The Romanian Front - A Communist Romanian AAR

[TehDarkMiner]

The Romanian Front - A Communist Romanian AAR

Yep, TDM's back! This time with BICE!

What is this?
A Romanian AAR, in which I join forces with the Soviet Union. It'll be first-person.
I'll play somewhat defensively, with a small army designed for offensives. I will be using statistics a bit too.

Rules/starting conditions
No neutrality and some more manpower to begin with (to make it fair. I am facing the whole axis here!)
I will only be invading Bulgaria and possibly Greece, until the Germans DoW the SU. And maybe Hungary I suppose.
I'll align to the Soviet Union and might send some forces to Finland to get combat experience.

Goals
To keep my country intact until the Soviet Union pushes back Germany (hopefully)

 

[sebas379]

Well you sure like setting the bar high don't you. At least you'll be able to trade for free with Stalin

 

[TehDarkMiner]

Oh yeah, I forgot that little comintern bonus

Well you sure like setting the bar high don't you.

I love to

 

[TehDarkMiner]

1st of January '36, to 10th of February '36.

Well, I decided to go for maximum IC to get as many units as I could.

Now this decision was a little harder.

I want a bit of a navy going, just something small, so that Italy can't do anything too damaging to me. Might be nice to take out a few of their subs too. It'd also be good to get interceptors and try to stop the inevitable bombing nightmare that is Nazi Germany. In the end I went for an army focus though, and put a few garrison units in my production queue.

I also very soon got a bunch of laws.

Now, I could have gone for a three-year draft but I wasn't liking the sound of the consumer goods raise for only a modest increase in manpower. I also went for advanced training, as the next level up would take too long to produce any units (my IC is only about 40).

However, at least I gained a bunch of leadership straight after I set up those laws.

I have no idea what any of this means but it looks good.

And finally, you can see my production screen.

I'll be putting those garrisons in my cities and possibly in mountain provinces, so that I can move infantry frontline divisions to other locations. I'll be getting some light infantry divisions soon, too.

The rough plan for a normal defensive corps that I will be using is as following:
- 3 Light infantry divisions (or infantry if I need to) to hold front lines
- 1 Infantry division to stay back until I am attacked and need reinforcements
- 1 Garrison division (if in a key area like around a city) or another infantry division.

For an offensive corps, I'd be doing the following:
- 1 Light infantry division (or cavalry if I don't have enough)
- 3 Infantry
- 1 Motorised (or semi-motorised).

That's the idea, anyway. I'm not used to BICE yet so if that's a bad idea then tell me

 

[sebas379]

Well I know nothing of BICE other than it looks complicated, but the plans sound solid to me.
I wonder 1 thing: If you join the Comintern, will Stalin still demand Bessarabia? That would...complicate things

 

[Gormytorysh]

For starters: SUBBED!

Second, hopefully I can pick up some more about BICE from your game. In certain things it looks really nice, and with other things I keep thinking "why on earth would you do it that way".... but it's a matter of taste imo.

 

[TehDarkMiner]

Well I know nothing of BICE other than it looks complicated, but the plans sound solid to me.
I wonder 1 thing: If you join the Comintern, will Stalin still demand Bessarabia? That would...complicate things

In vanilla I'm pretty sure that Romania has to be unaffiliated with any faction for that event. No idea if BICE changes things.

For starters: SUBBED!

Second, hopefully I can pick up some more about BICE from your game. In certain things it looks really nice, and with other things I keep thinking "why on earth would you do it that way".... but it's a matter of taste imo.

Thanks
Yeah, I have to agree with that. I love the new units they've added (well mainly, I'm not entirely sure about the US division stuff they have going on). I also love how they've changed naval warfare (though I don't really understand that too well yet). From what I can tell the AI is buffed too (apparently there's scripted invasion events you can opt to have, i.e. the allies invading France at some point).

But then there's just some stuff. I'm not a fan of the leader HQ stuff or some of the new sounds. I'll probably come across more as the AAR progresses though

Hopefully this'll reach some level of popularity too lol. So far it's not exactly but I'll just have to wait and see

 

[sebas379]

In vanilla I'm pretty sure that Romania has to be unaffiliated with any faction for that event. No idea if BICE changes things.

I can tell you right now that's not correct. I was already in the Allies in my last Romania run by 1940 when the Reds came knocking with their event, and they declared war on me when I refused to give them Bessarabia. But that was vanilla TFH (I believe, could've been FTM)

It was fun stopping them dead in their tracks with all the expeditionary forces from the Allies, until Yugoslavia went down

 

[blklizard]

This looks interesting so I'll be joining along for the ride. Just a heads up, I've never played this game so I might be peppering you with questions at times .

 

[Big Blue Blob]

If Romania conquers anyone, it should really be Hungary. It certainly makes more sense than Greece.

 

[TehDarkMiner]

I can tell you right now that's not correct. I was already in the Allies in my last Romania run by 1940 when the Reds came knocking with their event, and they declared war on me when I refused to give them Bessarabia. But that was vanilla TFH (I believe, could've been FTM)

It was fun stopping them dead in their tracks with all the expeditionary forces from the Allies, until Yugoslavia went down

Oh
Well, we'll just have to see if BICE fixes that

This looks interesting so I'll be joining along for the ride. Just a heads up, I've never played this game so I might be peppering you with questions at times .

Thanks
I'll answer what I can

If Romania conquers anyone, it should really be Hungary. It certainly makes more sense than Greece.

Well I'm not sure I want to be taking Greece at all, really. It was just an idea
I could take Hungary sometime later, I suppose, though I'm mainly worried that it will create too large of a front to defend against Germany front (I guess I could just fall back to my Romanian borders anyway and have a whole enemy taken out, I never really thought of that). Depends on what you guys think.
Though I'm still invading Bulgaria, in probably one or two updates

 

[TehDarkMiner]

Here's my plan of attack for Bulgaria.

It's not too difficult. I'm mainly hoping to push them to their VPs by the time that they can react, so if they do somehow mobilise quickly enough, I'll already have some ground. The aim is also to push from the top right first, forcing them to keep more forces there than at the top, where I can afterwards push straight to their capital (though I'm doubtful I will be able to attack the capital with a single corps).

Here's the state of my army at the moment (I have more forces to the north of the image, but they haven't been deployed anywhere useful yet).

For those wondering, the OOB looks like this:

The units are not my desired offensive divisions, because I haven't really gotten around to finishing the production of any divisions yet.

This gives me a total of 130k men to attack with. I doubt Bulgaria even has that many men.

And finally, take a look at my IC.

50 is decent, but I definitely want some more. Bulgaria should give me a few. The manpower gain is around 3 at the moment, even though it looks a lot higher (I seem to have started with a lot). And ignore the supplies - I forgot to make some until about a week before I DoWed. The divisions are all supplied.

And now that we finally have the usual introductions finished, let's get on to some warring!

Time to see how differently BICE handles battles.

 

[sebas379]

Looks like a solid plan, hit the east first to force them away from the river in the west, then hit there.
Doesn't BICE have a load of unique brigades and stuff as well?

 

[TehDarkMiner]

Looks like a solid plan, hit the east first to force them away from the river in the west, then hit there.
Doesn't BICE have a load of unique brigades and stuff as well?

Not for Romania
I'm pretty sure it's just for Germany and the US, from what I've seen so far.

 

[TehDarkMiner]

The battles started off very well.

I won them several days later with minimal casualties.

I'm particularly surprised that they lost so much, considering that they aren't even mobilised yet.

My forces to the east quickly moved into Bulgaria.

Unfortunately my time between attacks is something like 120 hours at the moment, which left me unable to do anything about a Bulgarian counter attack.

A single HQ with a cavalry brigade was facing an entire Bulgarian division, although it definitely would not have been fully mobilised by this stage.

The next wave of attacks from the east started, and I needed to use some of these forces to stop the counter attack from cutting off two divisions.

They got there just before my HQ division would have lost the battle.

I had a very strong offensive line now.

Soon I can approach on their last two VPs.

That update was a bit picture heavy, I'll admit. Do you guys want it to be more text heavy or leave it like that?

 

[blklizard]

The pictures are pretty and colorful but I'm having trouble understanding them. A little bit more text would help people like me . From what I gathered, I'd say you've caught them of guard with the enemy lacking the time to put on a proper defensive front.

 

[sebas379]

Looks good, Bulgaria looks to be done for. Did I spot some CAS flying around? That's great.
I agree, a little bit more text would be great.

I see Varna fell, I guess that leaves just Sofya to force their surrender?

 

[TehDarkMiner]

The pictures are pretty and colorful but I'm having trouble understanding them. A little bit more text would help people like me . From what I gathered, I'd say you've caught them of guard with the enemy lacking the time to put on a proper defensive front.

Will do. Thanks

And yeah, that's the plan!

Looks good, Bulgaria looks to be done for. Did I spot some CAS flying around? That's great.
I agree, a little bit more text would be great.

I see Varna fell, I guess that leaves just Sofya to force their surrender?

Thanks, definitely will add more text.

I just finished playing the rest of it, it'll take a little while yet
Well those aren't CAS in BICE, they're light bombers apparently. I also have flying boats (sort of a naval bomber thing) too. I might post a picture of my whole armed forces after this Bulgarian update I think

Well, on that, I don't think I screenshotted it because it wasn't worth any interest, but my bombing runs get around 30 kills (I have two ints, two flying boats, two light bombers and two medium bombers). In vanilla HoI3 a single interceptor fleet could reach 50, and a tactical often exceeds 500. I have no idea if my airforce is really out of date or if BICE has debuffed ground attack kills. Just pointing that out

 

[Big Blue Blob]

A lot of ground attack damage was psychological, unless the enemy was densely packed and in the open.

 

[TehDarkMiner]

A lot of ground attack damage was psychological, unless the enemy was densely packed and in the open.

Hm, that's a good point.