German HOI 3 AAR

I see, that is probably what happened in my previous game, oh well never mind, I will work around it.

Thank you anyway.

 

After much moving of troops into there positions from the invasion (except for the Russian Front) the norwegian front is almost comletely ready at Narvik for the Invasion.

However a problem has arisen, Sweden has declared war and has joined the Allied side. This in itself is not a issue, I can defeat the Swedish in a battle in the air land an sea, the problem is that I am in no way prepared for this war. Norway is completely undefended except for the army at Narvik, and my transport ships are busy in Africa landing troops for the Iraqi front. I still have to transport vessels that missed the last trip to Africa, so they will have to ferry a few armies alone across the ocean from Denmark to Norway, If needed I also still have my now two Full Airborne divisions ready in North Germany waiting for deployment.

The Invasion will have to wait for now.

 

Sweden has fallen far faster then I could have anticipated, and chose to be annexed. Excellent. Troop losses were kept to a minimum as well as the Air force losses, I did however loss another destroyer through combat with a few British Heavy Cruiser's that made there Birth at Stockholm, all of which were sunk by Naval Aircraft by the campaign's end.

I am now looking at this new development as a good one, for now I have air force bases even closer to the North of Russia for my Strat Bombers and more naval bases in the North of Sweden meaning faster transport to Russia once the Invasion begins.

The Invasion preparations can now continue.

 

Interesting situation with Sweden there. I've only ever seen them remain neutral (in HOI 2 at least). Do you think it would be feasible/possible to try and pull Finland into the Axis? I wouldn't want to be in charge of them right now - sandwiched between a highly aggressive Germany and Mother Russia. If you can pull the Finns in to help you, you can probably use their forces as security in Russia - anti partisan duties mostly, I'd imagine, which would free up some of your troops.

 

I am working on that now, but I don't like the chances. I was looking at even an invasion of Finland, and then I will have a direct line of attack directly at Leningrad and then I can cut there entire northern army near Murmansk off. But I would prefer there allegiance.

I may have to also bolster the front that Russia has with Romania, knowing that they are far weaker then my own men they may need a hand, so perhaps a corp consisting of a couple of armies there just in case.

I have noticed that in HOI 3 everybody seems to want war, everyone is willing to be influenced by other nations and it seems that eventually everyone will end up in the war. I mean the Irish joined the Allies, Spain, Portugal join the Axis, it is just crazy. I will try and display a list of all those in the war.

 

Finally some screenshots



This is but a small part of the invasion force that will invade north Russia from the port of Narvik in Norway



The Russian Front bordering Poland. In this shot you can clearly see the manpower I still possess even after the war in the west and Nrth Africa, as well as my 400 strong IC output which 300 alone have been allocated to production.


In this shot you can see how far my practically and theories of war have jumped as well as the 52 leadership points I possess with which 39 alone are allocated to research.

There will some more to follow including the Iraqi front, the British Isle's, France and The Forces yet to be moved to Japan in March.

I set the day of deployment to Japan as the last day of March 1941, with the date currently being Feburary 17th. This is set because to make the trip to Japan I have to pass through Allied controlled waters a dangerous task. March specifically was chose due to the fact that by the end of Feburary the Tirpitz will be completed as the middle of March will also give me 2 heavy cruisers and 2 Battlecruisers, this mixed with my current compliment of destroyers and light cruisers and single aircraft carrier should be enough to stop any who would attempt to stop me.

 

"I asketh and he delivers!"

Nice screens...I see you have the HQ units a good deal behind the lines and broken down. Do you have divisional HQ's on the line? (or are those the triple-x HQ's).

I'm interested in seeing your invasion of Russia. Now, did you have the 'Anschluss of Austria' and other such events?

 

Only HQ Corp's and I move them forward with the divisions and some of the HQ's have infantry regiments attached and I use them to hold not so important parts of the front line when needed.

You can also see in the eastern front screenshot how I split the front up. All along the rear of the front line there is a XXX Corp HQ this is directly the HQ for the divisions in front. Now if you look at the providence of Konigsberg in the top of the photo you will see a XXXX HQ this is designated Eastern Front Army Nth, and if you look at the XXXX in the same area as the lone airfield behind the southern lines this XXXX is callaed Eastern Front Army Sth, and both have the HQ, Eastern Front Army Group and this XXXXX unit which is in the centre of the screenshot, and this unit answers to the theatre HQ.

I have found it easier instead of using the standard 1st Army Group, I use more descriptive words based on there geographic area, for eg. The Eastern Front HQ, the Low Countries Army group, 1st Nth Germany Coastal Defence, and so on. It is easier when allocating units, or when you are trying to find one.

Yes Austria did happen, as well as the Czechoslovakia annexation, the invasion of Poland I did myself though.

 

The mighty Bismarck's ship tallies, clearly doing much better then her historical counterpart, this vessel goes no where without being tied to the Graf Zeppelin, oddly enough is yet to sink a vessel. The Bismarck has also never received any battle damage in any of these battles.

You can also see an example of the naming of my HQ's.



Occupied France, due to the war in England being fought and won, and as to date, I have seen no american military units, despite being at war since the beginning, I decided to strip the country except for a few corp's, but now is made up mostly of MP and Garrision units.

You can also see in the pic, the last British units on one of the Channel Islands, this apparently is a glitch in the game, where the AI will move huge amounts of men and materials onto small coastal islands. He moves that many on, that when I first took over France there were some 40 division there, that being 40 divisions they could have used during the invasion of England. Since the fall of England some year ago, I have been bombing the forces there non stop, being out of supply and contact with mother England, or there Governments there have been whittled down to simply 4 infantry divisions.



The Iraqi front. Clearly not the best of Pics. I should have used the Infrastructure map to illustrate the problems with supply there, but nonetheless it stil shows my forces preparing for the invasion of Persia.

i can not recall how many units are there now, but is is around 120,000 men.

 

In that French picture, what are the nations of the other units? Vichy France looks incredibly small if its just where those light-blue units are. Are the green units the Italians? The red/brown on the right of the screen are surely the Swiss.

 

Sorry about that I left that part out.

Yes the light blue ones are Vichy France, the reason they are so small is due to the fact that Italy actually started the war with France and I joined in a few weeks later, the Italians had time to take most of the south of France, and once Vichy France was created they only had a few areas that they could take from me, the rest were left to the Italians. I plan to take the rest of Vichy France in France, but the Vichy government has a lot of other Providences near my other territories, mainly north africa, where my forces are thin, so I just left them.

For some reason I always leave the Swiss where they are, always.

 

Ah, I like that it doesn't force Italy to give territory to Vichy France. I always hated that about HOI 2 - all my gains from attacking from Spain (i like having a piece of land near Gibraltar) and of course the traditional France/Italy border always gets given to the Vichy!

 

I hope in the next HOI they put more uses of the Special forces of ww2 such as commando's and the such. HOw good would it be to sabatage fortifications before the invasion or sabotage airfields and ports knocking out ships.

 

if anything the next HoI needs to allow the player to choose what lands to give to puppets, rather than predefined areas.

 

There are a lot of little things they could have done to make it better, hopefully there will be a HOI 4 and they will fix it up.

 

Ok for an update.

The middle of 1941 saw the invasion of Persia, as you would expect cue to the area, there were severe supply issues on my northern front, ironically this was where the bulk of the Persian Army was, so I attack south were my supplies were plentiful and the defenders non existent. I was able to reach the capital city without a fight through the south, and the mere presence of my supply less troops in the north held the Persian army on the defence. I managed to eventually flank the entire line with panzer units and the government capitulating and chose to continue the fight.

This new occupied country now gives me access to not only the south of Russia from two directions both through the Caucasus and directly into the "soft underbelly of Russia". Here enemy troops are few and far between, however most of my troops are either on the Poland-Russo border or in the Caucasus.

I also have access to British India now, and am slowly moving in, but again there are few troops there at the moment to make any large commitments, due to the coming war with Russia.

The war with Russia, although not planned was expected. The Russians themselves chose the 9th Of September 1941 to attack into Poland and attempt to steal victory there. I vastly underestimated the Soviet strength in numbers and in one section of the front namely the are around Memel, there being 140,000 men attacking that providence alone, and I estimate around 1 million men on the Polish-Russo front alone., this makes the ratio a 2-1 as I have only around 500,000 men.

I did however expect to be outnumbered which was why I opted for a three front war with Russia, a divide and conqueror if you will. The three fronts ended up being from Persian, North of Russia near Murmansk (an amphibious landing) and the main attack from Poland. The attack from Persian, due to the small amounts of men there, is progressing slowly, and I must take care with the men as few a available in the are to reinforce this theatre. This however is acceptable as there only objective is reach Stalingrad on the Volga river, this will take the majority of the oil fields away from the Russians, as well as divert troops from the main front.

The Norwegian Front, as it was known, had an estimated 250,000 men of all mixed units, hitting the area near south Murmansk and cutting the north Soviets off from leningrad, there objective simply being to attack Moscow, and draw troops that way and away from the front.

The main front is surprisingly not fairing very well, it has been almost 2 months and I have only taken around 2 lines of providences from the Russians. The going is tough and the enemy numbers high, however I have noticed that enemy formations that I damage or decimate, don't seem to get resupplied with new men, this leads me to a shortage of men in Russia, meaning that this war will be hard at the start but easier at the end.

I myself already researching the Flying bomb, I have a whole divions of Mechanized Infantry with Tigers in the field, as well as quite a few panzer divisions successfully halting the Russian advances. I have relied on technology and numbers, and so far through all the battles I have seen my small numbers seem to be winning as they are far more advanced.

The Japanese front has been called off, seeing as the Americans are patrolling the seas around Japan and I simply do not have either the Ships or carriers to be more specific to spare. I have 2 aircraft carriers and 1 escort carrier, 2 battleships, 4 Battlecrusiers, 5 Heavy Crusiers, 4 Light Cruisers, a dozen Destroyers, and around 10 Submarine flotillas, not a sea dominating force, and as this force can't even patrol the seas I already control, a mission to the Pacific is out of the question. The other reason being that as of yet the Americans have not once involved themselves in the European war despite being at war, so there is no need to annoy them.....Yet.

This screenshot shows both my available man power, so I can clearly go a long war if needed, the amount of soldiers the enemy has ready in single Providences, and the sheer amount of men he is using and still not winning.

 

You are going to lose at this rate I am sorry.

 

How do you figure that?

 

I don't know if this game is really historicly accuret and realisim battles like that were enemy have higher numbers and less loses is usally a bad sighn.(sorry spelling)

 

Your German empire looks quite impressive.

You really turned history; not only by taking Great Britan but by amassing a very tough navy.

I think PKG6 was referring to you winning the battle of Memel but losing more troops in the battle. If that were to occur in all the battles Germany couldn't keep up with the manpower tradeoff with Russia. That is quite impressive that you were able to win that fight even with the K to D favoring your enemy.

I've noticed that I have been losing battles in a similar fashion. I win the K to D but Japan wins the battle.