 9 MR fighters, 3 Ints, 2 TRA, 12 CAS, and 12 TAC as an airforce, all but the transports under AI control.