The fall of empires - AH WW1 AAR

[Lautipus]

Who will war and revolution sweep away in this alternate time line? I think Russia could be in some trouble with a ‘guiding hand’ directing the efforts of Austria-Hungary.

For now it seems that the Russians are doing quite well, but let's see what will happen. The war has barely started.

Also, Franz Josef is old. Will perhaps the plans of the archduke for the reorganization of the empire be implemented by his successor?

Watch out, the kaiser and king is old, true, but sharp and kicking. There is only one way to find that out.

I think we may have missed a trick ensuring the Arch Duke survived and went on to lead the empire. Something else would have triggered war in the balkans before long...everyone wanted to go to war by that point.

Maybe even have the assassination go off as it did otl, just without the last step of one of them randomly getting lucky and shooting them both?

Sooner or later something would spark it, if nothing else, at least the depression after multiple years of the naval build up, would make things easier.

 

[volksmarschall]

One cannot ignore WW1, and from the Austro-Hungarian perspective too. I'm in!

Cheers!

 

[Lautipus]

One cannot ignore WW1, and from the Austro-Hungarian perspective too. I'm in!

Cheers!

Welcome aboard, marshal of the people !

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

I'm astounded the Austrians are succeeding navally...even if it is against France.

That Russian front doesn't look good though. Better hope you can get the Serbian war done quick. And maybe get Italy to join in on your side. If you can do both, Austria at least will be secure.

 

[RustyHunter]

Russia is expected to advance at the start, but I suspect Germany will draw some of their divisions north. Once you take Serbia out, hopefully you can shift reinforcements and regain some territory. Fortunately, I'd imagine most of what you're losing is not very valuable?

I am curious how well cavalry performs in this version of the mod. I found them largely useless in the HOI3 version since their brigades were so much smaller than infantry. Cavalry could occasionally be used to exploit a breakthrough, but I found they couldn't stand up to even the lightest attacks.

 

[Lautipus]

I'm astounded the Austrians are succeeding navally...even if it is against France.

That Russian front doesn't look good though. Better hope you can get the Serbian war done quick. And maybe get Italy to join in on your side. If you can do both, Austria at least will be secure.

True, things don't look to good in the east, but the troops there were doubled, this will most definitely help. Ships are always interesting

Russia is expected to advance at the start, but I suspect Germany will draw some of their divisions north. Once you take Serbia out, hopefully you can shift reinforcements and regain some territory. Fortunately, I'd imagine most of what you're losing is not very valuable?

I am curious how well cavalry performs in this version of the mod. I found them largely useless in the HOI3 version since their brigades were so much smaller than infantry. Cavalry could occasionally be used to exploit a breakthrough, but I found they couldn't stand up to even the lightest attacks.

From an honorary perspective, each piece of land is valuable, but practically I built all of the factories in the heart of the empire, so no worries about that. Also the troops there got doubled.

With hindsight, they are usable. In this mod exhaustion and recovery is slowed down to vanilla hoi4 which fits well with ww1, thus cavalry can attack and fend off divisions with lower organization. The bonus in hoi4 is that the division designer gives you much options with divisions, it is flexible. May I ask if you have you tried hoi4?

 

[RustyHunter]

From an honorary perspective, each piece of land is valuable, but practically I built all of the factories in the heart of the empire, so no worries about that. Also the troops there got doubled.

That's good to hear, and I suspect you'll start pushing them back soon.

With hindsight, they are usable. In this mod exhaustion and recovery is slowed down to vanilla hoi4 which fits well with ww1, thus cavalry can attack and fend off divisions with lower organization. The bonus in hoi4 is that the division designer gives you much options with divisions, it is flexible. May I ask if you have you tried hoi4?

That's good to hear since cavalry shouldn't be good in trench warfare, but they should be useful in the east.

I bought base HOI4 a couple weeks ago when it was on sale for $1. I haven't had a lot of time to play a campaign, but I've tried out a few mods. I assume you can add more cavalry battalions to the templates and make a stronger division? Is there also some sort of horse-towed artillery for cav divisions, or is that abstracted into the cavalry battalions?

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

I would love to play WW1 HOI4 and in all honesty, the system may be better at simulating that than ww2...

 

[Lautipus]

That's good to hear, and I suspect you'll start pushing them back soon.


That's good to hear since cavalry shouldn't be good in trench warfare, but they should be useful in the east.

I bought base HOI4 a couple weeks ago when it was on sale for $1. I haven't had a lot of time to play a campaign, but I've tried out a few mods. I assume you can add more cavalry battalions to the templates and make a stronger division? Is there also some sort of horse-towed artillery for cav divisions, or is that abstracted into the cavalry battalions?

You shall see.

Indeed.

You can add a lot of cavalry battalions (depends on the doctrine), but it is better to use motorized (depends on your industrial capacity and your enemy). The "problem is" that line artillery exists with the same speed as infantry (4 km/h), while cavalry has a speed of 6 or 6.4 km/h? So adding line artillery would slow them down, but you can add motorized artillery which wouldn't slow you down (here the cavalry would slow you down as motorized units have a speed of 12 km/h), or even self propelled artillery - assault guns. But then you would be wasting the potential of SPG since they are combined with cavalry (lower speed in all/most cases, no armor). I think that in HoI4, it comes down to 2 things in combat (beside CAS, proper division width, doctrines etc.) and that is that you must have a superior army so that you can win the war quickly or that you can outproduce your enemy if it comes to a stalemate. But I should stop now as this is an AAR after all. But here you have my humble opinion.

I would love to play WW1 HOI4 and in all honesty, the system may be better at simulating that than ww2...

One thing that I miss from hoi3 is the delay between attacks, it doesn't need to be big (8-32 h max), because as it is it feels unrealistic when you can attack your enemy 24/7, maybe the introduction of logistics will change this a bit, we shall see.
This mode is quite good at WW1, it is not fast and also the equipment is properly named, if this is something that can bother you.
Maybe we could arrange a game, but we should have a separate thread. Perhaps a discord forum?

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Playing a huge multilayer ww1 aar could be fun. Only problem with it is how slow it may be, compared to even normal games (ww1 not know for being brief). Would have to put some major planning into it but I'm sure the interest would be there if it can be done...

Would certainly like to learn to play it anyway.

 

[Lautipus]

Playing a huge multilayer ww1 aar could be fun. Only problem with it is how slow it may be, compared to even normal games (ww1 not know for being brief). Would have to put some major planning into it but I'm sure the interest would be there if it can be done...

Would certainly like to learn to play it anyway.

From my experiences nothing is as slow as hoi3 MP. It is true that the ww1 mod is slower than vanilla hoi4.
If anybody is interested please like this post and I will contact you.

 

[Lautipus]

VI. Chapter: Central power's breakthrough
September - November 1914

The after more than one month of war, the k.u.k. army realized that artillery plays a bigger role in this "sitzkrieg" (sitting war) so a new division composition was proposed and 4 of such divisions will start training soon.

The front has stabilized in the east, Borojević's offensive for retaking Krakow is on the way, alongside a diversionary offensive towards Lublin as that sector of the front is the weakest on the Russian side.

The fighting in Serbia came to a standstill, the front hasn't moved from August, but the imperial and royal army is pressuring the royal Serbian army continuously, especially on the Serbian capital Belgrade.

On the 23rd of September, Belgrade fell into the hands of the empire

But this was not the only success, as Germany took over Brussels on the 25th

A look at the western front

Soon after news came that poor Belgium capitulated

Army report for September:
​

I. Armee: We manage to push partially back towards Krakow, while the diverting offensive. The Russians are putting up a defense but partial success is possible.

II. Armee: The front has stabilized, the Russians keep attacking but they are always pushed back.

III. Armee: The front has stabilized, the Russians keep attacking but they are always pushed back.

Reservearmee: The troops are gaining experience with every day though not fully trained troops should never be deployed as it is a waste of human lives and material.

IV. Armee: We contributed to the fall of Belgrade, beside that there is nothing to say. We kept the pressure.

V. Armee: After a long time we finally managed to conquer Belgrade, which was a big morale booster. Also the enemy has retreated some troops on our left flank, we will try to exploit this as even though the enemy is putting up a fight, they can not withstand a lot more.

Alpenarmee: We didn't manage to breakthrough unfortunately, but the enemy had to deploy more troops which made fighting easier for the 4th and 5th army.

Kavaleriearmee: We were mostly kept on reserve.

So far we have taken 54k casualties (43k to the Russian empire, 11k to the Serbian kingdom), while we inflicted 67k on the Russians and 16k on the Serbians.

On the 5th of September the 5th Army managed to cross the Danube and pushed towards the new Serbian capital of Niš. The state of the Serbian army is deteriorating daily. The 4th Army conquered some territory south of Belgrade.

The situation on the 13th of October. The Alpenarmee also break through the Serbian defense.

On the 21st of October, Serbia, was split in half. A proposal of surrender was issued, but Serbian fieldmarshal, Stepa Stepanović, discarded it. As a side note, Serbia fields 25 divisions in total, while the imperial and royal army fielded 30 infantry divisions alone, alongside 10 mountain/Kaiserjäger and 5 cavalry divisions.

Meanwhile the 1st army conquered Lublin, but it's offensive was called off. But this proved that even the big Russian bear can be beaten.

A small offensive was started by the of October in easter Galicia, by the 2nd and 3rd army, in order to move the front line to the Dniester.

Serbia still fought on even though the nail's on it's coffin were being hammered as the situation on the 10th of November shows. In reality it was mostly just capturing prisoners. The cavalry was useful in the south as it separated and encircled multiple divisions as well as it took the new capital at Ohrid.

On the 12th of November, 14 weeks since the war started, Serbia officially surrendered. Which freed more than 1/3 of the imperial and royal army.

Hearing this news, the k.u.k. called for Conrad to come to his office.
Conrad walks in and salutes the kaiser and king.
"Conrad, I was awaiting you, please have a seat...."​

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Now then...the central powers are doing much better than otl, or rather they are achieving what they did otl faster, which is good.

Now we need to see if the schleffen plan succeeds all the way, or just got the UK into the war in the place of Belgium...

 

[RustyHunter]

Very well done in beating Serbia! It seems your next goal is Russia (while keeping an eye on Italy of course). How does the Russian Civil War work in the HOI4 version of the mod? I'm glad your troops appear to be better than the Russian's, but the war has a long way to go.

 

[guillec87]

subbed

 

[Bullfilter]

Congrats on the successful conquest of Serbia. Will they take much of a garrison to control? Are there likely to be any serious revolts or Serbian nationalist guerrilla campaigns?

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Congrats on the successful conquest of Serbia. Will they take much of a garrison to control? Are there likely to be any serious revolts or Serbian nationalist guerrilla campaigns?

Well if it is like otl, then there should be multiple Serbian uprisings that keep a lot of Austrian troops there for the rest of the war. If not, then should be a quiet front until Greece gets involved...maybe.

 

[Lautipus]

Sorry for not posting anything but I had 2 exams, one on Friday and the other today.

Now then...the central powers are doing much better than otl, or rather they are achieving what they did otl faster, which is good.

Now we need to see if the schleffen plan succeeds all the way, or just got the UK into the war in the place of Belgium...

So far it is as you say, though Germany should have moved earlier through Belgium, we shall see what the AI will manage to do against itself.

Very well done in beating Serbia! It seems your next goal is Russia (while keeping an eye on Italy of course). How does the Russian Civil War work in the HOI4 version of the mod? I'm glad your troops appear to be better than the Russian's, but the war has a long way to go.

The k.u.k. army proved to be more competent than it was historically. I am not sure, but I presume it is a scripted event so it should fire of on a certain date. It would be more interesting if there was some mechanic regarding this, which should be implemented for all nations, but I guess that this would require paradox to do something, maybe for HoI 5?

subbed

Welcome aboard!

Congrats on the successful conquest of Serbia. Will they take much of a garrison to control? Are there likely to be any serious revolts or Serbian nationalist guerrilla campaigns?

Thank you, I think that the garrisson is about 4 divisions. No, I haven't experienced anything and I reached 1916. There is an option to make a puppet though, but let's just say that I am not there yet or that something happened meanwhile Also the garrison is not a big burden for A-H

Well if it is like otl, then there should be multiple Serbian uprisings that keep a lot of Austrian troops there for the rest of the war. If not, then should be a quiet front until Greece gets involved...maybe.

Historically speaking, guerilla warfare and partisan activity was scare in WW1, the Balkan are quite known for that during WW2. In this mod there were no uprisings so far. We shall see what happens.

 

[Lautipus]

VII. Chapter: War is not over by Christmass
November - December 1914

"You called for me" said Hotzendorf as he walked in the office of the kaiser und könig.
"I did. Conrad, I must say that I am pleased to hear that we conquered Serbia."
"Thank you, your majesty but I am afraid I bring some bad news."
"What are they?"
"I got some reports that the Serbian army moved into Albania. Their intentions are unknown, but Albania violated it's neutrality by accepting them."
"If it was not for use, they would have been part of Serbia after the 2. Balkan war. Conrad, just to be sure, conquer them as well."
"We need to declare war first, mein kaiser."
"I will take care of that, you get the army ready. Also why I called you, was not just to congratulate you. As you know the Italians declared to be neutral, but some bird tweeted about some meeting going on with them and the British. We need a major victory on the eastern front, to dissuade them from attacking us. Serbia was just a side show if we are honest."
"I already had something in mind, though the troops will need some time to regroup" commented Hotzendorf.
"I just want results before summer, Conrad. Also, when will Krakow be ours again?"
"I will make sure it will be recaptured as soon as possible!"
"That's all Conrad, you can go." the k.u.k. dismissed his general.

Franz Joseph maintained his word and declared war on Albania.

Nothing could prevent the fall of Albania, the Russian offensive has stalled long ago and France is busy fighting the Germans. A couple of days later, Albania capitulated as the imperial and royal army marched into the capital Tirana.

The k.u.k. also issued the same order to Miklos, to achieve a victory which should persuade the Italians from joining the war, but the ship of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine were still being repaired, Horthy gave an estimation that by the end of January he may undertake actions.

Since some people asked, here is an overview of the garrison forces for the 20th of November

Situation on the western front as of the 20th of November

Eastern front on the same day. Germany Lost quite some teritorry in east Prussia alongside Königsberg.

On the 6th of Demeber Turkey "purchased" is allying towards Germany, as has Horthy suggested time ago to the k.u.k. (historically, this ships were transferred in early August)

The IV. Armee, which fought in the Balkans, gor reasigned to the eastern front, near Przemysl. Hotzendorf had a meeting with field marshal von Denta before his army was deployed. While being near there, Hotzendorf also visited the HQ of the I. Army under the command of Borojević. His army managed to reach the outskirts of Krakow and was planing an attack on the city after new year, but Hotzendorf made clear the wish of the k.u.k. to retake the city as soon as possible. There were fights going on all over the eastern front but were mostly local skirmishes that achieved nothing, the Russians were now just bleeding their units against the imperial and royal army.


Deployment of the 4th army

On the dawn of 27th of December, Borojević launched an attack to retake Krakow, it was proceeded by an 4 hour bombardment

An illustration depicting A-H soldiers charging towards the city

On the 30th of December, Krakow was back in Austro-Hungarian hands. This news pleased Franz Joseph.

But there were some who did not cherish the victory, for they have paid the ultimate price in recapturing Krakow.

So the year comes to an end, but the war is far from the end.
​

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The balkan front continues to go very well. If the Greeks are allowed to stay neutral, and Bulgaria stays true to the central powers, Romania could be quickly carved into and used to keep Austria well supplied. It would also expand the Russian front immensely.

The western front continues to go quite well for the Entente. Despite losing Belgium save for one tiny sliver, Paris is safe and the actual front from the Channel to Switzerland seems relatively secure.

And the Russian front seems to be going alright for Austria, and presumably will get better now the balkan front is all but over (for now).