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Talvisota (and beyond) - A Finnish AAR

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The Winter War - The Defeat​

In early December, the defenders of Kajaani were routed, and the three divisions were falling back, badly mauled. Mannerheim's orders to hold at all cost probably bought Finland a few extra weeks of life, but at a severe cost - the divisions were now at about 1/4 strength each, and in no condition to do anything but to retreat and sit out the rest of the war.

As the Finns retreated, it was obvious that STAVKA was planning on a lightning attack through Finland to force the Finns (who were still holding strong in other parts of the front) to weaken their positions elsewhere and to try and halt the advance. Luckily for the defenders, their recent "mad dash North" had at least the Swedish volunteers ready to counterattack into Kajaani from Kuopio, with two divisions from Murmansk advancing from the North. The three divisions holding Joensuu provided covering fire and artillery support. For now, the Soviet Armored and Motorized divisions which were planning to blitz through down to Central Finland were contained.

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This temporary success proved to be too little to late. Massive reinforcements were spotted approaching Kajaani from Petrozavodsk and by January Stalin's troops breached the line not only in Kajaani, but also in Joensuu and were threatening to cut the small Nordic country in two.

Mannerheim decided that the situation was beyond salvation and gave the green light to begin negotiating with the Soviet Union. Luckily, the defense his men put up was fierce enough to dissuade Moscow from trying to capture the whole of Finland, and to only demand the same territorial concessions it did before the war. Thus, on 15 January 1940, the Moscow Peace Treaty was signed.

Despite German efforts to prevent aid from reaching Finland during the war, and ignoring Finnish calls for help, Helsinki now slowly began turning towards Berlin, and contemplating ways to reclaim its lost territory...

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So, as you can see I actually did worse than the Finns did IRL. :p I was expecting them to try and break the Mannerheim line, or maybe that the improved AI would try a landing in the south, but instead they attacked further to the north. I'm still not sure whether Victory or Valhalla was a good idea or not. My defenders held out longer, but they also weren't in any kind of position to counterattack once I ordered them to retreat.

Also, completely unrelated. Japan has already won in Asia, and it's early 1940!

war05.png
 
Wiking said:
So, as you can see I actually did worse than the Finns did IRL. :p I was expecting them to try and break the Mannerheim line, or maybe that the improved AI would try a landing in the south, but instead they attacked further to the north. I'm still not sure whether Victory or Valhalla was a good idea or not. My defenders held out longer, but they also weren't in any kind of position to counterattack once I ordered them to retreat.
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Victory or Valhalla is really something you use in order to prevent troops from retreating too early from a position (like, say, if your sending reinforcements you can use VoV to make them hold out until relief arrives). It really is a stop-gap measure for desperate defence, and I have used it effectively a couple of times, but yeah, it really isn't something you want to use that much, as it drains your troops.
 
Strange, I tried Finland in the '39 scenario and actually conquered all the regions from the north so that the border with the SU was only Viipuri, Petrozavodsk and Segezha.
 
Strange, I tried Finland in the '39 scenario and actually conquered all the regions from the north so that the border with the SU was only Viipuri, Petrozavodsk and Segezha.
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I actually tried SOVIET UNION and the border with Finland was only Viipuri, Petrozavodsk and Segezha at the end. :rofl:
 
Leonaru said:
Nice AAR. Yo still have time to do better than the historical Finns later on. ;)

:rofl:
It looks like Menkuguo has annexed the British Empire.
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The colours are changed - Brits are blue. :)

tuore said:
Strange, I tried Finland in the '39 scenario and actually conquered all the regions from the north so that the border with the SU was only Viipuri, Petrozavodsk and Segezha.
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Interesting. When I have time I'll actually compare the strength of the Finns in the '39 scenario and what I managed to build by '39. The pace with which you can research and arm yourself has really been drastically reduced since DD/Arma and I really had problems with my money supply.

All in all, you can definitely see I'm not at home yet with how AoD works. This is my second playthrough and I'm still learning the ropes. Amazing how much changes which are essentialy mostly under the hood can really influence you until you've mastered them. :)

Also, just a reminder; I will actually be in Finland for around 10 days, starting tomorrow evening, so unless I manage to squeeze in an update tomorrow, this AAR will continue once I get back.

EDIT: also compared with the '39 scenario. The latter definitely gives the Finns more of an advantage. They have tech which I simply couldn't have researched within 3 years (mountain inf. 1939, infantry 1939, even a land doctrine from 1940), as well as a similar amount of units + 2 air units. Less IC than I had by 1939, but that's the only downside. Won't make you conquer Moscow, but I can see this buying time and enabling it to get a few provinces.
 
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I guess I should have saved a screenshot of that epic fail. I lost 6 divisions in the north including precious mountaineers, and another army of about 9 divisions under Pavlov barely escaped encirclement in April of 1940 around Joensuu but was so badly beaten that it couldn't hold Petrozavodsk. I was building up reserves in Tikhvin and proposing white peace deals to the Finns that they kept rejecting, I mean I was actually pretty desperate about that thing when they suddenly all left the peninsula allowing me to take Vyborg and Helsinki without a shot, after what the event triggered.
 
Hopefully you will be able to reverse these losses after the German attack.

One of my fondest memories from Vanilla was of a Finland game in which the Winter War lasted until 1944, ending in Finnish annexation of the Soviet Union and, eventually with a nuke-aided blitz backstab of Germany in 1950s, of every major Axis, Allied and Comintern nation :D

My recollection from that is that Viipuri practically held itself. The real decisive theater was the eastern border, not the southern. The Soviet province line there is only one deep, which means that it's possible to cut them off after only one successful attack.
 
Smaller nations seem much weaker in AoD compared to Arma and the reasearch gap against majors are bigger. I had a game as Sweden where I tried a winter war intervention to hold off the Soviets together with AI Finland. We simply had no chance once their main forces arrived.

Good luck with your continuation war, if Sweden give military access to Germany you may get some reinforments through there.
 
Irsh Faq said:
Hopefully you will be able to reverse these losses after the German attack.

One of my fondest memories from Vanilla was of a Finland game in which the Winter War lasted until 1944, ending in Finnish annexation of the Soviet Union and, eventually with a nuke-aided blitz backstab of Germany in 1950s, of every major Axis, Allied and Comintern nation :D

My recollection from that is that Viipuri practically held itself. The real decisive theater was the eastern border, not the southern. The Soviet province line there is only one deep, which means that it's possible to cut them off after only one successful attack.
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:rofl:

Talar said:
Smaller nations seem much weaker in AoD compared to Arma and the reasearch gap against majors are bigger. I had a game as Sweden where I tried a winter war intervention to hold off the Soviets together with AI Finland. We simply had no chance once their main forces arrived.

Good luck with your continuation war, if Sweden give military access to Germany you may get some reinforments through there.
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Yes, the gap in technology and production is visibly larger and difficult to overcome. I held my own pretty well in my first AoD game with Italy, despite it being more difficult than in HoI2, but Finland is so small it's really difficult.

The AAR should continue tomorrow or so, still in Helsinki at the moment, but I have a ton of cool photos I made to boost my AAR. The Parola tank museum is simply brilliant. :cool:
 
Just a mini update; the German AI as is sadly so often the case in AoD decided against invading the USSR... I waited a bit, but saw it had a lot of units at the borders. Therefore I cheated a little bit, loaded as Germany and DoW'd the USSR (the Germans didn't have any intention of invading the USSR in 1941 as I left the game run almost to the end of the year without them doing anything, and then reloaded a July 1941 save). :mad:

Despite having a huge amount of units, the Germans and the Soviets are now going back and forth, nibbling a bit at the borders but the frontline is basically static 2 months into the forced Barbarossa. Humbug. I am now waiting for the Soviet AI to clear out a lot of the units it's sending to fight the Germans and then we'll see. I don't think Hitler will prove to be a good ally in this game and if things don't change soon I don't think I'll stand a chance (the USSR isn't having any problems with the Germans, they even gained some ground by August 1941). I can do a suicide Continuation War if that is the desire though. :D
 
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EPILOGUE​

Due to the wacky AI I won't be finishing this. Germany got pushed back already in late 1941, while at the same time doing insane things such as holding around 50 (!!!) divisions next to Axis Bulgaria. Really, Hitler, is that the best you can pull off?

I DoWd the USSR in the summer of 1942 just for the heck of it, but with the Soviets waltzing through Poland westwards they have no trouble diverting enough troops to counter my attacks.

Maybe I will redo this AAR from the beginning if two conditions are met in a patch or two:

1. the game needs to be significantly faster, having 17 IC and one tech team gives you zero to do for a LONG time since time passes so slowly in-game.

2. the AI needs to be tweaked heavily. I've seen strange behaviour in every AoD game so far.
 
Amallric said:
Too bad you didn't succeed. Strange that you SU is so overpowered though; I played it myself against Germany and its a challenge even in normal.
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Yeah, Germany is pretty much overpowered in AoD and I have no idea what went wrong with its Barbarossa. True that it didn't DoW USSR on its own, but by the time I did it for them, they already had most of their army at the border so that shouldn't be a problem. They basically didn't really attack much, maybe took a province here and there but were otherwise stationary, and in 1942 the Soviets went into an all out offensive across the entire front.
 
Perhaps the Germans were low on oil or something?
 
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