Just simply can't take France.

[Secret Master]

Here is the savegame. I would be happy if you checked it out and try out to push Beglium and France with this and when you see its impossible. Tell me what I could improve on.

So, I went into your save and tried to defeat France.

I didn't change production around (although I noticed that you had MIC and NIC unassigned for some reason). I just used existing units, templates, and planes.

I rearranged your OOB and reallocated planes. The same number of planes were allocated to the Benelux air region, but I didn't bother attaching them back to armies after I reorganized your OOB.

I put all armored divisions (and almost all the MOT) under Guderian and massed it against Luxembourg. I allocated 24 infantry divisions to other generals, and allocated 5 armies under Rundstedt on the Belgium/Luxembourg border. Two armies of 24 divisions were allocated under Kluge as Field Marshal and constituted my force along the Maginot Line.

This is important: I pulled well over 30 divisions off the front and allocated them to reserve armies. France fell so quickly, that this reserve force did nothing. But they were there to plug holes and gaps.

I delayed the attack on Belgium and Luxembourg until November 16th to give time for planning bonus and to let the front get rearranged.

Guderian's attack through Luxembourg went well. Within less than 24 hours, he was through the forest and pushing into Belgium and France:

Meanwhile, Rommel's infantry army breaks through Belgian defenses in short order. He is racing to Calais as fast as foot infantry can go when Belgium capitulates on the 20th:

Kluge's forces on the Maginot Line pin the French army down with pinning attacks while Guderian's panzers make a sickle cut to the south to prevent any French forces from withdrawing. Guderian's motorized forces move west towards Paris facing minimal French resistance from a few scattered divisions with low ORG.

Note that the screenshot doesn't show stray French divisions getting overrun by Fast Heinz's panzers. The divisions resisting his sickle cut are mostly beaten up already with low ORG.

I'd like to say Guderian's forces have the honor of reaching Paris, but they don't. Rommel's infantry forces, facing absolutely no resistance at all in their march past Calais towards Cherbourg and Normandy, send two divisions south to take Paris as an afterthought.

It's over by December 2nd. The entire campaign took around two weeks. It was over so fast that the reserve forces never moved forward.

Are you sure you aren't using some kind of mod? This was a fairly easy run through France. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to defeat France with the forces available.

 

[Tacticus101]

On the short term front, i suspect that you are just managing your divisions inefficiently. I dont know if you are trying to attack across the entire front with infantry or something, but i found that simply selecting all your Tank divisions (in their existing locations) and clicking on Brussles was enough to capitulate Belgium before any british divisions could reach it. The same applies to then defeating the French, your tanks with the airforce you have easily break through to capitulate them.

In general be very careful at attacking with your infantry, they are bad at it, stop your tanks joining the battles and spread your small airforce too thin. Attack with tanks, support with motorised and let the infantry fill in behind them to keep the gap open.

On a more strategic level, your research is bad, you should have better tanks and better planes building by now. Your divisions are also a bit poor and you dont need to sent so many random infantry and mountaineer divisions there, you are just wasting space. For example, one of your tank divisions is a Czech one, with a single tank and cavalry battalion; that shouldnt be anywhere near the front.

The reason why the tanks are spread out like that is because historically (which is what matters) most army groups had a couple of panzer and motorized divisions with the bulk of their army based around infantry divisions. I don't recall in ww2 that one army consisted of like 10 panzer divisions.

This is not accurate. In the battle of France, Seven of the Ten panzer divisions were concentrated in a single army group. Five of those in a single army under one general along with most of the german motorised divisions. The rest were only divided into two seperate armies themselves and were mostly grouped together for operations anyway.

It is not historical to divide your Panzers up across your army groups and it is certainly not historical to have them spread across the entire front, that was the mistake the allies made and why their tanks were defeated. To be historical, have almost all your tanks in a single army with your motorised and gather up most of the rest for the first breakthrough, which is the most efficient strategy in the game anyway.


Edit: Incidently, if you are intending to play very historically, why havent you taken the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?

 

[LakeClouds]

Are you sure you aren't using some kind of mod? This was a fairly easy run through France. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to defeat France with the forces available.

The OP needs to post us a screenshot of what's going on. Something doesn't make sense.

 

[Anthropoid]

On the short term front, i suspect that you are just managing your divisions inefficiently. I dont know if you are trying to attack across the entire front with infantry or something, but i found that simply selecting all your Tank divisions (in their existing locations) and clicking on Brussles was enough to capitulate Belgium before any british divisions could reach it. The same applies to then defeating the French, your tanks with the airforce you have easily break through to capitulate them.

In general be very careful at attacking with your infantry, they are bad at it, stop your tanks joining the battles and spread your small airforce too thin. Attack with tanks, support with motorised and let the infantry fill in behind them to keep the gap open.

On a more strategic level, your research is bad, you should have better tanks and better planes building by now. Your divisions are also a bit poor and you dont need to sent so many random infantry and mountaineer divisions there, you are just wasting space. For example, one of your tank divisions is a Czech one, with a single tank and cavalry battalion; that shouldnt be anywhere near the front.

This is not accurate. In the battle of France, Seven of the Ten panzer divisions were concentrated in a single army group. Five of those in a single army under one general along with most of the german motorised divisions. The rest were only divided into two seperate armies themselves and were mostly grouped together for operations anyway.

It is not historical to divide your Panzers up across your army groups and it is certainly not historical to have them spread across the entire front, that was the mistake the allies made and why their tanks were defeated. To be historical, have almost all your tanks in a single army with your motorised and gather up most of the rest for the first breakthrough, which is the most efficient strategy in the game anyway.

Edit: Incidently, if you are intending to play very historically, why havent you taken the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?

Well said, and based on what I know very true.

One question I have about the game, that I'd appreciate hearing knowledgeable folks like you reflect on: how do we reconcile the lack of Corp level organization in the game with its existence in reality? We have Divisions and Armies but the intermediary level of organization (Corps) has simply been skipped it seems.

On the one hand, I can understand why a game developer would do this. But on the other, I find it doesn't suit my micro-management "fondly my little toy soldiers" compulsions as well as I would like.

I wonder if a mod which incorporated Corps level could be done and if so how it might function?

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Where is this "Self-Propelled" artillery in the tech trees? Do you mean the artillery companies Germany starts the game with (and which do not add to width or effect speed)?

I'm guessing I need to move down the Sd.Kfz tech path further than I have! They are probably down that way eh!?

Self-propelled artillery (a.k.a SPART) is in the tank trees. If you look there, you'll see each tank model has three subsidiary models. The one with the explosion icon is SPART. You can remanufacture obselete tanks as SPART without using up Resources and at approximately twice the normal production rate. So your Panzer Is are really there to provide SPART for your motorized divisions.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Another bad player here. Biggest thing I learned from my few hours of v1.5.1 play is

- Don’t lead with the infantry anymore.
- There is a button that can fill up my planning bonus super fast.
- The AI will try to trap your units if you can’t cover your spearhead flanks.

And look in the research tree for the tanks and you will see three small buttons inside the big tank research icon. Those are three more techs that let you add artillery, anti aircraft guns, and anti tank guns to the top of the tanks chassis.

Pros call them SPAA, SPArt, and SPAT... I think. They are awesome units.
Edit -

Spoiler

A month passed before I saw someone ask that question, where are these units? I kind of thought I wasn’t scrolling over enough or something. I found the strategic bombers tech by accident too, after I accidentally dragged left and found the hidden half of the focus tree.

 

[Secret Master]

The OP needs to post us a screenshot of what's going on. Something doesn't make sense.

Yes. Because this leads to Tacticus's comments:

On a more strategic level, your research is bad, you should have better tanks and better planes building by now. Your divisions are also a bit poor and you dont need to sent so many random infantry and mountaineer divisions there, you are just wasting space. For example, one of your tank divisions is a Czech one, with a single tank and cavalry battalion; that shouldnt be anywhere near the front.

This all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that there is no reason that he can't defeat France. Even with bad production and research, there's more than enough assets to win in 16 days.

In general be very careful at attacking with your infantry,

Which is normally good advice, but even here, those infantry divisions were able to assault the Belgian army under Rommel and push right on through Calais and on to Paris.

There's no reason for losing here.

 

[Rebel1776]

Yes. Because this leads to Tacticus's comments:



This all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that there is no reason that he can't defeat France. Even with bad production and research, there's more than enough assets to win in 16 days.



Which is normally good advice, but even here, those infantry divisions were able to assault the Belgian army under Rommel and push right on through Calais and on to Paris.

There's no reason for losing here.

You're @Secret Master, you make Miracles happen.

 

[Black_Shade]

Ofc and I have read him. And I am fully aware of his strategy. But he did not command a army of 24 armor divisions or so in his own army group.

I only had to do this because you were giving commands at the army group level rather than army level, as the AI would just spread the panzers out again. At the very least, they need to be in their own army and you need to use army level orders for the other armies under the same field marshal, rather than army group level, so you can control what the panzers are doing. The AI isn't going to use them properly.

 

[Tacticus101]

This all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that there is no reason that he can't defeat France. Even with bad production and research, there's more than enough assets to win in 16 days.

Yep. Was just pointing out some of the things he could have done to make the war eaiser in the first place. Even a single well designed tank division would make the war easy.

Which is normally good advice, but even here, those infantry divisions were able to assault the Belgian army under Rommel and push right on through Calais and on to Paris.

There's no reason for losing here.

I agree. Some of it may be because it seems that the save is a recreation rather than the original save, so the problems are slightly different. The rest, i can only guess, is because if you wait after declaring war on Belgium or let the attack stall then the British and French can flood enough troops in to make things a little harder without better divisions. Not impossible, but if someone was already having difficulty it could be enough to push things over the edge.

 

[TorAndreKongelf]

And yet everyone that took your save suggests otherwise....you're either a Liar, or seriously hopeless.

There was certainly one good thing that came from this thread, im now very thankful for the Balance changes done in this patch.

Not fun to be called either of those. I think you misunderstood the intention of my post. And I perhaps should have been more clear. I was not asking in general how to beat France. I have 2800 hours played. And most of the times, I played as Germany. And I have taken France 50 or so times with Germany, and sometimes through the Maginot line for fun. The thing is that right after the patch. I met an absurd number of UK forces in Belgium. Belgium is around 6 provinces big. And each one of them had 3-4 divisions of Belgian and French origin, and then 8-12 UK divisions in each province. I have not seen that before EVER. However I played on Ironman and I was past that point and had to recreate the situation. However this time I played on the beta and I am not sure, but at the beta (where the provided save was), all the UK divisions wasn't there of course and I could rush through Belgium to Paris as I normally do.

Given what he said during Barbarossa and as Inspector General of Armored Forces, if there were 24 full strength armored divisions ready for France, he would have wanted them as concentrated as possible (logistics might limit this) for the breakthrough and/or pincer movements.

If Guderian could have commanded an army of 24 panzer divisions and he would choose to do so in an optimal situation, that is indeed a good argument yes.

Okay, so what we have here is Allied forces putting up an unhistorically competent defence of Belgium and you not compensating for this by focusing your armor because of role play? Did you suspect that this might be a solution to your problems all along?

I sometimes wonder, when reading calls for historical accuracy such as these, what exactly you allow yourself to change. Surely you allow yourself some leeway? Why can't the number of armored divisions be one of them?

I mean: I absolutely agree that it should be fairly easy for Germany to rush around the Maginot for historical reasons. Maybe one even could imagine some restriction to the British involvement there, if it really is a problem. Maybe even some temporary boost to German troops or some stat rebalancing. Always interesting to discuss these things.

But this thread confuses me a bit, because you are not actually just saying that you think the Allies are too good at defending and it destroys your immersion, but that you, an experienced player, were actually not able, after several tries, to at all break through their lines.

I try to play within the historical mode as much as possible. However of course I will always fail at this because my historical knowledge is limited. But usually when I meet an unhistorical situation or managed to go unhistorical myself due to some dumb slipup, I usually restart the game. I know this sound weird to most people. But its an autism thing perhaps.

So, I went into your save and tried to defeat France.

I didn't change production around (although I noticed that you had MIC and NIC unassigned for some reason). I just used existing units, templates, and planes.

I rearranged your OOB and reallocated planes. The same number of planes were allocated to the Benelux air region, but I didn't bother attaching them back to armies after I reorganized your OOB.

I put all armored divisions (and almost all the MOT) under Guderian and massed it against Luxembourg. I allocated 24 infantry divisions to other generals, and allocated 5 armies under Rundstedt on the Belgium/Luxembourg border. Two armies of 24 divisions were allocated under Kluge as Field Marshal and constituted my force along the Maginot Line.

This is important: I pulled well over 30 divisions off the front and allocated them to reserve armies. France fell so quickly, that this reserve force did nothing. But they were there to plug holes and gaps.

I delayed the attack on Belgium and Luxembourg until November 16th to give time for planning bonus and to let the front get rearranged.


Guderian's attack through Luxembourg went well. Within less than 24 hours, he was through the forest and pushing into Belgium and France:


Meanwhile, Rommel's infantry army breaks through Belgian defenses in short order. He is racing to Calais as fast as foot infantry can go when Belgium capitulates on the 20th:


Kluge's forces on the Maginot Line pin the French army down with pinning attacks while Guderian's panzers make a sickle cut to the south to prevent any French forces from withdrawing. Guderian's motorized forces move west towards Paris facing minimal French resistance from a few scattered divisions with low ORG.

Note that the screenshot doesn't show stray French divisions getting overrun by Fast Heinz's panzers. The divisions resisting his sickle cut are mostly beaten up already with low ORG.

I'd like to say Guderian's forces have the honor of reaching Paris, but they don't. Rommel's infantry forces, facing absolutely no resistance at all in their march past Calais towards Cherbourg and Normandy, send two divisions south to take Paris as an afterthought.

It's over by December 2nd. The entire campaign took around two weeks. It was over so fast that the reserve forces never moved forward.

Are you sure you aren't using some kind of mod? This was a fairly easy run through France. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to defeat France with the forces available.

Thanks for your post and the time. It was a nice read. A very nice strategy indeed. And ofc when continuing playing on the same save as you did I also took France very easily as before. All the UK divisions werent there this time. This save was made on the 1.51 beta and I am not sure that have made it so that the the issues I faced uptil this save was no longer there.

On the short term front, i suspect that you are just managing your divisions inefficiently. I dont know if you are trying to attack across the entire front with infantry or something, but i found that simply selecting all your Tank divisions (in their existing locations) and clicking on Brussles was enough to capitulate Belgium before any british divisions could reach it. The same applies to then defeating the French, your tanks with the airforce you have easily break through to capitulate them.

In general be very careful at attacking with your infantry, they are bad at it, stop your tanks joining the battles and spread your small airforce too thin. Attack with tanks, support with motorised and let the infantry fill in behind them to keep the gap open.

On a more strategic level, your research is bad, you should have better tanks and better planes building by now. Your divisions are also a bit poor and you dont need to sent so many random infantry and mountaineer divisions there, you are just wasting space. For example, one of your tank divisions is a Czech one, with a single tank and cavalry battalion; that shouldnt be anywhere near the front.


This is not accurate. In the battle of France, Seven of the Ten panzer divisions were concentrated in a single army group. Five of those in a single army under one general along with most of the german motorised divisions. The rest were only divided into two seperate armies themselves and were mostly grouped together for operations anyway.

It is not historical to divide your Panzers up across your army groups and it is certainly not historical to have them spread across the entire front, that was the mistake the allies made and why their tanks were defeated. To be historical, have almost all your tanks in a single army with your motorised and gather up most of the rest for the first breakthrough, which is the most efficient strategy in the game anyway.


Edit: Incidently, if you are intending to play very historically, why havent you taken the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?

Thanks for your reply. And my answer for you to this will be pretty much the same as the previous one to Secret Master, so I will not repeat it. Hmm, you say I could research tanks and planes faster. Does this mean that I should have researched Kampvogel and Panzerkampfwagen 3 ahead of time?

2 Panzer Divisions was under Hoths in Rundtstedts Armygroup A, and the other 5 was under Guderian in Kleists Panzer Army. Both under Rundstedt. Bocks Armygroup B also had 2 Panzer divisions in Reichenaus 6th Army, if my memory serves me right. So they were "semi-spread". Ofc Leebs armygroup at the Maginot Line had 0 ofc. Which maybe I had? So either way I am off historically anyway.

I do however find that there is many many playstyles that makes things much easier to me. But I am not after minmaxing, and thats also why I have never in my 2800 hours done any MP games because as long as competition goes, I have to throw everything I want to do out of the window, and do things in an optimal way.

Good question on the Ribbentrop Focus. I normally does it. I must have missed in my stress to recreate the scenario to provide the savegame.

The OP needs to post us a screenshot of what's going on. Something doesn't make sense.

I sadly cannot do that. Which is a shame. And I hope you just take my word for it. I had in my attempt met a radical increase in UK and French forces both in Poland and Belgium. And this was the whole intention to why I created the thread. Something felt wrong and completely off. I have never since release of HOI4 meet 30-40 divisions in both Poland and in Belgium/France before. However I failed to recreat this scenario, because this did not happen for the first time in WTT for me in the savegame. And I could walk into Paris as I usually do.

So I should have explained things a bit better. And I understand how this comes of as "A bad 2800 hours player can not even take France". Under normal conditions I surely can do this very easily. I wish I could show a screenshot of me fighting those extra 40-50 divisions of UK divisions in Belgium, but I failed to recreate that specific scenario in the save. Alas.

PS: I also am one of those "weird" guys who like to play immersively and I know this is not the min-maxing way of do this. The thing is that my specific wonky playstyle have gotten me through world conqest with 15-20 countries, both minor and major nations. I do play the game for recreational purposes, and not for competition.

 

[TorAndreKongelf]

Thanks for everyone who participated in the thread so far. I have tried to reply to as much as I can.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

I sadly cannot do that. Which is a shame. And I hope you just take my word for it.

You can't take a screenshot? Use print screen or F12 - pretty simple. This whole thread is feeling pretty bogus.

 

[LakeClouds]

However I failed to recreat this scenario, because this did not happen for the first time in WTT for me in the savegame. And I could walk into Paris as I usually do.

So the savefile you posted is not the actual game you were complaining about?

 

[TorAndreKongelf]

You can't take a screenshot? Use print screen or F12 - pretty simple. This whole thread is feeling pretty bogus.

There is nothing bogus about this thread. And the reason I cannot take a screenshot now, is that I can not travel back in time.

 

[TorAndreKongelf]

So the savefile you posted is not the actual game you were complaining about?

No. As I stated in the beginning, I didn't have a savegame where I came across the issue. But I said I would recreate the scenario as close as possible. And when I got to the point again when ready to attack Belgium, I stopped and uploaded a save to this thread, assuming the same scenario would play out just before.

 

[amalric de g.]

No. As I stated in the beginning, I didn't have a savegame where I came across the issue. But I said I would recreate the scenario as close as possible. And when I got to the point again when ready to attack Belgium, I stopped and uploaded a save to this thread, assuming the same scenario would play out just before.

Don´t excuse yourself, if some guys are unable to read and understand your threat, thats not your fault.

I remember very well one of my first games as germany in 2016. I had the same problem, Belgium was full of allied Divisions, in the border province to germany the allies had 50 Divisions alone.

And to the haughty guys, the OP asked politely a question, so you guys have no right to be arrogant and unpolite.

 

[LakeClouds]

However I have done like 5-10 attempts now on Ironman Regular and there is no chance in hell. I have tried almost everything

I still call BS - the original post said you tried 5-10 times not once. And none of the those you thought to do a save or screenshot?

 

[Secret Master]

Folks, let's not turn this into CSI: HOI4 Shenanigans, and try to guess if someone is lying or whatnot. The OP has come to us with a strategic problem and has asked for help in solving it. I expect us to come together in the spirit of this community and be helpful.

 

[wesleytj]

Ofc and I have read him. And I am fully aware of his strategy. But he did not command a army of 24 armor divisions or so in his own army group.

You don't need 24. 5 medium armor and 5 mot are MORE than enough to achieve the breakthrough. And as others have said, if Guderian had been given more armor, he certainly would have wanted it used in that same way.

It's also not a-historical to concentrate tons of CAS as dedicated air support at the schwerpunkt either - again, that's exactly what they did. The dive bombers helped the panzers clear the way at the point of attack to achieve the breakthrough, and then once past the front lines they helped keep the counter-attacks off balance and disorganized, smashing command and control facilities and generally just spreading chaos among the enemy units.