Things I am seeing in a VH/F game of Stony Road...

[KaiMaster]

First off, my wife is born and raised in Australia, so lately she only lets me spend hours playing HOI because I am protecting the Australian people from the fanatical and evil Japanese.

Also I wanted to see a more "hands-off" type of game and see how the new mod actually plays out and watch the AI.

I am in mid-1941 now and here are some observations:

1) All the cool kids join the Axis. The number of AI countries in the Axis is insane. Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, Nationalist Spain, Portugal, Japan, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Persia, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Yugoslavia are all proud Axis members (I think I got most of them). I almost wanted to take the dissent hit and join them! lol

2) Poland lasted longer than France did. Vichy was created and Germany was going crazy, annexing Denmark and Luxembourg and Austria and Czechoslovakia.

3) Japan is making progress in China, but even with obtaining French Indochina from Vichy, it lost it to a huge UK assault from India. The UK annexed Afghanistan and took most of Indochina (I have the eastern 3 Vietnamese territories north of Saigon). The Japan AI seems to still really suck. I was prepared to fight island to island but Japan has only taken one island since I started.

4) The USA is at 100% war entry and has not entered. Europe is all but gone and the Allies are outnumbered 4 to 1 in victory points

5) As Australia I annexed Persia (got caught in the mountains for one province damnit and thus it took me 3 months longer than planned) and Argentina. Bolivia and Paraguay are next. Some countries shouldn't officially join the Axis... I have also been trying to act as a thorn in the side of axis nations, with the help of the UK and South Africa I have pushed Portugal and Nationalist Spain out of all their overseas colonies (Fernando Po is MINE along with the Canaries).

6) Before Persia was annexed, the Soviet Union had 137 divisions along with 8-9 air units in one territory bordering Persia, and like 15-20 in each of the other two. I can see 15-20 in each territory because Turkey has 30+ in the bordering Turkish region. But 137 ground divisions in the territory only bordering Persia? As soon as I annexed it that number dropped to 15 as well. The Front AI has issues for the SU still...

7) Italy is still a force in Africa. When Italy entered the Axis, I moved several infantry divisions to the Nubia area to hold back the flood of Mussolini's legions, allowing the UK to mop up and eliminate all Italian influence. When I mobilized to liberate Persia from their misguided, oppressive government, the power vacuum gave Italy the chance to move back in. The UK has thus been pushed down to Ethiopia and Romania shares the Israel/Syria area with Italy.

8) The Netherlands are still neutral. Belgium joined the allies and recently in mid-1941 Norway joined the allies. They signed their death warrant I am afraid, without hostilities from the SU or from the USA they are doomed.

9) The German army outnumbers the SU army. !!! There should be a trigger or something that fires off Barbarossa early if that is the case. If Hitler knew that he OUTNUMBERED the Soviets he would have invaded in a heartbeat. Especially with Finland, Romania, and Turkey as allies.

10) The Australian armed forces are out of manpower (anyone here surprised hehe). But I have 8 divisions of medium tanks with 70MM guns, fear me (at least until I meet the Germans lol).

All in all... the UK AI seems ok. Just wish it handled Africa better. It seems to do just fine in the asian theater. The German AI seems ok. Italy's AI seems fine too. Japan's AI blows.

 

[unmerged(12730)]

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Did you play Stony Road or World Tumbling?

But 137 ground divisions in the territory only bordering Persia?

Always more to see for the human player, as the AI prioritizes a human border..

 

[KaiMaster]

World Tumbling I believe. Should have mentioned that... oh well I was at work on lunch hour what can I say?

Do other people see this kind of thing or was it just me?

 

[unmerged(11731)]

The world tumbling scenario is biased against the allies to challenge would-be Eisenhowers and Montys. The Stoney Road to War is biased against the axis for all you little Hitlers hiding in the closet (with J. Edgar Hoover:}).

If you want a balanced scenario, try the regular scenarios that came with the game and everything else with Stoney, prepared to get spanked or give the spanking.

A good in between is probably to try either scenarion and put it at normal level if you are looking for some medium of balancing the play.

Remember, it is your job to make the other bastard die for his country and not you! - not the exact wordings but from Gen. Patton.

How about "Nuts!" during the Ardennes offensive?

 

[unmerged(10646)]

BTW, "A World Tumbling" is a fantastic diversion from the "All Germany, All the Time" focus of a Stony Road and a lot of the other mods. I played the US in AWT (VH/N) and had to resort to some very different startegies to get a foothold in fortress Europa.

Things that went wrong:

1) I didn't give the USSR any tech (my focus was on Nat. China, UK, Canada, France, SA and Australia) - the Soviets and their pre-war tanks got steamrolled.

2) I got a +40 WE event in late 1939 but didn't take it seriously and held off entering the war for another 6 months.

3) Republican Spain won the civil war and joined the allies. Before I knew it, the Germans had taken the mountain areas and I had to rush in reinforcements to save the anarchist rabble. This tied down nearly 90 of my divisions trying to hold the line and advance into the mountains against the (massively teched up) Wehrmacht.

4) I focused on Naval and Sub Techs hoping for superiority versus what I thought (from the info screen) was a nearly omnipitent IJN and well reinforced islands. However, the Japanese AI was braindead and I effectively eliminated Japanese convoy shipping by late 1940. Advanced Battleships are cool though

5) I completely ignored AF techs until 1942 and was getting eaten alive by massive stacks of German dive bombers until I got the P-51 (and later, jets. P-47s were useless) into service.

6) I over-expaned my economy - I didn't have nearly enough resources to maintain a 1700+ IC economy.

Things that went right:

1) WE3 really paid off - even though I couldn't possibly maintain an economy of that size, 3-1 oil-rubber allowed me to run one heck of an industrial giant.

2) Argentina and Bolivia joined the Axis and were quickly overrun giving me access to extra coal and steel (though Bolivia was a real pain)

3) North Africa was cake - completely taken by late 1940.

4) A seemingly disastrous attempt to invade via the Balkans led to the annexation of Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria and the puppeting of Turkey. This, in turn, led to a massive Axis counter-attack involving hundreds of divisions and virtually the entire luftwaffe (versus my 45 divisions and no planes). I ran my divisions into the forts of Ionia and Thessalonika, bolstered the AA in those provinces and sat tight for three years against overwhleming odds. This tied down those literally 200 Axis divisions in Greece and the continually improving AA decimated the luftwaffe - the Germans were *way* more concerned about Ploesti than Paris.

5) Germany turned down the bitter peace.

6) Nationalist China, due to my generous tech-sharing program, clobbered the Japanese and were able to help out in Siberia and Europe.

6) With seemingly the entire Wehrmacht tied down in Spain, Greece, and Siberia, I was able to invade France in Force at Marseille and encircle the Wehrmacht in the mountains of Spain. With naval support, their supply line was completely cut off and 100+ German divisions in Spain were no more. From there on out, it was a cakewalk to Berlin and the Wehrmacht was broken and out of supply and easily defeated (August, 1945).

Tim

 

[Viking]

Originally posted by Timdog
BTW, "A World Tumbling" is a fantastic diversion from the "All Germany, All the Time" focus of a Stony Road and a lot of the other mods. I played the US in AWT (VH/N) and had to resort to some very different startegies to get a foothold in fortress Europa.

Things that went wrong:

1) I didn't give the USSR any tech (my focus was on Nat. China, UK, Canada, France, SA and Australia) - the Soviets and their pre-war tanks got steamrolled.

I kept running out of diplomats, focus on france, nat china, UK and USSR. Don't bother with anybody else, the CW shares with itself. The UK will share any developents of US research shared with allies. Give them the tank prototype they will develope the tank and share it with the CW.

2) I got a +40 WE event in late 1939 but didn't take it seriously and held off entering the war for another 6 months.

*d**t!!!!

3) Republican Spain won the civil war and joined the allies. Before I knew it, the Germans had taken the mountain areas and I had to rush in reinforcements to save the anarchist rabble. This tied down nearly 90 of my divisions trying to hold the line and advance into the mountains against the (massively teched up) Wehrmacht.

my personal favourite is to do it with tac bombers. With a few (40+ tac bombers + escorts) you can turn any 5 div republican stack into a 10 div WAllied stack. When the tide is turned and the germans stop attacking then start carpet bombing the germans with the tacs. You can turn the mountains into a meat grinder.

4) I focused on Naval and Sub Techs hoping for superiority versus what I thought (from the info screen) was a nearly omnipitent IJN and well reinforced islands. However, the Japanese AI was braindead and I effectively eliminated Japanese convoy shipping by late 1940. Advanced Battleships are cool though

20 medium subs are enough to sink the IJN. Just keep them sailing and replenish any losses. Eventually you will sink all the TP and more importantly you will attack the (relativly) defenseless 1 CV, 1 CA, 2 DD, 8 TP stacks which result in a 1/4 of midway each time. By the time I had returned the pre-war carriers from transporting short range fighters to europe to lend to the allies and returned them to the pacific the japs only had 14 CA, no CV, 1 BB and 4 DD left. My fleet had no problems.

5) I completely ignored AF techs until 1942 and was getting eaten alive by massive stacks of German dive bombers until I got the P-51 (and later, jets. P-47s were useless) into service.

don't fight the germans, fight the japs, italians and other axis minor allies. Let the russians fight the germans (with a 100 TP convoy of supplies)

6) I over-expaned my economy - I didn't have nearly enough resources to maintain a 1700+ IC economy.

Never build factories with the USA.

Things that went right:

1) WE3 really paid off - even though I couldn't possibly maintain an economy of that size, 3-1 oil-rubber allowed me to run one heck of an industrial giant.

You don't need the factories with WE.

2) Argentina and Bolivia joined the Axis and were quickly overrun giving me access to extra coal and steel (though Bolivia was a real pain)

You kill off bolivia by getting military access to chile and marching 9 infantry divisions (no guns) under patton into la paz and then annexing the country. Knock out argentina by landing one mechanized 9 division army and another infantry 9 division army at mar de plata marching north. Then send the infantry army to paraguay and the mechanized army is spread out to take provinces. The first campaign I did against them took two years with 7 (9 division) armies. The second took 4 months and took 3 armies. Two months after the end of the campaign I was landing in lybia and 4 months after that I was invading rome.

3) North Africa was cake - completely taken by late 1940.

easy, peasy..

4) A seemingly disastrous attempt to invade via the Balkans led to the annexation of Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria and the puppeting of Turkey. This, in turn, led to a massive Axis counter-attack involving hundreds of divisions and virtually the entire luftwaffe (versus my 45 divisions and no planes). I ran my divisions into the forts of Ionia and Thessalonika, bolstered the AA in those provinces and sat tight for three years against overwhleming odds. This tied down those literally 200 Axis divisions in Greece and the continually improving AA decimated the luftwaffe - the Germans were *way* more concerned about Ploesti than Paris.

I invaded greece with 9 marine divisions.. when I had the country annexed I placed the 30 fighters, 40 bombers and 100 divisions that I had been saving up to be placed. Three months after the fall of greece I was on the polish border with about 8 german divisions between my (now) 150 divisions and 100 aircraft.

5) Germany turned down the bitter peace.

6) Nationalist China, due to my generous tech-sharing program, clobbered the Japanese and were able to help out in Siberia and Europe.

also send them supplies, that allows them to keep their 150+ inf divisions at full strength.

6) With seemingly the entire Wehrmacht tied down in Spain, Greece, and Siberia, I was able to invade France in Force at Marseille and encircle the Wehrmacht in the mountains of Spain. With naval support, their supply line was completely cut off and 100+ German divisions in Spain were no more. From there on out, it was a cakewalk to Berlin and the Wehrmacht was broken and out of supply and easily defeated (August, 1945).

I can't make it on time, since I seemingly have never been able to beat the wehrmacht at anything other than the Carpetbombing game where I carpetbomb with 30 STR bombers against ther 2 inf divisions.

Tim

 

[unmerged(12730)]

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So, altogether you still say World Tumbling may be even harder!?

 

[unmerged(13502)]

Yep its kinda easy

 

[Viking]

Originally posted by N!ghtY
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So, altogether you still say World Tumbling may be even harder!?

World tumbling is a bit too easy for the individual player... but the problem lies with the AI that is on your side.

1) The US never ever joins when I am the CW. That doensn't really matter since....

2) The US never does anything (other than garrison the carribean with 20+ divs and 40 large ships), but that is made completely irrelevant by...

3) The panzers stopping in magnitogorsk (every time) on their way to getting railed back to crush my 50 division invasion of france.

in other news

4) China never survives a japanese assault (unless I use all my DP to give it techs plus feed it 100 rubber and 100 supply convoys).

Am thinking of removing TUR and ARG from the german AI file influence section. (as well as persia and afghanistan).

I usually quit as the UK by then since I have 50 MP and have to deal with germany (plus most of europe) which has conquered all of continental russia.


Personal pet peeves.

750 steel for USA with 1050 (somthing) factories.
Only 150 oil in baku.

The USA (on its own), the USSR and the combined CW each outproduced the entire axis during the war.

Am setting research rate to 2.0. No more Maus tanks in 1943 for germany each time. I killed 20+ of them in 1944 as the russians once.

 

[CommanderCody]

World Tumbling in VH/F is a great challenge. However, it seems I've run into a fatal bug that won't even allow my autosave or my last two manual saves to reload (I'll keep trying other saves - but how far back do I have to go?). Anyway, it crashed near the end of August 1941 and I was the UK. I don't know what triggered it - nothing unusual was going on that I know of. Some interesting things happened until then:

- I was able to give techs for free at the rate of one a week to the U.S., France and CW nations until my last reload (maybe early '40?). Nat China always cost me one DP. After that reload it cost 1 DP for everybody. Actually, giving them for free to Commonwealth countries does make some sense - was it a feature or a bug?

- Everybody and their brother joined the Axis - holy piling on, Batman! At first I panicked and then I realized that this was more ICs for the taking, heh heh. Thus, I started with Persia, then Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Rumania (I think while I was doing Persia or Turkey I annexed Portugal). I realized before it was too late that keeping greater Hungary as a buffer between me and the Wehrmacht was a good idea. The Nat Chinese annexed Afghanistan with a little Russian help. I wasn't going to bother - thanks, Chaing Kai Shek!

- Next I annexed Italy - this is always easy. I could have done it earlier but decided to historically take care of North Africa first. France was still alive - no Vichy - although the only thing they had in France was 47 divs in Colmar surrounded by a lot of Germans.

- After Italy I took a few troops out of Northern Italy and mopped up Nat. Spain from three directions (Portugal, Gibralter, and Valencia). During this time the Wehrmacht started hitting me in Northern Italy and causing some problems. They had 150mm Maus tanks, for chrissakes! I was getting by with Lt. Advanced 70mm (some sort of Crusader). Also, they outnumbered my air force by umpteen to one but careful use of concentrated air units usually wore out his sporadic attacks.

- As I gathered some forces for a quick invasion of Argentina and Paraguay (Bolivia I was going to ignore completely), the CTD happened. Can you say, "D,OHHHHH!!!!" The plan was to take them with about 15 divs, pull back to the Po River in Italy, maintain in the Balkans, and then hit Northern Germany with an invasion through a German beach (no sense in giving all those territories to France or the Benelux boys). If the Swiss-Black Sea front got weak in response I'd exploit the weakness.

- Japan was making very slow progress in China and only had taken a few Pac islands by the time of the CTD. I gave China quite a few tech and supplied them with resources for a long time - it seems to have paid off. I devoted only one fleet to Asia-Pac for convoy protection. No ground or air forces were required as they were still far from Hong Kong and didn't invade anywhere in lucrative SE Asia.

- Russia wasn't doing too well. I gave them no techs and came in late with some coal, oil and steel and still later with supplies. They lost Moscow, Leningrad, Murmansk, and Archangelsk, but were still holding on to Stalingrad and Baku and everything east of Saratov (except the Japanese had taken Vladivostok). They had about 120 inf divs, 90 militia, and a handful of armor and mech. I'm so used to taking them on after Germany that I don't give them techs or any help. In World Tumbling that's a mistake.

- The U.S. wouldn't come out to play. How many times did I invite them to the axis of the willing? Anyway, knowing they wouldn't contribute much combatwise I was hoping for a few good tech gifts from them.

- I was considering stabilizing the European front lines and then mopping up Japan. However, those Germans weren't getting any weaker and their tech was way beyond mine - so that dictated a Berlin thrust and some encirclements.

- Sweden joined the Axis, although Norway and Denmark were still neutral and untouched. I had one div garrisoning the UK when all of a sudden the Swedes landed in Coventry! After they made pinprick landings in Perth (Scotland, not Oz) and Edinburgh I finally decided to garrison most of the beaches with one div each. Nobody else attempted anything.

- Status: About 660 ICs, beaucoups resources, 1500 manpower, about 105 inf (many on loan), 30 arm-E, and 4 Mech-A divs, 14 Tac (improved), 5 fighters (basic escort), and 8 Nav (improved). Jerry had about 315 divs, with about 70 being arm and mech. All were better one for one than mine. The Japanese still had a pretty good navy, but I wasn't too worried. Ivan did stupid things like garrisoning 40 divs on the line between them in me in Turkey and Persia and with the Nat Chinese in Afghanistan.

- This is real tough for the allies. I had to be much more focused in my tech decisions - such as no naval techs whatsoever. I also only toward the end decided I needed to ramp up my tank techs and go for improved fighters and advanced medium bombers - once I saw the German machine shredding some of my units. Of course, I was still big on the electronics - I love those comp techs. I didn't do the worker's efficiency, though. I also studied some gold doctrine techs and passed them to allies in hopes they'd research the follow on doctrines. I had some success with that.

- Congrats to Stony and whoever else contributed to World Tumbling. It's a great challenge - I wasn't sure of victory even in 8/41. Thanks!

 

[unmerged(15485)]

Well. Can't really say that it's not a challenge considering that I lost last time (playing USSR), but then again, that game went very very bad.

I had a big enough army to beat Germany in the long run. I had enough forts to hold em up. Problem was the Allied declared war on me as well. Without declaring war on the Axis. So I ended up in a 4 year long defense of Soviet against the whole world. 100+ div allied troops landed in Sevastapol and 300+ Germany (+ 100+ other Axis) troops rolled in on my western front, knowing that they had a safe west front themselves. Japan, having conquered China, started conquering all of the east, and in 44 I was annexed.

I'll try again soon though, and see if I can manage a TAD better in diplomacy.