World in Conflict - A Multiplayer AAR, TFH 4.02 #5

[Sir Garnet]

Well, on the 17th of July the Soviets, probably at their breaking point, called a general retreat towards Moscow, completely abandoning the Daugava-Dniepr riverline. Germany still had 1.5 months of Destiny and started chasing the huge retreating Soviet army to try to kill as many divisions as possible.

Can you explain this break-contact strategy? How the Soviet decides the forces are near enough breaking that it is time and how it is done - just SR back to a fresh position covered by dug in brigades, inf divisions as speed bumps, and infrastructure destruction from combat or logistic attacks to slow them down? It sounds like it turned out badly in the game, though was that more due to the correlation of forces than technique?

Also, I understand how a player can play a single country at a time and how in some Paradox and other games two can each operate a country at the same time. It sounds like there was some actual Italian/German crossover between countries in this game - can a player control multiple nationalities for a faction in HOI3? Or did that involve relogging in to change?

Tasking responsibilities that way is potentially more effective, plus I find coop fun in any case if there is some kind of plan or structure and everyone is putting in the effort with some voice comms for strategy. I'm curious about the MP game mechanism available for it.

 

[Rastrigin]

Can you explain this break-contact strategy? How the Soviet decides the forces are near enough breaking that it is time and how it is done - just SR back to a fresh position covered by dug in brigades, inf divisions as speed bumps, and infrastructure destruction from combat or logistic attacks to slow them down? It sounds like it turned out badly in the game, though was that more due to the correlation of forces than technique?

Well it's subjective when to retreat, tbh we tought SU was going to hold the line a little longer and were surprised when they retreated. Anyway I guess they decided that because we were about to break out into plain provinces just in front of Moscow and all the nearby Soviet forces were out of org, so they couldn't counterattack and they knew they had no chances to fight us on open plains, they would just lose organization at a rate they can't replenish and start losing troops due to german superior mobility.

Retreating can be done by strategic redeploying or simple moving back province to province hoping to break contact. The first one is faster but it's risky. If the enemy manage to attack your forces while you are retreating then your units have delay and are very easy to encircle/outrun. If you retreeat manually from privince to province then you can retreat from combats if they attack you, you can always strategic redeployment if you manage to break contact... the best way Imho is to leave a rearguard behind and break contact with the bulk of your forces, then try to retreat your rearguard while you always keep the main army 3-4 provinces ahead of the enemy. Anyway every retreating strategy is very difficult and you are most likely going to sacrifice something.

to you last questions, yes and yes. I player can control more than one country by opening two or more hoi3 game windows or by using two laptops. Usually this is only done during the build up or during war if a minor has expeded it's army to a major, then a player may double the minor (that doesn't have an army anymore) so that the AI doesn't screw up production/research etc. Also, two players can coop the same nation, like feye and I did last session, to split responsabilities and workload.

 

[markkur]

Nice to hear that.

Maybe you want to join our group for the next round?
We always welcome new players. Guess we will start a new one soon, because either Germany breaks the Soviet defence at Moscow in the next session, or they likely never will.

I certainly appreciate the offer but I fear it's a tad early for my involvement. I'm just out of basic training and finding I've not really left boot-camp yet. Here's an example of my present tactical brilliance; I'm in my first game as USA and after my strategic strike (operation boon-doggle) into the Balkans I rewound (cough, cough)and thought about going the normal (sensible) route of establishing my first efforts in Europe. Did I do this? In a word, nowayjose. Instead, after taking Japan out in early 43 I decide on the master-stroke of landing at Wilhelmshaven and blitzing to Berlin. Now, after some fierce fighting, I am half the distance to Berlin that the Russians have to go. So far not so bad but and it's a big BUT; I have not even thought of where the VPs are in Germany.<L>

I think you veterans need teammates that have enough experience to remember the basics. I might join later though, if I can make a little more progress, gain some confidence and...discover how to make screenshots! <arrgh> Seems the Steam version defies the instructions in the HoI3wiki.

Btw, if you have not already, you guys should make a movie-series in the future and maybe make a recruitment campaign to give the new guys an overview of how "your" games begin etc, you know, sharing the details. An old dog like me hasn't a clue.

ps I;m finding so far, I'm more Eisenhower than Patton. In winning the Pacific I had to take all islands in the Pacific first, some matter of principle. <L> I might not be bloodthirsty heathen enough for MP.

 

[Rastrigin]

Well, you can just take a nation of very little relevance, like mangchukuo or south africa, do your little and stay on TS to listen to more experienced players. You'd also be able to take savegames and look at them after the session and in my exerience that's the best way to learn fast how to play hoi3 MP.

 

[Traks]

Well, you can just take a nation of very little relevance, like mangchukuo or south africa, do your little and stay on TS to listen to more experienced players. You'd also be able to take savegames and look at them after the session and in my exerience that's the best way to learn fast how to play hoi3 MP.

Yes, playing a minor is good start in MP. Majors will ask for your help in limited operations, and if you lose division or two, majors can still go on successfully.

Sir Garnet - there were several reasons for SU loss of divisions:

1. Germany still has "Destiny" decision active, which gives strong bonuses to German divisions.
2. Proper retreat is hard to do in HOI3. Best strategy is to have 1-2 divisions province back and start falling back gradually with divisions that have low organization. But more than 0, as completely disorganized divisions retreat to random directions. Ideally you would rotate in fresh divisions into meatgrinder while battered divisions regain organisation and can come back, but that is possible if a) your troops are of much higher quality - HARM that can't be pierced easily, or ARM against infantry. b) your combat modifiers are much higher - by defending in favorable terrain, behind rivers or having best training and really good generals. c) if you have so many spare troops that rotating divisions is easy. d) you can trade some territory for time, especially as SU. Enemy will have supply issues and also will have to guard big territories.
3. I believe in this situation SU overextended themselves too early. They sent like 30 extra divisions to south, which made rest of the front weaker and helped to break through, while not achieving much in southern sector. While situation briefly was dangerous (had a lot of minor forces, but they can't compete with Soviet full ARM divisions) I believe in worst case we would slowly fall back and try to do counterattack from center, severing off enemy divisions who wandered too far.

 

[KevinG]

The main mistakes I made were:
1) Trying to save any of the infantry at all, I could have saved all my tanks if I simply left the infantry to die which 80% of them did anyway. I can plop out 30 infantry divs every 2.5 months, tanks take a lot longer and cost way more.

2) Not communicating with my co-op and completely forgetting about what forces I had in the South after I gave control of the southern front to him. As I was desperately trying to hold the riverlines in the center I noticed in the corner of my eye we were actually gaining ground along the Dnieper. Before the start of the session I never intended to attack anywhere, so the fact that my co-op had enough forces to breakthrough in the South meant he had all the reserves that were supposed to go back to the center. If you remember from my last AAR update I sent 2 armies from the center to the south to counter-attack the German breakthrough, and those reserves weren't around prevent the breakthrough at Chavusy. Had I remembered my original plan going into the session things would have gone a lot different.

3) Strat deploying too soon in the North. I actually did leave 1 division behind as a rearguard in every province as I gave the strat deploy order to the rest, however all my units were attacked before they could get away from the front line so they all got the dreaded attack delay. I should have manually moved my my troops back leaving 1-2 divs behind to sacrifice, and then once they were a province behind the front I could have strat deployed. TBH this thought was running through my head as I gave the retreat but I was so tired from lack of sleep + I was in full blown panic mode from the breakthrough in Chavusy that I said screw it and gambled that Germany wouldn't notice in time. Unfortunately for me he attacked every province literally seconds after I gave the retreat order.


Ironically I think that if feye didn't injure his arm and the session was fought 1v1 he wouldn't have been able to micro the huge German army by himself and I would have continued to hold.

 

[Rastrigin]

2) Not communicating with my co-op and completely forgetting about what forces I had in the South after I gave control of the southern front to him. As I was desperately trying to hold the riverlines in the center I noticed in the corner of my eye we were actually gaining ground along the Dnieper. Before the start of the session I never intended to attack anywhere, so the fact that my co-op had enough forces to breakthrough in the South meant he had all the reserves that were supposed to go back to the center.

That is what I sospected and that's why I regret sending South 2 armored corps just days before the start of the retreat... On another note the attack in the South did confuse us quite a lot. Even after breaking through I was still conviced you had have a lot of fresh reserve divisions if you could spare so many for the South, in fact your retreat caught us by surprise.

 

[Traks]

That is what I sospected and that's why I regret sending South 2 armored corps just days before the start of the retreat... On another note the attack in the South did confuse us quite a lot. Even after breaking through I was still conviced you had have a lot of fresh reserve divisions if you could spare so many for the South, in fact your retreat caught us by surprise.

and divisions in south all survived to fight another day lol.

I would have hold out few more months too, before counterattacking. As yes, feye complained about your line holding much better than expected and he could not achieve breakthrough anywhere.
And Rastrigin did great job there.

 

[feye1]

Ironically I think that if feye didn't injure his arm and the session was fought 1v1 he wouldn't have been able to micro the huge German army by himself and I would have continued to hold.

That is probably true, because it's a pain to do an offensive in both the west and east at the same time with success + micro 175 planes at any given time. I would have had to give up at least one of the offensives before the other has ended. And to be honest, I don't know which one. East is more in need of time, but with getting rid of the west I could have had more troops send back to the east.

Calling in a mass retreat as Soviet Union is the most shitty and hardest part to do as that country by the way. Now curious if the Moscow defence can hold till winter joins the battle..

As yes, feye complained about your line holding much better than expected and he could not achieve breakthrough anywhere.
And Rastrigin did great job there.

He certainly did. Good news at the start of the session was that the main soviet reserves were on his flanks, meaning the center was vulnerable due having only little amount of reserves. In the south Germany just retreated with a large force and we shifted those to the center, where Soviets kept large force in south and tried to attack us. I think that helped us very much. In the end you can basically give up the south as USSR pretty easy, though it's not ideal ofcourse.

 

[markkur]

Well, you can just take a nation of very little relevance, like mangchukuo or south africa, do your little and stay on TS to listen to more experienced players. You'd also be able to take savegames and look at them after the session and in my exerience that's the best way to learn fast how to play hoi3 MP.

That's a good idea, as a matter of fact it would address an unspoken drawback I have; I'm a long term chronic pain sufferer so it "can" cause me some difficulties with thought. <L> If you men play in "moods of controlled-intensity"<S> I could go that route. If so, Rastrigin maybe you could line me out on the MP basics first? I'm a fine team-player and used to do a lot of RTS years ago but lately I've done zero that direction, never on steam etc. If you'd rather not mess with this, it's no problem.

Did any of you get HoI3 thru steam and do have a working screenshot? The wiki says F11 and the SS goes to a folder in MyGames. Paradox/HoI3/Screenshots but no folder existed and making it changed nothing. I checked under steam apps common and a SS folder is there but the SS didn't show there either? How ru making SSs and where do you find them?

 

[feye1]

That's a good idea, as a matter of fact it would address an unspoken drawback I have; I'm a long term chronic pain sufferer so it "can" cause me some difficulties with thought. <L> If you men play in "moods of controlled-intensity"<S> I could go that route. If so, Rastrigin maybe you could line me out on the MP basics first? I'm a fine team-player and used to do a lot of RTS years ago but lately I've done zero that direction, never on steam etc. If you'd rather not mess with this, it's no problem.

Did any of you get HoI3 thru steam and do have a working screenshot? The wiki says F11 and the SS goes to a folder in MyGames. Paradox/HoI3/Screenshots but no folder existed and making it changed nothing. I checked under steam apps common and a SS folder is there but the SS didn't show there either? How ru making SSs and where do you find them?

You are always free to join us. There is no need to have experience if you play a minor like Australia or Hungary. Nobody will blame you and neither will you unbalance the game.

If I make screenshot with steam it appears for me in: C:\Users\Dennis\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\Screenshots

 

[gunstickuncle]

Exactly what he says. We welcome new players, and it's the nature of new players to not have a lot of expertise.
It's not about messing with so or sth, this is an opportunity for us to recruit a motivated new player, at least that's how I see it.

This is our MP thread:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...FH-World-in-Conflict-5-Monday-20.00-23.00-CET

 

[Rastrigin]

The only thing you need to keep in mind about hoi3 mp is that you are playing against a human, who is actually capable of thinking rationally and doesn't move randomly like the AI, but most likely has a scope. The rest is just basically up to how capable are you in optimizing you strategies, and that's a thing you never stop learning... The best way is to take part to a game and try it yourself.. As it was pointed out, don't worry about balance issues and don't be too obsessed with your performance. About your problems: I'm sorry to hear that, but as far as the game is concerned I don't think there is any issue. As a minor you will actually find the rhythm very slow, maybe even boring, because speed have to be set in order for majors to efficiently control 100s of divisions.

 

[feye1]

Also for anyone that is interested to join our next epic battles, you can sign up here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...H-World-in-Conflict-6-Monday-19.00-22.00-CEST

We will still have to play one or more session(s) to end this game! But sign up for the new game if you want to join us!

 

[feye1]

Defeat of Soviet Union

With the breakthrough established, German troops were closing in on Moscow. The Russians formed an impressive ring around the capital and dug in behind the rivers. From the West, South and North German troops were incoming. Several heavy battles in the outskirts of Moscow were going on and with Destiny running out the Russians might hold till Winter joins the theatre. The Luftwaffe was ordered to bomb the few air fields in the Moscow Area so they became useless for repairs. Meanwhile supplies were dropped from air near the front to remain good supply situation.

Meanwhile in the west the Allies were dug in behind the Dutch and Belgian rivers. We expected them to hold, but noticed transport fleets close to the area. We first bombed those fleets so they went more up north and then send the remaining parts of the Italian fleet in a sneaky movement up to Scapa Flow where it engaged a transport fleet of the UK. It sunk some destroyers, but sadly enough no transports. On it's way back to a German port it was engaged and several ships sunk on both sides.

We sunk a few DD here..

Poor Italian Fleet... though we sunk a British battleship!

The place to breakthrough was in the north near the Afsluitdijk. We quickly assembled huge armoured force including the strong Heavy Armour. The British resistance was no match for our forces and we quickly moved to Den Helder where we got a port and could ship in additional supplies. We pushed the Allied forces further back and took the Dutch capital Amsterdam, which gave us again a nice income of rare materials. The new and last line of the Allies was thin and would most likely break within days or maybe a few weeks, but the loss of about two armies would happen sooner or later... but would we even make it till that situation?

The east was going very good. We managed to encircle some Russians and the battle of Moscow was ongoing and heavy! However, we also noticed Russia lacked tanks and the tanks he had were deorged after being used against our superior units. It would only be a matter of time before Moscow would fall. In the second week of September the situation looked very bad for Stalin and German forces reached the Kremlin. A few days later, on 10 September 1941 Moscow was under total control of the Wehrmacht. Russian counterattacks didn't had any succes and with it's army temporary out of supply, fuel and low organisation due heavy fighting everywhere, it was a matter of time before the Soviet Union would collapse entirely. Italian and German forces were moving into several key cities and with the amphibios invasion of Murmansk on 17 September, the government of the Soviet Union and the Red Army surrendered to Germany at midnight on 18 September.

With the surrender of the Soviet Union and the entire Allied Army in danger, the Allies decided to surrender together with the Soviet Union. This was much a relief of our friends in Japan, who were in serious problems with a possible upcoming Allied invasion.

Overall I think all players can admit we had a very good and fun game. There were basically no discussions, everything went smooth and good and we had a lot of fun. Both sides played very well. It was one of the better games I had as being a part of a multiplayer group in this community. It was also a pleasure to be moderator with these great guys. Overall we just had a great game with good battles. Now let's gear up for our next game, as powers will rise once again from their ashes...

 

[Rastrigin]

Good update! Maybe you switched some screenshots though? It seems the first one tells it all...

A commander of the East I have little to add... Before the sessions we made up a good plan to assault The Russian defensive line from all sides to increase the chance of breaking throgh on good infrastructure. But this would take time and during the actual game I wanted to try a front assault with the forces we already had in front of Moscow, to make the most out of the remaining week of Destiny we had. The outcome of those fights were quite good, with some key provinces taken and many Soviet units deorged, but the infra was already total crap... In the meantime the rest of the army caught up and I decided Germany could be strong enough to keep the frontal assault on moscow even on 0. The soviet player kept counterattcking me on exposed provinces and the battles of moscow was always kept on with very bad odds, we also had many supply problems, so our units were losing org quite fast and had to be rotated from the rear in order to regain it (can't reorg on 0 infra). Many times the soviet counterattacks were succesful and we were driven back from the province we just conquered, but in the and our numerical superiority was overwhelming and he slowly advanced, province after province the noose on Moscow was tightening, up to the point where there was only a two province corridor for the Sov player to rotate the divisions under attack in the city. When those provinces could be attacked the Soviets lost the ability to efficiently rotate the divisions in the capital and Moscow didn't stand much longer.
With the capture of moscow our exausted forces got a wave of much needed supplies while the soviets equally exausted forces were briefly out of supplies. This was enough to break the resistance of the Russian army in the area, which couldn't find any defensible position to protect the remaining VPs.

Overall this game was decided with the German breakthrough and the Soviet losses that followed. Had the Soviets managed to retreat their full tank army to Moscow and some more infantry division, I think a frontal assault on Moscow would have never succeded and Germany would have been forced to try a rivercrossing North and South, without Destiny and with the Soviets still holding the 20% national pride bonus. With winter closing in.

 

[feye1]

Good update! Maybe you switched some screenshots though? It seems the first one tells it all...

Ye lol, that one must be in the middle

 

[Traks]

As Italy I can add that most of European defense held on me, I even sent some minor forces to defend Italy proper (so defense still looked formidable), and sent around 120 full divisions to defend in France. 25% had AT, some ART, and I had around 10 ARM divisions which were valuable as mobile firebrigades or quickly taking gaps/undefended provinces. ARM was created from ARM+MOT+AC, so lacked any heavy punch. Still had to rely on infantry for most operations. It was a miracle we managed to hold Spain too. Allied air presence was strong, and TACs did get shot down often. Germany did all the punching, and I did all the defensive plus pinning down. In the end, I was down to -5 negative manpower.

Still, one of most enjoyable games as Italy.
In retrospect, 130 divisions were too many, could have went with 100 high quality fully equipped ones.

 

[feye1]

If the Allies did hit Italy with a sizeable force in summer of 1941 they would have had a good chance of taking Rome.

Italians proved to be very valuable!

 

[Strossi]

Usefull Italians haha. This aar was a beautifull read.