New Player - Germany Doesn't seem to bother defending?

[Bennyy]

Hi All

So I've just done my first full play through of HOI3 as Yugoslavia, and the game is great fun... up to this point.

Germany beat Russia and got the bitter peace event, establishing total dominance in Europe, leaving only the UK independent. However, once defeating Russia Germany insisted on maintaining at least 75% of its army on the border and didn't send any units to guard the Atlantic wall. SO when the US invasion came in '45 they were only up against lackluster Hungarian troops so steamrolled all the way to Stuttgart and Frankfurt before I ragequit, as Germany still kept all its forces in Russia.

I'm still determined to get some fun out of the game by attempting 'Fortress Yugoslavia', but I'm a bit bummed that the Axis went from total victory to embarrassing defeat due to stupid AI. Is this a common issue? And is there any way around this always happening in future?

 

[confinement]

You already said it. "Stupid AI".

You can still get a lot of fun, but playing Yugoslavia will not give you the best experience.

 

[marxianTJ]

The USSR likely had oodles of divisions still and so the German AI regards them as the bigger threat, so it will hold oodles of divisions there - as for Yugoslavia, if you're not doing anything, going back in time a bit and better garrisoning French ports will pretty much prevent any landing from taking hold and you can move on with your game

+ I've found if you loan Germany a bunch of transports the AI will usually use them to take out the UK post fall of the USSR so that's nice and will also drag lots of troops west.

 

[Bennyy]

Thanks for the advice, just went for Yugoslavia as a starting nations due to its small neighbors and single theatre. In the end I held the mountains in the north easily against the Yankee armour inflicting 3:1 casualties... But a massive armoured push through Hungary right into my heartland eventually shattered me. Leading to extremely bloody battles of Belgrade and Zagreb, was a lot of fun.

I do think its testament to the quality of a game when you can genuinely enjoy loosing!

 

[yamato2cz]

german AI defended place where it felt i was most threathened from. thats it. you can log in as germany and rebuild OOB and create few new theathers to repair it.