The Phoenix – A very ahistorical BlackIce AAR

[Nitrax]

Hearts of Iron BlackIce v8.5
Difficulty: Normal
Invasions: Yes
Rebellions: Yes
Personalities: Yes
Type: Narrative / Guide

The Phoenix – A very* ahistorical BlackIce AAR
By Nitrax

*IMHO - I could be wrong, but I've not seen that many attempts at this.​

Chapter One: Demons

January 1927​

Bayreuth. If any one place was the soul of National Socialism it was Bayreuth. Munich may have been its birthplace but it was that small, almost unremarkable town on the Red Main river, that was the spiritual home of every committed National Socialist. It was there that Wagner was buried, and now Hitler had arrived to witness the death of another great man.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain had been born an Englishman but had the soul of a German. He was over eighty and even when Hitler had first met the man, at the festival to honour Wagner in 1926, his health had been failing him. His body was confined to a wheelchair while his mind soared. Many suspected him mad, he talked about being pursued by demons for much of his life, but even so his thoughts on race still held great deal of influence.

When Hitler had arrived he’d found the old man lying in bed, eyes closed and with breathing so shallow he wondered if he was still alive. Only when the eyes fluttered open and settled in Hitler he did he breath a sigh of relief.

“Hail, my leader.” The German was flawless, but Chamberlain had never managed to fully loose his English accent. Hitler opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by the old man. “No. Say nothing. I must ensure you hear this first. Afterwards, if there is still time, I will answer your questions.”

The eyes closed again. Hitler wondered if Chamberlain had fallen asleep and began counting his own heartbeats, only by the eighth did the old man speak. “You will loose everything. I have seen you loose the war in the east. My demon showed me. I saw German armies die in the snow, I saw the Communist horde as it marched into Berlin, I saw you loose.

“So I have made you a deal. One to ensure your victory. To save you. It's called a malus, and it will weaken your enemies. Plagues and famines will reduce their numbers. Their keenest minds will be dulled. The Soviets will bare the brunt of it, but the British too will struggle.”

Hitler took a breath. He was torn between his incredulity that the Soviets could ever beat him and his desire to humour Chamberlain. A once great man reduced to madness.

“You don't believe me do you?” Hitler held his tongue. “Tell me Herr Schucklebruger, why did you never speak to Frau Rabatsch?”

Hitler felt his blood run to ice and Chamberlain, without even opening his eyes, smiled wickedly. Months ago Hitler had had those papers, the ones that pointed to the embarrassingly pedestrian name of Schucklebruger, destroyed. It had never really been his. He’d be born as Adolf Hitler, but the name had belonged to his father and Adolf had avoided it thanks to his father legitimising himself through the courts.

And then there was the second name. The woman who he’d first spied one winter’s morning on the streets of Vienna. So beautiful and remote that Hitler, little more than a vagabond at the time, had never had the courage to speak a single word to her.

The first name Chamberlain might have ferreted out from somewhere but the second was impossible for anyone else to know. Or so he had thought up until now.

Unless Chamberlain's demon was real?

Only then did Hitler speak. Carefully, so to remove any remaining disbelief from his voice. “If it is a deal, what does your demon wish for in return?”

“Just your victory, my leader. He will be best served with your victory.”

A.I Settings
U.S.S.R Very Easy
UK Easy
France Normal
USA Normal
Italy Hard
Japan Hard

Chapter Two: Byzantine Diplomacy

May 1940 - 7 days after the fall of France.​

Hitler could not remember the last time he had felt so tired. The last few months of fighting had drained his energy and the latest damned peace conference had pushed him over the edge into exhaustion. He'd managed a few hours of sleep on the plane to Turkey but it wasn't enough. At least he had an hour or two of parade watching before the negotiations began.

Hitler was seated on the balcony of a hotel overlooking the parade route that ran from Istanbul’s medieval wall to the Hagia Sophia. He briefly wondered if anyone would notice if he fell asleep.

Something niggled at the back of Hitler’s mind. Something was wrong and he couldn't figure out what. He glanced at his aides, at Ribbentropp his foreign minister, and finally across the street at the balconies filled with the leaders of the other delegations. Italy, Britain, Yugoslavia, Japan, all the nations that were at war were represented here. Not one person looked confused or out of place but that did little to reassure Hitler. Something was really wrong.

Then the first of the soldiers began marching down the road. Everyone stood and clapped politely. Below him the crowds cheered but Hitler felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

“Is everything alright my leader?” One of his aides, Captain Fälschenmeister, asked.

“Are they… are they carrying axes?”

“Yes my leader. It’s the traditional weapon of the Varangian Guard.

“The what?” Before Fälschenmeister could reply there was a sudden burst of wind and the flags that some of the soldiers were carrying opened up to reveal a golden double headed eagle on a red background. “I thought we were in Turkey?”

“My leader, did you not have time to read my report?” Hitler suppressed a grimace. He hadn’t. There had been so much to do with the conquest of France that he hadn't had the time to read every report that crossed his desk.

“Tell me Fälschenmeister, what is going on here?”

“The Greeks sir, they conquered Bulgaria and Turkey and reformed the Byzantine Empire. It's back from the dead.”

“What? When?”

“Erm... about two days ago. This parade is in celebration of the new empire. It was all in my report sir.” Hitler motioned over to Ribbentrop and a moment later the other man was by his side, still smiling and waving as if nothing was wrong.

“Ribbentrop?”

“How can I help you my leader?”

“What have the Greeks-

“-Byzantines,” Fälschenmeister interjected.

“What have the Byzantines got to do with these negotiations. Are they not just providing neutral ground?”

“Not at all my leader.” Ribbentrop beamed. “We and Italy declared war on Yugoslavia-”

“Yes, and then they joined the Allies, so what?”

“But their independence was guaranteed by Greece. The Greeks didn't join the Allies but since the Byzantine Empire is now more powerful than Yugoslavia the Byzantine's have taken the lead in the negotiations.”

“And the British are just going along with this?” Ribbentrop nodded. “It doesn't matter. Either Yugoslavia surrenders to us or we’ll crush them and this so called Byzantine Empire.”

Ribbentrop and Fälschenmeister exchanged nervous glances. Hitler glowered at his foreign minister until Fälschenmeister found the courage to speak.

“I'm afraid, my leader, that a war with the Byzantine Empire would be very difficult to pull off. Politically the Greeks are very well liked by the German people. Extremely well liked. There’s a lot of respect for what they've accomplished in less than a year-”

“I don't care about respect.” Hitler snapped. To his surprise it wasn't enough to silence Fälschenmeister.

“However the Greeks have spent the last year negotiating over a score of trade agreements with us. They are now purchasing a vast amount of our steel. In fact they are the only thing keeping several large firms in business. We can't figure out why, but the end result is that our economy would suffer immensely from the loss of income if the war continued.”

That gave Hitler a cause to pause. He had to keep big business on his side to conduct further wars. Ribbentrop clearly sensed his hesitation and leapt into it.

“While it is true we would almost certainly win in any war against the Byzantines their army is quite impressive. Lots of well equipped and experienced mountain troops, plenty of anti-tank guns. They even possess a small but surprisingly potent air force.”

“Any tanks?” Hitler asked.

“No. They don't need them. We'd have to attack through mountainous terrain, against a properly entrenched and fresh force even our tanks won't do well. In fact the only flat area for our tanks to operate is on the Romanian border. We'd have to cross the river Danube under fire to get to it. As I said, we’d win, but your standing back home will suffer from the heavy casualties we would suffer in a war that the majority of Germans don't want.”

Hitler was silent for a moment. He examined the marching troops below. It was a show of force. Ribbentrop was right, these men were well equipped and trained. An invasion would be bloody. Finally he shrugged.

“Very well. We will avoid a war for now. Let's see how well this new empire can stand up at the negotiating table. Don't worry. I bested the British at Munich, I'll best Byzantium as well.”


The Following Day.

Germany AI - Hard

Player – Greece. The Byzantine Empire.

Special Note. I did edit the save game at this point in order to make it far more interesting. Without the edit Poland, or at least the rump state, remained in the Allies faction. It might be small, but it meant that the entire German invasion of the USSR had to send its supplies through a three province thick corridor north of Poland. So, despite the USSR being noob AI, they actually stalled the advance at the gates of Moscow for ten years. The last seven of those years the USSR had 0 manpower. The last five of those years they had less than 30% officer ratio (even with all their leadership going to officers), but the entire German army was without supplies and stuck. No one could make an interesting AAR out of that so I reloaded and and moved Poland to the Axis faction (and made them a German puppet).



I had thought to do the entire game as a narrative, however the section from 1936-1940 would have been quite dull, so instead I’m just going to put down my strategy and thoughts. Hopefully the narrative will begin again once things pick up.

Chapter Three - We did the impossible.​

So. The big question. How does Greece survive the Italian/German invasion?


They make sure the invasion doesn't happen. Exactly as Ribbentropp described. I'll start will the grand strategy so you will see here I'm going with this. First three caveats,

1. I am not an expert at this game, I’m still very much a newb, don't take what I write as gospel or the only way to do it.
   
   
2. Even I'm not sure why the diplomacy occurred the way it did. I will do my best to explain the steps I took and leave it to more experienced players to figure out….
   
   
3. So yes, I cheated, a little. I turned on noneutrality on September 02, 1939. I figure that once Hitler is invading Poland everything is fair game. In theory you can do this strategy without the cheat by using spies to raise threat levels and lowering neutrality at the yearly spying event (you should do this anyway so you can get better laws). However you have to be very lucky with your events. One ‘Great Peace Demonstration’ or a little bad luck at spying and it's all over. I simply got fed up with doing the first four years over and over again. Every time I managed to get my neutrality low enough in time I messed up in some other way. Such as forgetting to research infantry weapons or something stupid like that. Each attempt took an entire evening and I got sick of it after about 10+ attempts. TLDR - This strat should be doable without cheating, if you can play a perfect game.
   

Buckle in boys and girls, we’re jumping on the crazy train and rebuilding the Byzantine Empire. Our first invasion, starting on the 2nd of September 1939, is against Bulgaria. Why Bulgaria? Very simple.

1. It gives us a far better defensive line against axis aggression than if we had only conquered Turkey. Instead of a long and thin strip of land from Salonica to Istanbul with very little in the way of good terrain and zero strategic depth we gain a border with a river and another with mostly hills/mountains. And it's all land we can give up if we need to.
   
   
2. If we attacked Turkey first Bulgaria might have joined the Axis by the time we got around to it.
   
   
3. Bulgarian naval and airbases will be useful in the invasion of Turkey and the extra resources and IC is nice.
   

The invasion of Bulgaria, which I will detail below, usually takes me 2-3 months. They have some pretty good terrain there and there is almost no room to maneuver. Once that is complete we immediately re-orientate against Turkey.



The most important thing to remember is that we must annex Turkey at least before one week after the Fall of France, because then Germany will declare war on you(goslavia). Obviously the difficulty settings of each power will effect when France Falls. If the German AI is hard expect the fall to occur as early as April 1940. In this play through they fell in May.


In terms of diplomacy I start to align with the Axis asap, but I don't join. From Sept 1939 I also start buying steel off Germany whenever possible. I think (but am not sure) this means that the AI is more likely to agree to your peace terms due to better relations.


When war is declared you should be informed that you have been made the leader of the alliance. (The one between you and Yugoslavia, not the allies) Immediately sue for peace. All the Nazi occupied countries will be freed and everyone goes back home. Germany will keep quite a bit of Poland and a handful of provinces from France and Denmark.


Note: If Italy does not join Germany in declaring war on then it will remain at war with Britain and France after the negotiations. Since France does not have an army any more they will be easy prey for Italy. Once Italy has conquered France and North Africa they will come after you. (That was a great little war, but I had to stop that play through owing to the ‘Poland in Allies’ problem mentioned above.)


I'm not sure how the leadership of the alliance is calculated. Whether it is IC or Leadership. I suspect, due to the wording of the popup, that it is the later. If so then you should probably do as much as possible to increase your leadership before the war starts. So things like building a university and the right politicians are needed.


Finally, I'm not sure what role having the British set to ‘easy’ played in all this. Maybe if they had been tougher they would have assumed the leadership. I simply don't know.

Chapter Four – Building the Tagmata​

Once again I’m not an expert. I’ve done the conquest of Bulgaria and Turkey several times and I'm onlu now starting to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. I started with the advice given in the manual, people who are experts on the game will probably be able to come up with better divisional builds, but here are my thoughts.


(I'm also trying avoid cheesy strategies, such as building divisions with 5 Artillery units, to make for a more immersive play through.)


The three most important things to remember are:

1. Win both wars before the Fall of France (You may get a 1 week grace period).
   
   
2. Don't worry if you don't have the most modern army, you only have to have one better than Bulgaria and Turkey.
   
   
3. Always take the Homefront decision. It's going to be the source of 99% of your manpower, so take it whenever possible.
   

My Rule of thumb is that Greece can make a good infantry army and ONE other thing. Anything else and you simply wont be ready in time.


The Navy - Forget it but don't scrap it.

Airforce – It is possible to get a small one going, with one or two unit types. (Assuming they are from the same frame.) They won't win you any wars, but we will need them much later on. In this playthrough I went for Interceptors and Close Air Support, but that's just a personal choice. It's probably better to invest the leadership into your army though.

Spying - if you are not using the noneutrality cheat then you’re probably going to want to use lots of leadership for spy missions to increase the threat of Bulgaria and Turkey. This will need to be done from day one.

Industry - Not yet. Once the invasion of Bulgaria begins we should have enough of an army to win the next few wars. Once I start the invasion I begin investing as heavily as possible into industry. IC from conquered nations is nice, but it's not enough on its own.

Armour - Not needed. Most of the terrain you will be fighting in will be mountains and hills so these units are not going to be that effective anyway. Bulgaria doesn't have any, Turkey has a few light thanks but not enough to cause a problem.



Next we need to decide what the make-up of our infantry army will be. We start off with around 15 mountain brigades and about the same number of garrison/militia/light infantry/infantry. As far as I can see there are four options. I've given them all a go and here are my thoughts.

1. Pure infantry. It will be possible to get around 25-30 divisions this way before we run into manpower problems. Its really good to have so many units, but they aren't as useful in mountains, which is a problem.
   
   
2. Light infantry - My invasions with these, again around 30 of them, resulted in very heavy casualties and very slow progress.
   
   
3. Pure Mountain - The downside here is that Mountain troops require a lot of extra tech. Light Infantry Branch Upgrade, Special Forces Branch Upgrade (the description of these techs both list Mountain troops) and Mountain Unit Training and Command and Control. Extra Mountain brigades also take quite a while to train, so we may not be able to get that many more before we have to attack.
   
   
4. Mixed divisions of 1 Mountain and 1 Infantry. This doesn't require much more leadership than option three, since we will probably want to get line infantry techs anyway. It also serves as a poor man's Strength Increase without crippling our manpower. Also if you upgrade all your other starting infantry units (garrison, militia ect.) to infantry you have roughly enough for 15 divisions of these divisions.
   

In terms of support units you have enough transports/div hqs and pack artillery to man 15. With enough IC/Time to fill them out a bit. Once all my upgrading is done I build an engineer and a recon cav unit for each division. Anti-tank and Anti-air is not needed at the moment, but I started building the former as I moved into Bulgaria so I would have some around for invading Turkey.

One of the main aims of this force is that it is buildable as a minor power, but once we graduate into the big leagues we can expand the army very quickly by breaking off the infantry brigades to form the core of a new division.

We also start off with 5 and a half cavalry divisions. Disband the half one (but use the r-con cav and div HQ) and upgrade the horsedrawn transport on the others as its slowing the rest of the division down. You then have a division capable of exploiting holes. It will suck at attacking troops dug in a mountain, but it can defend itself if the situation is reversed.

Using this method (and thanks to the six IC bonus I gained from my player backstory for a total of 36) I was able to begin the invasion of Bulgaria with the following order of battle.


Varangian Guard Corps
4 Divisions of Infantry, Mountain Infantry, Pack Arty, R-Cav, Engineer, Horse trans, DivHQ
1 Division of with the Mountain Infantry replaced with Naval Infantry.

Byzantine Guard Corps
Divisions of Infantry, Mountain Infantry, Pack Arty, R-Cav, Engineer, Horse trans, DivHQ

Sacred Band Corps
Divisions of Infantry, Mountain Infantry, Pack Arty, R-Cav, Engineer, Horse trans, DivHQ

Vardariotai Corps
5 Divisions of Cavalry, Artillery, R-Cav, Lt Transport and Div HQ

1st Infantry Corps
5 Divisions of Infantry, Artillery, Engineer, R-Mot, Anti-Tank,Lt Transport, Div HQ.


Air Force
6 Close Air Support
3 Interceptors


Next time -

Invasions!

Factories!

Constant crashing!

 

[Nitrax]

First of all, I apologise for the delay. My game hit a period of intense crashing. Even running it on the slowest speed it was still crashing every twenty minutes or so. I have almost a hundred save games covering a single year and I had to play through some weeks four, five, or even seven times due to the crashes. The folder that I move all my save games to is now 13 gig! Nothing I do appears to fix it,


I was tempted to restart and play without BlackIce, however I think it's spoiled me. Switching to base HoI was like going back to Baby’s First Wargame. Before 1940 I had conquered Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Afganistan without breaking a sweat. The wars were all over in a matter of weeks. Simply put, after spending months figuring out how to do this in BlackIce, HoI was stupidly easy.



For now I'm abandoning my idea of a narrative story going on between chapters regarding Hitler’s pact. I might bring it back in the next section as I think I have a cool story with it, but it's not vital.

Chapter Five: Empire Building.



The Invasion of Bulgaria​

There has to be a way to make these maps look better.

So, as we can see from the above map, this is a fairly simple campaign. Just remember to flankand envelope whenever possible. Especially on the mountainssurrounding Sophia, we need all of them to make the attack on Sophiaa hell of a lot easier.


In total this campaign took about 7 weeks. Casualties were,


Greece - 4290

Greatest Losses of Life - Taking of Sophia - 1169


Bulgaria - 35443

Killed by airstrikes - 1246 (A lot less than I thought, maybe CAS aren’t as useful as I had hoped., or maybe I really don’t have the leadership to make use of them.)

Greatest loss - Battle of Sophia - 16925 Killed (This is why you surround cities before attacking them. It was almost 50% of their troops.)



The invasion of Turkey.

5th January to May 6th 1940



The Plan


This plan is broken down into three parts. It is designed to out maneuver the Turkish forces, avoiding engagements over insignificant provinces and bulldozing the way towards victory point locations with an overwhelming number of troops. While victory should be assured the difficulty lies in winning before Germany or Italy declares war on us.


Forces

Because this invasion started weeks after we had annexed Bulgaria our OOB remained pretty much identical. I had completed construction of 5 AT and started 5 more during course of the war. In addition I added three more CAS to our small but potent airforce.

First let's cover everything outside of Turkey.

Construction - 5 Units of either Heavy AA or AT, since these are cheap, quick, and will be needed after the war.

Air power - I also started to alternate between building three interceptors and three CAS to keep Light Aircraft Practicals as low as possible. I intend to never not be building these units for the rest of the game.

All of the remaining IC went to constructing more IC. This is the point I really wanted to start ramping up my industry so that in a few years I'll be able to go head to head with Italy.

I also gained the synthetic industry event at some point, although I can’t remember the exact details, but it is very useful, if expensive.

Also useful was the Giant Infrastructure project: Farm mechanisation. As this grants another 100 manpower per war per year.

Diplomacy - Trade agreements with Germany (they will always want to sell steel) and Italy whenever possible. That will (I think) make them more amenable at the negotiations.



Stage One - Istanbul and Izmar

There we go, much better.

It is imperative that we move rapidly during this phase, as it's the one real chance that Turkey has of slowing us down long enough to get an organised defence up. The primary objectives here are Istanbul and the crossing into Uskudar. If Turkey gets one or two full strength divisions here and time enough to dig in things are going to get very tricky. So keeping divisions in reserve ready to leap forward while our advanced divisions are reorganising after the last attack is vital.


The secondary objective is to get the Varangian guard across at Canakkale. It should be noted that every time Turkey moves a fleet through the straits it stops the crossing dead. You won't even be told this and if you get distracted by events elsewhere the Varangians will waste several days waiting for you to reissue to order to attack.

Canakkale is useful because it allows up to flank any defences near the crossing at Uskudar, and it places our forces within striking distance of Izmir. Once that port is conquered however the area becomes less important, the next nearest VP locations will all be closer for our main force at Uskudar. However it may be possible to sneak a fast unit from here all the way East to Gaziantep.

Naval landings may help outflank dug in defenders, but be aware that Turkey does posses an airforce and a navy and losing divisions at sea is always painful. However they only have a handful of airfields, once they are taken at the end of stage two I start making naval landings.

The Turkish Navy will split itself up and go convoy hunting, so if you do get into a naval battle make sure you use your entire fleet to ensure victory.



Stage Two , Duzce and Ankara

Here we can clearly see that I forgot to add the Icons on this image.

Once the main force has crossed at Uskudar we can begin the drive on Ankara, capturing Duzce along the way. The river Sakayra and the mountainous terrain provide perfect defensive positions, allowing the right flank of the attack to be protected. The left flank is secured by the sea. I sent two of the mobile divisions in a wide northern arc. This way they could either swing down to surround Ankara or use them in a quick dash to Trebizond. In the end I went with the former.

In the south the Varangian guard pushed north east in order to link up with the main force and reducing the provinces we needed to defend.

Ankara needs to be surrounded completely before being attacked. This should not be difficult to do as we still have 10-15 divisions in the area.



Stage Three - Trabzon and Gaziantep

By ‘port hopping’ from Istanbul to Sinop to Trebizond the naval infantry division was able to capture that port with only minimal losses. At the same time the mobile divisions that had swung south to surround Ankara made a dash for Gaziantep in the south east corner of Turkey. It's actually only a few provinces away and they found the last capital of Turkey undefended.



In all this campaign, while being longer and more complicated than the Bulgarian one, was actually easier on our troops. Engagements were minor and losses small. The larger territory meant we could maneuver and outflank Turkish forces, forcing them to withdraw without having to fight through them. Air power was not as dominant as I would have liked, and the navy did little more than watch landings take place.



Then the Byzantine Empire, having taken back it's core territory, was officially refounded. Parades and medals all around. Emperor Constantine IX returned to life, but being five hundred years behind the times it was decided that he would be allowed to retire. Instead King Georgios II was crowned the new Emperor, although naturally it was more of a figure-head role.

In this depiction of the retaking of Istanbul the Turkish forces, having been driven from the city, attempt a
counter-attack but are held back by Byzantine troops of the Sacred Band.

Chapter Six. Tidying up.​

Our next step was Persia. I'm not going to go into the strategy on this one, since it should be fairly straightforward. Just be aware that attacking Ardabil is not only costly but pointless. (it's a mountain province behind a river) it should be by passed completely. Also keeping units supplied can be an issue, especially south west.


If we don’t annex Persia then the British and Soviets will. They may even do it during the invasion itself, which means that they take lots of provinces even if we’re the ones occupying them and/or have units in them. Not a good thing. So, once again, speed is vital. As is the 100 manpower we gain, and all the nice oil.


For the extra manpower I also invaded Afghanistan. That's quite possibly the simplest invasion plan I've ever had. I just formed all my men into a big arrow and marched them to Kabul and another province was added to the Byzantine Empire.


There were no other easily conquered nations near us. Although Iraq and Saudi Arabia looked tempting. If the British empire had been at war with Italy then it might have been possible to annex them while no one was looking, but to do it without that distraction would be suicide.


So now it was time to refit and expand our army. The infantry brigades from the 1st Byzantine Guards Corps were removed to create the core of the 2nd Byzantine Guards. We had gained two Battle commanders whose Motorised Brigades went to replace the cavalry of two of the Vandarioti divisions while their Hq’s went into the Varangian guard.


R-Cav units were upgraded in Armoured Cars, artillery in the standard infantry divisions were replaced with Rockets. The Mountain divisions kept their pack-arty. Another major change was the introduction of medium tank detachments into the standard infantry divisions. This was for several reasons. It made our divisions tougher, it increased our armour construction practicle - making it easier to build full armoured divisions in 1943, and finally with Persia secured I didn't need to worry about running out of fuel.

Here we see Byzantine Soldiers inspecting one of the new Comet Tanks


Aircraft production also continued, a mix of CAS and INT’s, although my leadership wasn't high enough to keep up with all their tech. While the planes were advanced for their time pilot and ground crew training was sorely lacking.


Likewise industrial investment continued on as large as scale as possible. We had started the conquest of Turkey with 46/71 IC/Available IC and by the war’s end we were up to 56/87. By December 1941 we were at 68/108 with six more on the way. I felt that that was a good number to hold at while I upgraded the armed forces.


Our manpower reserves had begun at 44, by the end of the invasion it was at 104 thanks to the Home Front event. (Our actual monthly regain hovered around 1.05)


Thanks to Byzantine diplomacy peace was declared throughout the world. Countries were liberated, amies stood down, and everyone saw a bright future ahead for the new empire.


The people of the world finally had peace in their time.


For eight months.

Chapter Seven. The Calm Before the Storm​

Eventually the Pearl Harbor attack fired for the Japanese. Unfortunately for them it was written without the possibility that Italy and Germany might be at peace in mind. The Allies, including the newly liberated France, all piled onto Japan while the other Axis powers remained steadfastly neutral.


However the empowered Japanese were more than a match for the Allies. Not a week went by without news of some great Allied warship sunk and it wasn't long until Singapore and Burma fell. In Burma the fighting continued with British forces very slowly being pushed back. By July The Philippines had also fallen fell under Japanese.


Meanwhile not a shot was fired in Europe. Hitler was up to god knows what in his slightly enlarged Germany. The soviets were no doubt cranking out the divisions for an invasion which might not even occur before 1945. Britain and France rebuilt their armies and Italy just sat there, eyeing the Mediterranean possessions of the British and Byzantine Empires with envy.


Occasionally there would be a minor revolt in one of the far flung provinces of the empire. I dealt with these with some ‘Party Bus’ divisions. These consist of one transport (trucks are probably the most suited, they’re cheaper than halftracks) and an armoured car brigade. These units are really fast but, unless you attack across a river, will always defeat the rebels.


(The reason for the name is simple. Since there are never any casualties on either side I like to think that they defeat the rebellions using none-violent methods. So they turn up and organise a big party for everyone and afterwards they all agree that the Byzantine Empire is actually the most awesome thing ever created. It's also the reason why the units and commanders don't gain any combat experience from putting down a revolt.)


So the war was over for the Byzantine Empire. Even if I possessed the means to fight Japan I couldn't. Declaring war on them would bring down all of the axis powers on me like a tonne of bricks. Some of those powers I could defeat one on one. Romania could be held off thanks to the river Danube. Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia wouldn't be much of a challenge at all. Italy and Germany however could both crush me with one hand tied behind their backs. So I couldn't do anything against the Japanease even if they hadn't been half a world away.


To make it even more frustrating it was going to take decades to join any other faction than the Axis. Once peace was concluded I immediately began to align with the Allies, in the hope that one day I could get my hands on all that tasty lend-lease and use it to fuel a massive industrialisation program. Alas, Italy had other plans, they refused to stop using diplomatic influence on me. Occasionally the Soviets would do the same for a few days as well, as if to say ‘don't forget about us’. The end result was a very, very slow drift towards the Allies.


Strategically I was not in a good position to defend against Axis aggression. As far as I know annexed countries don't count towards the ‘important cities’ occupation mechanic which meant that I only had two. If Salonica and Athens fell it would be all over. (I did think about editing the save game to move my capital to Istanbul but in the end I decided not to.) So while I had conquered everything between Istanbul and India I had no strategic depth at all.


In theory if I could survive the next ten years and do nothing but build up my industry then perhaps I could spend the following ten years building an army big enough to hold off the Axis powers. Assuming that the noob AI Soviet Union hadn't collapsed by then.


Still. It's not the worst plan I've ever had.

Well bugger.

Oh, now it's on!



Next Time.

Fails all round!

Encirclements!

Mexicans!

 

[sebas379]

This is a very ahistorical yet fun aar, i like the variety in writing. Looking forward to the next chapter (?)

 

[General Awesome1234]

Mexicans?

 

[sebas379]

Mexicans?

Yes of course. Are you not familiar with the great byzantine-mexican war of 1942? I thought everyone knew about that one

 

[General Awesome1234]

Yes of course. Are you not familiar with the great byzantine-mexican war of 1942? I thought everyone knew about that one

Oh ok...........................Wait what?