Navies Are For Chumps - A 1941 CGM USSAAR

[Gen. Marshall]

Congratulations Alsadius-

I voted for this AAR in the ACA's. Even though your AAR is only in the initial stage, I think it has great potential, and I like your style.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Alsadius]

Jan 1 - Feb 28, 1942
Jan 3: Much as I complained about the AI doing dumb attacks, I must admit that they're doing some smart ones too. Plock and Tomaszow are both in the unfortunate position of bordering 4 German-held provinces, which lets major enveloping attacks develop. Both have been under heavy, heavy attack recently, and I've been forced to move a lot of forces around to allow for fresh reinforcements to take over the defence. I'm taking Grudziadz to relieve Plock slightly, but there's no similar relief possible for Tomaszow, and it's the one I care about more since it's part of my only Vistula bridgehead. I'm throwing the SHArm corps and an infantry corps in as a stopper instead - those guys can hold out against damn near anything. I'm trying to disengage my armoured corps from this area to free them up for a big offensive down south, but it's going to make the defence a bit hairier.

Jan 4: The eastern lobe of the pocket has been cut off, with 1 infantry division and 1 armoured division inside Rowne. 13,484 men were captured or killed.

Jan 6: So I noticed something odd looking at my tech - I have 2.5 naval combat experience. So far as I can tell, the occasional losses I'm taking on convoys are actually giving me naval practical, which is going to be incredibly useful when it comes time to research doctrines. I almost want to get my convoys hit harder at this point. Also, my land experience seems to be capped at 10.0 for some reason, which is kind of lame.

Jan 14: My armoured corps has finished building. I've replaced it in the queue with six destroyers, six transports, and two corps of garrison troops. Which costs a total of 146 IC, because I have no practicals for any of them.

Jan 18: You know when I said my SHArm corps could hold out against damn near anything? Yeah, four SHArm divisions have already retreated. Turns out when there's only 2-3 of them in a battle at once, because of reinforcement times, they get chewed up fast. I've sent a corps of regular armour back in, along with another corps of infantry, and enough of the armour has hit the battlefield that I should be fine.

Jan 22: The battle for Tomaszow is finally finished. I held it, three waves of reinforcements later.

Jan 29: The pocket has been completely reduced. The last 14 divisions were finally taken in Stepan, with 120,948 men killed or captured. The total toll, not counting combat losses, was therefore 322,658 men, comprising 37 infantry and 2 armoured divisions. For comparison, that is roughly eight months of German manpower growth. Pretty good outcome for "Hey, I can't hold Maloryta, let's see what happens if I let them push a bit", I must say.

Feb 10: I'm intentionally stepping down offensive operations right now, as you can probably tell. The primary reason for that is that I'm attempting to untangle my order of battle - reunite corps and armies that have been split up by the needs of the fight. My plan is to get every corps into a single province, and to have the armies all on a single sector of front. I'm not losing bonuses yet, because the eastern front is fairly small compared to control range, but it'll start happening soon if I don't do this. Also, I'm redeploying all the pocket-reduction troops back to the front lines. The plan is for my deployments to be as follows:
Army Group North: 1st and 2nd Armies, holding the front from the Baltic to Tomaszow. (northern German sector)
Army Group Centre: 3rd, 4th, and 5th Armies, holding the front from Grojec to Jablonow. (southern German and Hungarian sectors)
Army Group South: 6th and 7th Armies, holding the front from Radauti to the Black. (Romanian sector)
Army Group Reserve: 8th Army, 6x Armoured Corps, SHArm Corps, 2x Engineer Corps, launching the primary attack.
In other words, basically the same as it's been all along. For comparison, here's the current chain of command(and this is after I've already done a fair bit of untangling):

Feb 13: Ugh, a Parliamentary Scandal - big leadership and dissent penalties for three weeks.

Feb 20: The first steps to The Bomb have been completed - Atomic Research is done. I expect to have my first nuclear reactor built by early 1944 at this pace, which if I understand nuclear production properly, should have me ready to drop one in line with my 1945 goal.

Feb 21: Sinkiang agreed to join the Comintern today, adding a mighty 10-brigade army to the Communist forces. Only took about a month of influencing them, too. Oddly, Communist China is being dragged Axis by Japan, but I'll still have someone to conquer China with.

Feb 27: Good news and bad news today. Good news is, my radar installation finished, and is being deployed to Sevastopol to cover the Balkans and Middle East. Bad news is, Germany landed a paratrooper attack on the island of Aland and conquered it, which gives them a base further into the Baltic. They also took Elbing in yet another one of their WW1-style assaults.

Feb 28: Their troops have been driven back out of Elbing by my counterattack. And even on the defensive, they managed to take an unfavourable loss rate. See kids, this is why "Just keep attacking!" doesn't work - even though you wear me down and prevent me from rebuilding org, by the time your troops finally get in, they're so exhausted that they're easy to push out again.

 

[shierholzer]

I'm not sure, but are your SHARM divisions consisting only of SHARM?
If that's true, no matter how much of them you throw in they will all retreat, since SHARM has a frontage of zero, so get them some infantry attached to get frontage!

 

[Alsadius]

I'm not sure, but are your SHARM divisions consisting only of SHARM?
If that's true, no matter how much of them you throw in they will all retreat, since SHARM has a frontage of zero, so get them some infantry attached to get frontage!

Guard/Guard/Guard/Artillery/SHArm. I've played this game a time or two

 

[shierholzer]

Guard/Guard/Guard/Artillery/SHArm. I've played this game a time or two

Blame me.
I thought all times, that the counters only show the SHARM sign if it consist only of SHARM, so my fault.

 

[Alsadius]

Mar 1 - Apr 30, 1942
Mar 1: I'm currently considering two possible paths for the Balkan attack. The less ambitious plan is marked in blue, the more ambitious in yellow. Mountain ranges are the red dashed lines, and VP cities are the explosion icons.

Each knocks out two minor Axis powers, and each pockets the troops on the Romanian border pretty reliably. The blue plan is a lot less prone to failure from sheer length of supply lines, and it takes out the main Axis oil supply, but it goes straight across a nice big mountain range. The yellow plan turns the whole Balkans into a giant pocket, and almost certainly captures more troops, but it's a more ambitious operation, with close to a 20-province frontier along the German border that'll need to be defended somehow. Even if I couple it with a general advance by Army Group South to reduce the "pocket", it'll still be a nightmare finding the troops necessary. Also, Slovakia and Hungary are weaker powers than Romania and Bulgaria, so taking them out is less valuable. For right now I'm leaning towards Plan Blue, perhaps with some alternate routing that results in my troops circling around the mountains(Lwow-Cluj-Bucharest?), but I'll consider more as we go along.

Mar 8: There's no combat whatsoever happening right now. I think this is the first time in several months that's happened - usually, Germany has three assaults going on at a time.

Oh, there we go. Three hours later, they throw a single division against a dug-in corps. That's more like it.

Mar 13: I've started noticing a lot of understrength German formations. Like, "Armoured division at 67% strength" formations. I think the manpower shortage has started to really hit home.

Mar 20: All those doctrine techs finished. I'm rolling the research into 1942 Arm, 1942 Inf, and a few of the more important/lagging land doctrines.

Apr 9: I've decided to get a lot less deliberate with my op planning - the current plan is basically "Hit Hungary with a hammer and see what happens". I'm going to curl east at some point and take down Romania, but the choice of exactly when will be something I make during the attack. I've got 7 corps of infantry and 3 corps of armour massed in the area, over and above the usual corps-per-province of border troops. The rest of the intended attackers are dedicated as reserves for the permanently-under-attack provinces on the German border. The short-term ops plan is to break the border troops with pure infantry, and then use the armour to drive through the hole. Normally, I use armour to break the initial holes, but my expectation is that that's only really necessary against Germans.

Apr 19: Rocket Test Site completed. Dropped it into my Helium province, because I might as well go all-in with my rocketry. I may build a second in a year or so, when I'm getting close to actually building rockets. Also, Germany just fired the Destiny decision, which makes me very glad I'm going up against the Balkans for the next few months.

Apr 20: At dawn, I finally launched the long-anticipated attack. Eight infantry corps attacked four provinces on the Hungarian border, supported by three wings of bombers. The Germans instantly began spoiling attacks against the wings, but I have more than enough force left in reserve there to handle that.

Apr 21: The garrison troops finished. I now have three corps in at a lower total cost per day than the two corps that just finished(and, of course, they're done in 60% of the time too). Apparently, getting your practicals up matters - who knew?

Apr 22: Maybe that's why the Hungarians have always sucked - they use Inf/Inf as a division composition. Three support brigades for the whole front, and no third Inf anywhere. And to think I was a bit worried when I saw full corps on the defence in each province.

Apr 30: As expected, there's nothing to back up the front line on these provinces - once I broke the initial crust, I'm just driving everything before me. The plan is to swing the units on the German side of the attack forward a little bit, with the hinge on Debica, to provide cover for the main attack against the inevitable German reinforcements. Probably going to build a line out to Budapest or so with infantry, while the tanks swing towards the Romanian heartland from the rear. Army Group South will provide necessary reinforcements - I'll probably start pushing the Romanian border back about the time my tanks hit Cluj - enough to get it wrapping up sooner, but not so much that I push their troops right out of my own pocket.

 

[Alsadius]

May 1 - Jun 30, 1942
May 7: German resistance seems to be stiffening along the Kosice-Debrecen line. It's not so tough that I can't break through if I need to, but it's nothing like the "Drive forward unopposed" that my three armor corps are enjoying right now. I'm still holding out hope that I can throw a shield out as far as Budapest, but it may be difficult - there seems to be a general southward redeployment going on.

May 9 Cluj has fallen, and the situation looks favourable. I'm going to start slowly rolling the Romanian defenders back, from the north on down. I want to break their org so they can't form fallback lines, and get those two armies to go from passively holding the line to actively closing the pocket.

May 12: A minor pocket was just crushed at Dej, with 14,698 men inside. Also I'm starting to see stuff coming up from the south against my advancing troops...though it's mostly HQs and the occasional scattered division, nothing that'll even slow me down. The Romanian border guards are starting to look appreciably weaker, though.

May 17: The Romanian border is being stripped right down - one province has zero defenders. I'm throwing some of my forces forward to try to create some pockets before everyone just leaves.

May 21: I know it's totally impractical, but launching an invasion like this makes me wish that HOI had an "Idle Divisions" button the same way RTS games have an "Idle Villagers" button. The idea of anything in the breakout zone sitting still makes me sad.

May 26: I'm officially a chump.

May 27: Another minor pocket crushed at Gheorgheni, with 52,695 men inside.

May 31: Another minor pocket crushed at Zalau, with 22,615 men inside. Of course these pockets aren't as important as pocketing Germans, because these nations are going to be out of the fight soon and so reducing their manpower doesn't matter much, but it's still fun. Also, since it's been a month, an update on my progress. tl;dr, Romania is falling faster than it did in WW1.

June 9: Ploiesti has fallen, depriving the Axis of their main fuel supply. The only defender was a retreating zero-org Bulgarian infantry division.

June 16: Bucharest has fallen. Not that it matters much - Romania's down to 12 provinces, most of which have defenders - but it's still a nice moral victory.

June 17: Or maybe not. Apparently, Romania decided not to go government-in-exile - all their troops surrendered. That certainly makes life easier.

June 23: Finished the first wave of destroyer techs, and unlocked CLs.

June 25: Three corps of garrison troops finished, freeing up the last of my engineers. I've put in half a dozen CLs, and the rest is going to upgrades.

June 30: It's been six months, so it's time for some world maps. Britain is retaking West Africa aggressively, Japan is advancing slowly through Burma, and North Vietnam is apparently running a huge rebellion that's giving a great power serious trouble. And of course, some jerk is rampaging through the Balkans. The German front is cut off in the pictures, because it hasn't moved - the fighting's been pretty heavy, but it's pure WW1 up there.

 

[Gen. Marshall]

There's not much in terms of German units down there, so I guess the best thing you could do now is rolling up those Balkan states methodically.

Then, it will be up to you to come up with another brilliant plan, for the Germans will surely defend the borders of the Fatherland with everything they have. Provided that the WWI-style warfare hasn't bled them dry by then, that is. A possible operation might be a huge naval landing near Venice or (is Denmark in Allied hands?) the Baltic coast. Show 'em that a million chumps can beat even the "mighty" Wehrmacht!

 

[gokiller]

Wow! Keep it up! It's really brilliant!

 

[Alsadius]

There's not much in terms of German units down there, so I guess the best thing you could do now is rolling up those Balkan states methodically.

Then, it will be up to you to come up with another brilliant plan, for the Germans will surely defend the borders of the Fatherland with everything they have. Provided that the WWI-style warfare hasn't bled them dry by then, that is. A possible operation might be a huge naval landing near Venice or (is Denmark in Allied hands?) the Baltic coast. Show 'em that a million chumps can beat even the "mighty" Wehrmacht!

Yeah, the current plan is to knock the Balkans out of the war first. Hungary will likely fall when I take Budapest(depending on their NU - if they're 77% or lower, that's the end of it), Bulgaria is basically undefended, and Croatia and Slovakia have maybe a single army corps between them. After that, probably another big encirclement along the middle of the line, at which point Germany and Italy will likely be weak enough for me to just murder them in a general offensive.

And when I say WW1, I mean their attacks are WW1. I could break their line fairly easily, I just have a defensible line at present that I'm not advancing for reasons of economy of force. If they're willing to trade five of their men for one of mine, I'm going to let them and use my troops elsewhere. Especially given that I have three million men in reserve, and they don't have enough to reinforce their tank brigades.

Also, "huge naval landings" are really out of the question. My whole fleet is six transports - I don't dare take them out of Sevastopol harbour, and even if I did, that's only a corps of capacity. They're only there to support me when I decide to go after Turkey and to build practicals. And no, the Allies have made zero progress except in French Guyana and West Africa. I've seen no Overlord landings, and no beachheads exist at present.

 

[Hearth]

Interesting. Followed.

 

[Alsadius]

July 1-Aug 31, 1942
July 6: Just finished 1942 armour techs. As if I didn't have enough stuff to upgrade. Rolled the research into marines, landing craft, and 1942 arty.

July 10: I'll give the Bulgarians this much, they know how to defend their capital - there was a full corps there. It didn't help them, because I just took Sofia, but at least they tried.

July 11: Bulgaria has surrendered. Unlike Romania, they decided to retreat to Berlin to keep the flag raised, but I'll be lowering it on them soon enough. Next up: Hungary.

July 16: Apparently, I'm not as good at this game as I thought. I built five airbases a few months ago, to burn spare IC on something vaguely useful. It seems airbases are like naval bases, in that you can't put them in a province that already has one without actually building them specifically for that province. I guess I just built five dirt strips for small towns in Siberia, because lord knows I don't need any more provinces with airfields in Europe.

July 20: After the fall of Budapest, Hungary has surrendered and been formally annexed. Eight provinces of Hungarian-controlled Yugoslavia have devolved to UK control - I think I'll let the Germans take that back before I advance through it. The next move is to take Croatia and thereby turn Greece and Albania into one giant pocket. Also, fun stat: I started this campaign three months ago today, and so far three nations have fallen to my advance. Somehow, I don't think I'll have any difficulty making it five in five.

July 22: I can build battleships now. Two are in the pipeline, though they won't be done until December 1944. (Also, I think there must be a bug - battleships have 3 sea defence?)

July 29: Just closed a nice little pocket in Salgotarjan - only two divisions, but both of them were German armour.

Aug 3: I noticed there was a strategic effect bonus for taking Danzig, so I did. Also, there was a nice little pocket in Bajmok, formed by that random UK territory in Yugoslavia. Ten divisions were inside, and 64,822 men were killed or captured.

Aug 5: Zagreb has fallen to a flying tank column. More troops are inbound to help hold it.

Aug 8: I've apparently organized a Communist Yugoslavia to administer the captured territory. This is news to me. Fortunately, it at least picked up the UK territory.

Aug 11: I just noticed something really odd on the German border. They seem to have pulled all their troops back two provinces, and just left a screening force on the border. A couple provinces are literally empty. And from what I can tell, the corps that have fallen back are just sitting still, not redeploying. Very confusing.

Aug 20: Sarajevo has fallen. Croatia will surrender at midnight. I think I'm now obliged to take Bratislava on Sept 20th, just to make it all even anniversaries.

Aug 30: Another step on the path to nukes done, plus it's about time for a big-picture screenshot. Note how much of a shambles my order of battle is - I haven't bothered fixing it, because the time it'd take is better spend capturing whole countries, but it's amazing how much of a mess it is. I'm trying to do a bit of resolution, though - 7th Army is currently tasked with capturing Greece, and it'll hold down the Balkans until proper garrisons arrive as well. The rest is heading back to the German border. Next operation is to cut off that giant salient in south Poland - it's fairly lightly held, but there's still about an army inside, including a corps of armour.

 

[Gen. Marshall]

That OOB surely is a mess....

At least you'll be able to use your troops in the Balkans against Italy and Germany soon. When you pocket Southern Poland, it will be the beginning of the end for Germany. Then, Italy, and after that we will have to wait a bit - I don't think those two battleships will be able to take on the RN. About those battleships: With the abysmal techs you have right now, 3 SD seems about right. Don't worry though, it will be at 12 very soon.

 

[Daffius]

Well, first to congratulate you on your win... The view count will surely jump

Good AAR by the way.

 

[dertechie]

Nice AAR, though I must admire the oddness of winning a ship name by (ab)using CGM to ditch your navy.

 

[robw963]

Congratulations Alsadius for winning the TFH AAR contest. Well deserved!

 

[Gen. Marshall]

Congratulations Alsadius...

You've got one award now, how about two? Winning the contest and the ACAs would be a remarkable achievement, to say the least. I think you can do it, so let's hope the other forumites think the same. You surely deserve it.

Oh - and Flying Dutchman is a great name, it would make me very proud

 

[Alsadius]

Thanks for the praise everyone, and extra thanks for the prizes Paradox . Also, I'll put the offer here as well - I need a name for a ship, and I'm taking ideas. Jokes and/or references to things I enjoy are preferred. Make sure you get it in by Thursday, because they want my submission by the end of the week.

Nice AAR, though I must admire the oddness of winning a ship name by (ab)using CGM to ditch your navy.

Heh, that amused me too.

Also, apologies about taking longer for this update - I'm having to mess with custom events to get everything finalized for the Sep-Oct '42 update.

 

[Alsadius]

Sep 1-Oct 31, 1942
Sep 2: Apparently I'm bad at anniversaries, because Slovakia just surrendered 18 days early. Also, I know it's not properly a country anymore, but Albania is entirely under my control as well. I've started attacking the Polish salient - having a spare army worth of troops in Warsaw is going to come in really, really handy here. Also, pocketed 3 divisions of Italians in Podgorica - 24,269 men down.

Sep 4: Now there's a big win for the Allies - Siam has fallen to the British advance. Given that last I looked it was mostly Siamese troops who were doing the advance through Burma, that probably stopped the advance cold too.

Sep 10: Okay, this is starting to get weird. Poland has just joined the Comintern, and taken control of all Polish territory I've conquered from Germany. Why did they not do this months ago, or wait until I'd conquered the whole country? I suppose I should expect Greece to do the same soon as well.

Sep 12: The ring has closed onto Katowice, and I've started reducing the pocket.

Sep 26: With the capture of Athens, Greece has been set up as an independent Communist state.

Sep 28: The pocket has been crushed, with 10 divisions(including 4 armoured and one SS) inside. 92,834 men were killed or captured. As well, no less than 17 HQs, including two Army Group commands, were taken.

Oct 2: Oh boy, my very first partisans! One stack of militia on Pogegen, shouldn't have any problem with this - my port defenders are right nearby. Also, noticed something very odd about the main German line - it seems to be running away from my troops as they advance, despite the fact that I'm getting into Germany proper now. I really have to wonder when they're going to actually stop and fight.

Oct 10: From what I can tell, the Axis now lack the capability to meaningfully resist me. Until that changes, I'm not going to be bothered working on clever mass encirclements or pausing to reorganize my army groups. I'm just going to drive forward and end the war.

Oct 24: With the fall of Patra, every single province belonging to an Eastern European country at the outbreak of the war is under Communist control(except a couple outlying islands that I don't have the fleets to invade). Everything from here on is a German or Italian core.

Oct 31: Sadly, HOI's biggest flaw is getting very obvious right now - the diplomacy. I'm going to make a few homebrew events to clean up the map of Europe - nothing unreasonable, all well within the realm of what the Allies did historically. To start with, Yugoslavia is going to inherit Croatia - yes, that's probably a bit easy-mode, given that Croatia still has a government in exile, but it was a silly little splinter government anyways, not a real prewar country. Also, they're taking back Split. I'm sure a decision like this will contribute to ugly sectarian warfare 50 years down the line, but for the purposes of an AAR, I'll let that slide. After that's resolved, the map looks like this:

 

[Gen. Marshall]

I looked at the picture first, and wondered why your map actually looked neat. For just a second, I thought that TFH cleaned up the borders - I should have known you did it, though. HOI and nice post-war borders? No way.