Who said Nazis can't have nukes? - German Reich TFH HPP AAR

[SKOTy]

Hello and welcome!

I've spent last month with Historical Plausibility Project mod and I've decided to make an AAR with this absolutely amazing mod. As title said I will be playing as Germany on normal difficulty, with all option on player controlled.

If you're interested, here's a link to my previous AAR which was EU3 one so you can make idea how the AAR will look. It was abandoned due to progress of new content in World of Warcraft, but now I have no distractions as I've decided to quit raiding so hopefully this AAR will end with Nazis with nukes.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?628826-Ottomans-the-Grand-Conquest
Expect the AAR to be picture heavy, and I will try to mention all important differences between vanilla TFH and HPP, hopefully this AAR will serve as some HPP introduction but I am still learning HPP.

Also please be patient with my English as I am not native speaker so sometimes I may use some weird sentence

The reason why I choose Germany is pretty obvious - playing Germany is fun as you change the flow of history and Germany from the beginning is much more manageable than e.g. SU (reorganizing SU OOB and units take me few hours every time).

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Start date: 1936
Difficulty: Normal
Player control: all
Country: German Reich

Game rules:

• No extremely gamey things like surrounding enemy's capital and preventing supply flows, no attacking with HQ just to extend frontage
• Sign M-R Pact
• Others will come, but nothing comes into my mind right now
• No cheating, save game editing and reloading, apart from fixing game issues, (Finland not aligning to Axis after Barbarossa)

Game goals:

• Get nukes and nuke USA
• Research Wunderwaffen
• Lure as many countries into Axis as possible, conquer or puppet the rest

What to be prepared for:

• Gdansk or war will be fire bit earlier then historically, Fall Rot and Fall Gelb will be executed in 1939
• Weserübung (Norway) and Tannenbaum (Switzerland) will be executed in 1940, expect Sweden to be part of Weserübung
• 1941: Barbarossa, expect some nice encirclements, in my test game I've managed to reduce Soviets to 15 divisions on front
• 1942: Sea Lion

I will play a bit tonight so hopefully see you in evenings update.

 

[SKOTy]

Index:

Pre-war chapters
Chapter 1: Road to War
Chapter 2: Before Second Sino-Japanese War
Chapter 3: Sino-Japanese War
Chapter 4: Last days before war

Fall of Poland and Allies in west Europe
Chapter 5: Polish demise
Chapter 6: Fall of France
Chapter 7: Some useless stuff
Chapter 8: Weserübung
Chapter 9: Unternehmen Parsifal, part 1
Chapter 10: Unternehmen Parsifal, part 2
Chapter 11: Unternehmen Tannenbaum, Unternehmen Nibelung
Chapter 12: Unternehmen desert Fox
Chapter 13: Unternehmen Seelöwe

War with Soviets
Chapter 14: Preparations for Barbarossa
Chapter 15: Operation Barbarossa, part 1
Chapter 16: Operation Barbarossa, part 2
Chapter 17: Operation Barbarossa, part 3
Chapter 18: Operation Barbarossa, part 4

Expansion of the Reich and intervention in second Sino-Japanese war
Chapter 19: Finnish episode
Chapter 20: Small steps
Chapter 21: Restoring order
Chapter 22: Pushing forward
Chapter 23: Troubles at new Zealand
Chapter 24: The intervention
Chapter 25: The intervention, part 2
Chapter 26: The intervention, part 3
Chapter 27: The intervention, part 4
Chapter 28: Jewel of the east
Chapter 29: Vast expansion

War with USA
Chapter 30: Clash of the titans
Chapter 31: Clash of the titans, part 2
Chapter 32: Clash of the titans, part 3
Chapter 33: Clash of the titans, part 4
Chapter 34: Clash of the titans, part 5
Chapter 35: Operation Ragnarök, prologue
Chapter 36: Operation Ragnarök, part 1
Chapter 37: Operation Ragnarök, part 2
Chapter 38: Operation Ragnarök, part 3

 

[Belgiumruler]

subbed

 

[unmerged(729203)]

subbed

 

[Ikarases]

Cool, shame I don't have the Czechoslovakian OOB ready yet, since it would be really interesting how such an army would trouble Germany if things went wrong

 

[SKOTy]

Cool, shame I don't have the Czechoslovakian OOB ready yet, since it would be really interesting how such an army would trouble Germany if things went wrong

I am monitoring your activities in HPP threads And I am awaiting some Czechoslovakian improvements in next version of HPP, at least I hope for them

 

[CommonCanadian]

Subbed Eight million times. NUUUKES

 

[enigmamcmxc]

I will be interested to see how this turns out. Playing one of the earlier versions of the HPP mod and playing as Germany, it took me until July 1947 to get the infrastructure and research in place to produce my first bomb. Still, a strike on the US is outside of my ability at the moment. So yes, I will be very interested to see what you can do so I take on board a few things so I can strike down those capitalist dogs! :ninja:

 

[SKOTy]

In my test game I was able to get nuke in 1945, let's see how it turns in this AAR.

 

[Ikarases]

I am monitoring your activities in HPP threads And I am awaiting some Czechoslovakian improvements in next version of HPP, at least I hope for them

You're welcome to help me with development and bug-fixing soon as I get the beta version up. My working morale as low as always though

I'll see what I can do

 

[SKOTy]

You're welcome to help me with development and bug-fixing soon as I get the beta version up. My working morale as low as always though

I'll see what I can do

I was already thinking about somehow helping the HPP team, perhaps with coding and things around it as I am programmer, but I do not have enough time

 

[SKOTy]

1. Road to War

This update will mainly focus on reorganizing things into more manageable shape and initial build-up while explaining some core differences and features of HPP. So, let's begin.

I've changed some of my minsters as you can see, all of these choices are self-explainable, although I've seen some debates whether to choose Hjalmar Schacht or Franz Xavier-Schwarz (resources +5%) as Armament Minster. 10% extra IC just sweet, and I usually put Xavier-Schwarz as Armament Minister when I am going to run out of resources.
You can notice one change from Vanilla, Wilhelm Frick provides +5% research efficiency instead of espionage bonus.

My production queue - 3 ships that are already building at game start and I've decided to build Bismarck and it's sister ship Tirpitz to gain some practicals. I am also building one light fighter and one naval bomber to gain some practicals in these areas.
The rest of production queue is filled with 2x INF/1x SUP(H) divisions - you'll later see why.
In HPP all of ART, AA, RART, SPART, etc. were replaced by one type of brigade - support brigade which comes in 3 variants, horse-toweled, truck-toweled and mechanised.

I am focusing on essential industrial tech for now, while building a decent spy base. In HPP spy recruitment was vastly nerfed as you can see.

In HPP you gan leadership via Education tech (+0.5 leadership per level) and bigger part of it via your international status - you have several criteria which you have to meet in order to advance higher in your international status. You no longer gain leadership from provinces like in vanilla which was sometimes ridiculous - after conquest of France you already have enough leadership to research nearly every tech and after Sea Lion you literally drown in leadership - this is no longer for HPP.
As you can see I am missing quite high number of divisions to advance to Major Power - that's the reason why I am building a lot of infantry divisions - get +7 additional leadership as soon as possible.

List of Victory conditions, but more important are the country modifiers.
As I've mentioned, you gain some leadership via Education tech - my Education is at level 8 so I am gaining 4 leadership from it.
Nation United - in HPP you gain some nice bonuses if your national unity is high enough, also you get some penalties for NU bellow 70.
Advanced Encryption Techniques - you gain 5% bonus to counterspionage for each level of Encryption tech, similarly you gain 5% bonus to espionage for each level of decryption tech.
Officer Training - Again from tech, of each level of Officer Training (tech) you gain 7,5% bonus.
Advanced Oil Production - from oil production tech.
Detailed Tax System - from Education tech.
Harsh methods used by the Government - given by your ruling party which is NSDAP.
Rare materials from China - this represents trade between China and Germany if your relations are high enough.

I could have one more country modifier - Swedish Metal to Germany - gives bonus to metal production while reduces money - in my test game it has showed that I can live without it and have some additional money.

German Reich's war machine is in full throttle while Americans are still suffering from Great Depression.

Finally I got some spies - I will use them mainly to raise threat on UK and SU and some other nations, to get other countries neutral enough to enter the Axis, unfortunately in HPP there's no drift from faction due to faction threat they pose (at least what I've noticed).

In HPP you choose one land doctrine and stick to it like in HOI2. For Germany the doctrines are pretty straightforward - I choose Blitzkrieg and Armored Schwerpunkt. Also another difference from vanilla - re-occupation of the Rhineland is event which fires, you can also fire it like decision but I believe it's better to wait for event to fire.



That's all for tonight. I will be glad for any positive feedback and constructive criticism.
I've encountered one issue while taking screenshots - I have steam version and when I use F12 (steam shortcut) to take screenshot my game sometimes crashes which is utmost annoying - I was taking the last one 3 times and when I launch game without steam and press F11 to get screen nothing happens. Could anyone provide me some hint what may be wrong?

Thank you for reading

 

[Ikarases]

It's always nice to see how the VCs are shaken up when you don't use the VC selector

For my AARs, I use IrfanView. PrintScreen, Ctrl+V and Save. Nothing fancy, but it works cool most of the times (and when it doesn't, I hate my keyboard for that ).

 

[SKOTy]

It's always nice to see how the VCs are shaken up when you don't use the VC selector

For my AARs, I use IrfanView. PrintScreen, Ctrl+V and Save. Nothing fancy, but it works cool most of the times (and when it doesn't, I hate my keyboard for that ).

I have plenty VC to choose from

I will investigate a way to take screens in safe way without game crashing before I proceed further, thought about Fraps.

 

[enigmamcmxc]

I don't know if it will help, but I play in windowed mode and use the default printscreen key. I have never had any issues. Just a thought ... although possibly not a very good one

Interesting start, looking forward to see where you go with this.

 

[SKOTy]

I don't know if it will help, but I play in windowed mode and use the default printscreen key. I have never had any issues. Just a thought ... although possibly not a very good one

Interesting start, looking forward to see where you go with this.

My screen resolution is not high enough (1366x768 - I play on notebook) to allow me play in windowed mode - I will try to look at this issue today, and I think I should be able to forge update tomorrow.

Question for readers: would you like just highlights before war begins with interesting facts etc. or would you prefer some detailed overview on my buildup? I am asking because everyone has seen German buildup and preparations for war may times...
Do you like the form of the AAR? Quite picture heavy with description of the pictures.

 

[Maggix]

As for screenshots, you should consider using either puush or maybe steam. While puush has the advantage of screenshots being immediately uploaded, the number is also limited and they might get deleted after some time. Steam on the other hand also allows you to upload as many screenshots as you want to, and they wont get deleted.

 

[SKOTy]

As for screenshots, you should consider using either puush or maybe steam. While puush has the advantage of screenshots being immediately uploaded, the number is also limited and they might get deleted after some time. Steam on the other hand also allows you to upload as many screenshots as you want to, and they wont get deleted.

I am using steam and I think due to steam my game randomly crashes when I attempt to take screenshot therefore I am trying to find another solution for making screenshots.

 

[Belgiumruler]

I am using steam and I think due to steam my game randomly crashes when I attempt to take screenshot therefore I am trying to find another solution for making screenshots.

f11

 

[SKOTy]

Screenshots are solved thanks to Fraps so I am playing right now and I will update either tomorrow or on Thursday evening.