The reason for late game slowdown

[Tomnoddy]

Venezuela vs Curacao. Both countries scraping the barrel with about 80k manpower in the field. Rather than put that in 8 full strength divisions, use 64 skeleton ones instead so you can attack with the ones hat wouldn't fit the front width when the first attack fails. By running all their divisions down to 0 org is how they failed to defend their shoreline in the first place.

Meanwhile ....

El Salvador has built a Terracotta Army. 100 divisions to garrison 2 provinces , well done. They begged to join the axis, then continued to sit there despite being at war with all their neighbours.

Oh and here's a shot from earlier in the war. Medium armour divisions failing to penetrate our light armour - oops Stalin, need to rethink your production and deployment strategy (also that probably wasn't the wisest counterattack ever).

The moral of the story? Invade everyone. Annex everything. Do not create puppets. They just bog the game down.

 

[Vegtamskvitha]

Now combine that with the fact that the AI is going to build a bunch of 3INF divisions, and you are going to enjoy speed 2 in 1943 although you actually put it on speed 4...

And while you mentioned puppets, I would like to say that their desire to spam units does not only slow down the game, but also hurts other mechanics:
1.: Demanding lend lease from your puppets (if you are really desperate) because they are spending every gun for their 5000 divisions.
2.: Creating puppet templates because they are out of manpower.

 

[Captured Joe]

Now everything makes a lot more sense... good God.

 

[SentosKarum]

I'v noticed that Sam Salvador tends to have a huge-ish army. Must be echoes of DDRJakes greatness.

 

[Alexlazer]

Now combine that with the fact that the AI is going to build a bunch of 3INF divisions, and you are going to enjoy speed 2 in 1943 although you actually put it on speed 4...

And while you mentioned puppets, I would like to say that their desire to spam units does not only slow down the game, but also hurts other mechanics:
1.: Demanding lend lease from your puppets (if you are really desperate) because they are spending every gun for their 5000 divisions.
2.: Creating puppet templates because they are out of manpower.

Speed 2 ? LOL you're being too nice boy. Take a look at quill18's last Let's Play, just click on any of the last videos and you'll see the game lagging like crazy, and that's on his powerful gamer/youtuber/programmer computer. If even on that kind of PC the lag ruins the game experience, I don't even want to know how it is on lower-end computers. I personally usually don't go beyond 1945 because of this (and also because to main war has usually already been won).