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It was inevitable, let's just hope that war on your terms will catch the germans off guard... Briefly...
If you have read tommylotto's Italy AAR, you will have seen the kind of force Germany can still bring even when over stretched in France and distracted by a war with the soviets.
 
I've also made the assumption in many games that Germany will be a pushover simply due to the poorly defended border. But the Reich always manages to fill that border up once shots are fired in anger.
 
Wow! Italy declares war mano-a-mano.

But I question the timing. Why not wait until Germany attacks Poland. If you declared after they attacked Poland, you would be joining the war with France, UK and Poland. By declaring before the invasion of Poland, Germany may call that attack off and finish you off alone first!

Though it will be much more dramatic this way!
 
Just catch up. Nice AAR mate.
Maybe it was wise to wait for the Germans DOW on Poland so they fight in 3 fronts.
 
I agree with the others. maybe it would have been wiser to let Germany play its hand first; set them up as bad guys for real.
 
Until disproven by events, I'll echo the sentiments of those who preferred you to wait for Germany's invasion of Poland. I don't know how the Polish Question is triggered, so if the Germans might put it off, now that the Italians are sniping across the Alps, but generally speaking it would've been more prudent to let Germany throw the dice first (and gain complete international condemnation).

Oh well, Mussolini was never know for his levelheaded military decisions, so I guess this is pretty mild, by his standards. :p He got what he wanted: war on his terms. He might just get a lot more of it than he had anticipated.
 
Italy going it alone and declaring war first? :eek: I am going to agree with the consensus here. I think it would have been advisable to let Germany fire the first shots. Now Italy is the aggressor and may be seen as such.

It was very interesting to see Hungary also entering an alliance with France. Very unusual. Mussolini had assembled an impressive defensive alliance that might actually have worked. Now that Italy has started the war I fear there is a very real risk that neither France nor the other Italian allies will put themselves in harm's way.

Hitler may have discounted the Italian threat but I'm sure Germany will very quickly get forces in place and, yes, I think Germany has more than enough divisions to pose a strong challenge. As to whether Germany now postpones its plans and concentrates on Italy first... can't wait to find out! :D
 
As with all the other AARs this is very good. Don't really like HPP though. IT's nice but I'm not a big fan of what they did with China

Welcome, Thandros! Glad you're enjoying the AAR! HPP works well for what I'm doing, but might not work as well for some other options/styles. I think TheBromgrev did a China AAR which might explain why the changes were done the way they were.

[re: the "dreaded" French-Italian alliance] They are in this game, because the German AI is too stupid to cover the Italian border when not allied with Italy. Worse still, Italy being in the Allied camp should force the German AI to cover that front too. This will be over rather quickly, I'm afraid.

Welcome, Baltasar! Well, the trick here is Italy is not in the Axis. There's an Alliance between Italy and France, supposedly related to the Locarno Treaties. I'm not going to spoil how it turns out -- that cliffhanger was intentional -- but it's not liable to be quite as overwhelming as it might seem.

Probably not as even though they have no forces in the border region they have strong forces on the Polish Border which should be able to react fast enough to stop him taking Berlin if not then the AI really is dumb

Yeah, the Germans have quite a bit of warmaking power, and not all of it "distracted" yet. They can theoretically throw quite a bit at me.

War on Italy's terms.... Let's hope this bodes well for the kingdom. What was the reaction in Paris and London?

Ahh, cannot tell! :) I shall let you know when the next update comes. The suspense! :D

It was inevitable, let's just hope that war on your terms will catch the germans off guard... Briefly...
If you have read tommylotto's Italy AAR, you will have seen the kind of force Germany can still bring even when over stretched in France and distracted by a war with the soviets.

Yes, I'd been keeping up with Tommylotto's AAR, but hadn't reached the point where he came into conflict with Germany. I'll catch up on that soon!

I've also made the assumption in many games that Germany will be a pushover simply due to the poorly defended border. But the Reich always manages to fill that border up once shots are fired in anger.

Welcome, Eqqman! You're right -- Germany's no pushover. Now, the war could end up being easy, or could be hard, depending on the specific setup of the war, and AI reaction, etc. But not a pushover, in any case.

Wow! Italy declares war mano-a-mano.

But I question the timing. Why not wait until Germany attacks Poland. If you declared after they attacked Poland, you would be joining the war with France, UK and Poland. By declaring before the invasion of Poland, Germany may call that attack off and finish you off alone first!

Though it will be much more dramatic this way!

Ahh, yes... The Timing. :) All the speculation was driving me crazy, so I figured I'd explain before we move on to the next update.

This AAR was premised on using the Locarno Pact to oppose an aggressive Germany. And so, theoretically, the conditions for declaration of war were met a long time ago. I just wasn't ready. As a political person, I'm attuned to the fact that you normally need a "spark" as an excuse for war, even if the overall cumulative tensions seem like they'd been enough. So, every time Hitler did something aggressive, I've considered whether I'm able to respond to end his aggressive actions. Usually, the answer was no.

Now, with this latest provocation with regard to Czechoslovakia -- where Hitler basically said, "This is my last demand", but then went further -- is the provocation I chose to respond to. I'll explain Poland in a moment, in response to someone else's comments...

Don't forget, he has those handy dandy alliances with France Yugoslavia and Hungary that may come into play if Germany's threat against them is high enough.

Yes - this is another possibility I'm hoping will work out!

Just catch up. Nice AAR mate.
Maybe it was wise to wait for the Germans DOW on Poland so they fight in 3 fronts.

Survey says this is your first post, Mythos1978, so Welcome! :) And welcome back to reading! You're right, from a gameplay standpoint it's not very wise to attack now, and not wait for Germany to attack Poland. I'll explain my thinking in a moment, more fully than my response to Tommylotto above...

"In the blue corner we have the challenger, the giant, Primo Carnera fighting out of Italy...in the red corner we have the champion Max Schmeling hailing from Germany."

I cant wait to see this fight. :)

It'll be fun! :) Just looked Carnera up -- wow, he's huge! Is that fight with Schmeling historical? Or just convenient as a simile?


Yaay! :)

Hmmm....somehow I get the feeling that when the Germans will muster their forces the ITalians are going to retreat on their scooters saying "Ciao...." :D

Awww... You have no faith! Besides, the Italian army has very little in the way of motorized transport, right now. They'd have to huff it! :D

I just survived war with Germany playing as Italy. Good luck to you :)

Excellent! By "survived" do you mean you won, or barely missed losing? :D I can't say for sure which will happen in this AAR -- either could still happen.

I agree with the others. maybe it would have been wiser to let Germany play its hand first; set them up as bad guys for real.

All in all, you're probably right. But, as I mentioned with Tommylotto above, I wanted to use a particular provocation where Germany had finally gone too far, and so it wouldn't fit with my role-playing to wait and see if they did more. I was figuring (RP again) they would only get stronger as time went on.

Besides, knowing that Germany will attack Poland is a foreknowledge my Mussolini doesn't have -- I didn't want to use a gamey tactic to get advantage.

Thirdly, I want more of a challenge, and so I do actually want to go to war without Germany having to fight a war on 3 or 4 fronts.

Until disproven by events, I'll echo the sentiments of those who preferred you to wait for Germany's invasion of Poland. I don't know how the Polish Question is triggered, so if the Germans might put it off, now that the Italians are sniping across the Alps, but generally speaking it would've been more prudent to let Germany throw the dice first (and gain complete international condemnation).

Oh well, Mussolini was never know for his levelheaded military decisions, so I guess this is pretty mild, by his standards. :p He got what he wanted: war on his terms. He might just get a lot more of it than he had anticipated.

:D Indeed! He's getting what he deserves. No, I strongly suspect Poland will remain unmolested, so long as Germany has another enemy to fight. I hope the Poles thank me! :D

Italy going it alone and declaring war first? :eek: I am going to agree with the consensus here. I think it would have been advisable to let Germany fire the first shots. Now Italy is the aggressor and may be seen as such.

It was very interesting to see Hungary also entering an alliance with France. Very unusual. Mussolini had assembled an impressive defensive alliance that might actually have worked. Now that Italy has started the war I fear there is a very real risk that neither France nor the other Italian allies will put themselves in harm's way.

Hitler may have discounted the Italian threat but I'm sure Germany will very quickly get forces in place and, yes, I think Germany has more than enough divisions to pose a strong challenge. As to whether Germany now postpones its plans and concentrates on Italy first... can't wait to find out! :D

In planning this AAR/war I made the assumption that France and Italy would be on good speaking terms, and that they would "understand" each other, whether they cooperated in a formal alliance or not. Italy was willing to go it alone, but would prefer allies. Since Italy is not in the Axis, no "world war" exists, and so the network of alliances will come into play. As others have expressed, let's see WHETHER they play, and HOW they play! :D

Finalmente, guerra!

:D Bienvenida!/Benvenuto! Welcome, JOR2010!

well ... we'll see what alliances are pulled to this war !

Indeed, so! :)

Thanks for all the quick, energetic feedback, guys! I appreciate it. I didn't expect so many comments so quickly after the update.

Another update in a few days. Can't guarantee the weekend -- I've got other major projects which need to take priority.

Renss
 
Very good progress so far!

I used this as inspiration and attempted something similar, which ended in complete failure: the Germans fought a stalemate with France along the Maginot/Siegfried lines, the British did not intervene in time, and the Yugoslavs (is it Yugoslavs or Yugoslavians?) were quickly overrun along with Italy in approximately a month.
 
A stalemate on the French-German border shouldn't be too difficult to achieve, because the frontline is quite short. I guess that even if Germany was at war with Poland, its potential would be so big that it would be able to at least stall you for a while and counter-attack after Poland is defeated. However, if the Balkan nations are in your camp, then it's a different story. It's not possible to cover EVERY front and I think that the AI would become confused. Even the player could find it difficult.

Regarding the effects of time - I think that you are correct. Germany has more IC, more MP, more LP, more of everything, which means that time works in their advantage, not yours. If they were threatened by the Soviets, then it would be different, but I doubt that Stalin is ready for his potential conquest of Europe.
 
Rensslaer, to answer your question correctly:

nPbtL.jpg


War started jun 39', ended the next day of this screenshot. Although i had to spend 2 years cleaning balkans from German allies and puppets. It also was on HPP, so it CAN be done :D