-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Plessiez said:Hey Danny, unfortunately your advice came a bit late
Oh so whats the situation then?
June 1942
when we left things last time I had just realised that the German eastern front had collapsed and was wondering what to do about it. It was decided that we should take over the rest of Italy as quickly as possible and make a beachhead in France with what troops we had available.
First step - asking the French for military control. I thought this was a great idea - I liked the concept of Free French forces marching into Paris alongside their British counterparts. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. The first thing I noticed about my new French troops was that they had zero organisation. That was soon fixed with some convoys. The second thing I noticed was that they had no transports and wouldn't load onto mine, apparently being too fussy. That was less easily fixed, so the French stayed in Africa for the rest of the war.
The second step is to push on with the attack in Italy. We do a bit of juggling of our garrisons on Malta and Sicily and since the Italian fleet is practically destroyed we can spare a few divisions to reinforce our troops on the mainland. We launch our attack late in the month, and although there is some rough fighting for a while we manage to capture Bolzano, Venezia and La Spezia by the end of June. Unfortunately we don't capture any of the Italian fleet this time though we sink everything that tries to flee from port.
July 1942
We believe that we're only one province away from controlling Italy, setting up a puppet government and freeing half of France. Genoa falls early in July and.... nothing. No option to puppet appears for us. Getting desperate we wonder whether we need to occupy their new captial in north Africa. Nicknmaking this mission the 'Donothing Raid' we load up a division of paratroopers, fly over Spain dodging the Italian airforce and refuel in Free-French north Africa. A couple of days later we make a paradrop onto the Italian capital, pick up our troops a few hours later and get them back to a province with some infrastructure. Probably the quickest invasion and occpuation ever. Unfortunately still no option to puppet.
Another lend lease shipment arrives while we think what to do next. This is lucky since our supply situation is getting pretty low - in fact, I am now relying solely on supplies from the US and am manufacturing only a quarter of what we need each day.
Our occupation of Italy has opened up another front with Germany. Similarly the Italians are ammassed over the border in southern France looking like they might rather like their country back. Its going to be hard to free up any troops from Italy without opening ourselves to attack, especially now that we are defending four provinces from attack instead of two.
August 1942
In August our attentions are drawn to Hong Kong. During the month they try about six times to get the mother of all transport fleets past our fleet stationed in the Hong Kong sea. We don't know where they were going or what they were trying to achieve - if those ships were loaded they had enough men for a good sized invasion of Australia. Fortunately for us they didn't seem to get the message that they were losing five transports each time they attacked us, and by the end of the month we have sunk their whole fleet. It looks like a couple of transports may have escaped via some back route because we lose control of the South Solomon islands - our first land losses to the Japanese. We send out three divisions of Royal Marines to take care of that, and turn our attention back to Europe.
We have one army left to utilise in Europe. Nine divions of Infantry and three of Armour (following Vigilantsldr's avice ) Since our military policy is always to defend as small a front as possible we decide on Brest as our invasion point. We can only be counterattacked from one direction and if all else fails we'll just reboard the transports and run away. On August 29th we make our landing defeating the one German division that was guarding the province.
September 1942
Our worst fears about the German army were unfounded. Their few divisions in north-west France collapse in front of us as we sprint from province to province. Determined to try and use our paratroopers for something more sensible than landing in Africa we even try a combined arms attack on Nantes against the Germans. Unfortunately we get the timing all wrong and the Germans have retreated before the paras even arrive.
By the end of September we have pushed inland and freed a triangle of France, from Brest, inland to Cannes and South to La Rochelle. Most of the German army seems to be busy failing to keep the Soviet Union from running all over their own back yard.
The Italians are far more numerous than the Germans however, and our troops in Gibraltar are still facing off against sizeable armies. We decide to take our three marine divisions from there and transport them by sea to open a new front in Barcelona. The plan being to link up with our troops in France and to draw enough Italians away from our forces in Italy that we can break out.
October 1942
Our landing in Barcelona goes well and we head inland. Unfortunately the Italians sneak around behind us and cut us off from the sea. Taking a lead from the strategies used by the AI we decide to just keep marching and eventually link up with our armoured divisions in the south of France. We'll have to return and take back Barcelona at a later date. The only downside to this is that the idea of drawing away troops to allow a breakout from Italy never gets off the ground.
In France, October is a weird month. We have two spare divisions, one of armour and one of marines that we use to make a landing in Lille, even though the Soviets already control it. Its around this time that we realise that we can recapture provinces that the Russians have taken and free them. At this stage we haven't yet realised that we can even liberate provinces that have Russian armies in them - that comes later.So October is mostly spent chasing around after the Russians and waiting for them to move our troops out of a province before jumping on it and raising the French flag. We even liberate Brussels but run out of fuel and pull back into France. Basically from here on the game in Europe turns into a kind of 'whack-a-mole' where we chase around trying to jump on things, then chase the Germans out of another province and get there before the Soviets.
November 1942
November is really much the same as October. We manage to liberate France all the way down to the border of Spain and have freed Paris and a few provinces further inland. The only disaster for us (in fact, the only real disaster of the war) is the savage mauling of one of our armies in Nancy at the hands of the remaining German troops. We had nine divisions guarding the province and only two made it back out. Elsewhere though the Germans are on the run by now. Their border with Italy is now far less heavily guarded that before so we advance into Bregenz and Innsbruck but can't get any further because the Soviets have the rest of Germany sealed up.
Our six advanced cruisers are finally completed in November but we're so busy chasing around Europe that we just leave them in the queue for a while.
December 1942
Despite the disaster in Nancy we still have enough men in France to continue its liberation. Even though we have some pretty strange rag-tag collections of forces. Field Marshall Alexander leads one marine division and one paratrooper division for instance. We realise that we can liberate provinces from the Russians even if they have armies stationed there, so a solitary tank division goes through the low countries, freeing Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Soviet Union finally annexes Germany on December the 12th. In Spain the forces arranged around Gibraltar look sufficiently thinned out for us to launch an attack into the mainland, which we get under way late in the month. The Italians put up very little resistance and with the aid of the three south African divisions that we have there we start to push north through Iberia without too much trouble.
January 1943
Really this is the end of the game for us. Wtih France freed and Germany annexed, the Canadians finally decide to commit some troops to the war and start landing men in Caen. We try to explain that the war's almost over and where were they two years ago but they won't listen.
Finally we get the option to puppet Italy, presumably now that they've lost most of their provinces worth any victory points. We puppet them and have one final piece of silliness. Half the Italian army apparently thinks that Fascism really is the best thing ever and decides to become Japanese. Its a strange thing seeing parts of the South of France coloured bright yellow. We send our troops from Italy to help out the Italian forces that stayed loyal to the allies and after some fierce fighting we manage to defeat the 'Japanese' and bring peace to Europe.
And this, I think is where this AAR will end. France and the Low Countries have been restored. Italy is now a puppet of the UK and controls Spain (But they were communist anyway so I don't really mind too much). The Soviet Union controls all of Germany except for two provinces which we have captured next to Switzerland.
In the Far East the Japanese still haven't attacked Siam and their territories in China are slowly getting eaten up by the Soviets. I don't really fancy a war against Japan just to conquer Chinese provinces that I never wanted so I think I will leave things as they are now.
To be honest I was a bit disappointed that the Soviet Union managed to break into Germany as early as they did. I was looking forward to some difficult D-Day landings and fighting my way through France against a determined opponent. Unfortunately the closing stages of the war were a bit of a cake walk and felt kind of silly at times. I guess I have achieved England's objectives though of restoring peace to Europe and freeing my allies from occupation. The only failure is that the Soviet Union captured all of Germany instead of part, or preferably none of it.
Thanks for reading this AAR and for your comments throughout it. I've enjoyed my first game of HOI despite the comments above. Perhaps when 1.06 comes out there will be a Second Time Players UK AAR to read
Finally, some lessons learned in case any other first time players read through this.
I'll probably add some other words of homegrown wisdom when I think of them
when we left things last time I had just realised that the German eastern front had collapsed and was wondering what to do about it. It was decided that we should take over the rest of Italy as quickly as possible and make a beachhead in France with what troops we had available.
First step - asking the French for military control. I thought this was a great idea - I liked the concept of Free French forces marching into Paris alongside their British counterparts. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. The first thing I noticed about my new French troops was that they had zero organisation. That was soon fixed with some convoys. The second thing I noticed was that they had no transports and wouldn't load onto mine, apparently being too fussy. That was less easily fixed, so the French stayed in Africa for the rest of the war.
The second step is to push on with the attack in Italy. We do a bit of juggling of our garrisons on Malta and Sicily and since the Italian fleet is practically destroyed we can spare a few divisions to reinforce our troops on the mainland. We launch our attack late in the month, and although there is some rough fighting for a while we manage to capture Bolzano, Venezia and La Spezia by the end of June. Unfortunately we don't capture any of the Italian fleet this time though we sink everything that tries to flee from port.
July 1942
We believe that we're only one province away from controlling Italy, setting up a puppet government and freeing half of France. Genoa falls early in July and.... nothing. No option to puppet appears for us. Getting desperate we wonder whether we need to occupy their new captial in north Africa. Nicknmaking this mission the 'Donothing Raid' we load up a division of paratroopers, fly over Spain dodging the Italian airforce and refuel in Free-French north Africa. A couple of days later we make a paradrop onto the Italian capital, pick up our troops a few hours later and get them back to a province with some infrastructure. Probably the quickest invasion and occpuation ever. Unfortunately still no option to puppet.
Another lend lease shipment arrives while we think what to do next. This is lucky since our supply situation is getting pretty low - in fact, I am now relying solely on supplies from the US and am manufacturing only a quarter of what we need each day.
Our occupation of Italy has opened up another front with Germany. Similarly the Italians are ammassed over the border in southern France looking like they might rather like their country back. Its going to be hard to free up any troops from Italy without opening ourselves to attack, especially now that we are defending four provinces from attack instead of two.
August 1942
In August our attentions are drawn to Hong Kong. During the month they try about six times to get the mother of all transport fleets past our fleet stationed in the Hong Kong sea. We don't know where they were going or what they were trying to achieve - if those ships were loaded they had enough men for a good sized invasion of Australia. Fortunately for us they didn't seem to get the message that they were losing five transports each time they attacked us, and by the end of the month we have sunk their whole fleet. It looks like a couple of transports may have escaped via some back route because we lose control of the South Solomon islands - our first land losses to the Japanese. We send out three divisions of Royal Marines to take care of that, and turn our attention back to Europe.
We have one army left to utilise in Europe. Nine divions of Infantry and three of Armour (following Vigilantsldr's avice
) Since our military policy is always to defend as small a front as possible we decide on Brest as our invasion point. We can only be counterattacked from one direction and if all else fails we'll just reboard the transports and run away. On August 29th we make our landing defeating the one German division that was guarding the province.September 1942
Our worst fears about the German army were unfounded. Their few divisions in north-west France collapse in front of us as we sprint from province to province. Determined to try and use our paratroopers for something more sensible than landing in Africa we even try a combined arms attack on Nantes against the Germans. Unfortunately we get the timing all wrong and the Germans have retreated before the paras even arrive.
By the end of September we have pushed inland and freed a triangle of France, from Brest, inland to Cannes and South to La Rochelle. Most of the German army seems to be busy failing to keep the Soviet Union from running all over their own back yard.
The Italians are far more numerous than the Germans however, and our troops in Gibraltar are still facing off against sizeable armies. We decide to take our three marine divisions from there and transport them by sea to open a new front in Barcelona. The plan being to link up with our troops in France and to draw enough Italians away from our forces in Italy that we can break out.
October 1942
Our landing in Barcelona goes well and we head inland. Unfortunately the Italians sneak around behind us and cut us off from the sea. Taking a lead from the strategies used by the AI we decide to just keep marching and eventually link up with our armoured divisions in the south of France. We'll have to return and take back Barcelona at a later date. The only downside to this is that the idea of drawing away troops to allow a breakout from Italy never gets off the ground.
In France, October is a weird month. We have two spare divisions, one of armour and one of marines that we use to make a landing in Lille, even though the Soviets already control it. Its around this time that we realise that we can recapture provinces that the Russians have taken and free them. At this stage we haven't yet realised that we can even liberate provinces that have Russian armies in them - that comes later.So October is mostly spent chasing around after the Russians and waiting for them to move our troops out of a province before jumping on it and raising the French flag. We even liberate Brussels but run out of fuel and pull back into France. Basically from here on the game in Europe turns into a kind of 'whack-a-mole' where we chase around trying to jump on things, then chase the Germans out of another province and get there before the Soviets.
November 1942
November is really much the same as October. We manage to liberate France all the way down to the border of Spain and have freed Paris and a few provinces further inland. The only disaster for us (in fact, the only real disaster of the war) is the savage mauling of one of our armies in Nancy at the hands of the remaining German troops. We had nine divisions guarding the province and only two made it back out. Elsewhere though the Germans are on the run by now. Their border with Italy is now far less heavily guarded that before so we advance into Bregenz and Innsbruck but can't get any further because the Soviets have the rest of Germany sealed up.
Our six advanced cruisers are finally completed in November but we're so busy chasing around Europe that we just leave them in the queue for a while.
December 1942
Despite the disaster in Nancy we still have enough men in France to continue its liberation. Even though we have some pretty strange rag-tag collections of forces. Field Marshall Alexander leads one marine division and one paratrooper division for instance. We realise that we can liberate provinces from the Russians even if they have armies stationed there, so a solitary tank division goes through the low countries, freeing Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Soviet Union finally annexes Germany on December the 12th. In Spain the forces arranged around Gibraltar look sufficiently thinned out for us to launch an attack into the mainland, which we get under way late in the month. The Italians put up very little resistance and with the aid of the three south African divisions that we have there we start to push north through Iberia without too much trouble.
January 1943
Really this is the end of the game for us. Wtih France freed and Germany annexed, the Canadians finally decide to commit some troops to the war and start landing men in Caen. We try to explain that the war's almost over and where were they two years ago but they won't listen.
Finally we get the option to puppet Italy, presumably now that they've lost most of their provinces worth any victory points. We puppet them and have one final piece of silliness. Half the Italian army apparently thinks that Fascism really is the best thing ever and decides to become Japanese. Its a strange thing seeing parts of the South of France coloured bright yellow. We send our troops from Italy to help out the Italian forces that stayed loyal to the allies and after some fierce fighting we manage to defeat the 'Japanese' and bring peace to Europe.
And this, I think is where this AAR will end. France and the Low Countries have been restored. Italy is now a puppet of the UK and controls Spain (But they were communist anyway so I don't really mind too much). The Soviet Union controls all of Germany except for two provinces which we have captured next to Switzerland.
In the Far East the Japanese still haven't attacked Siam and their territories in China are slowly getting eaten up by the Soviets. I don't really fancy a war against Japan just to conquer Chinese provinces that I never wanted so I think I will leave things as they are now.
To be honest I was a bit disappointed that the Soviet Union managed to break into Germany as early as they did. I was looking forward to some difficult D-Day landings and fighting my way through France against a determined opponent. Unfortunately the closing stages of the war were a bit of a cake walk and felt kind of silly at times. I guess I have achieved England's objectives though of restoring peace to Europe and freeing my allies from occupation. The only failure is that the Soviet Union captured all of Germany instead of part, or preferably none of it.
Thanks for reading this AAR and for your comments throughout it. I've enjoyed my first game of HOI despite the comments above. Perhaps when 1.06 comes out there will be a Second Time Players UK AAR to read
Finally, some lessons learned in case any other first time players read through this.
- Building destroyers for convoy duty was a total waste of time.
- Infantry with Artillery makes for a very slow war. In future I'll use motorised.
- You can never have too many transports.
- It doesn't matter what the German submarines do in the Atlantic since the only convoys you have there go to Canada and Bermuda. This is a shame since the war in the Atlantic was incredibly important to the survival of the UK.
- You don't need as many men in North Africa as you think. The Italian AI is a pushover there.
- Building AA for home defence isn't very useful since the Germans never launched a strategic bomber attack.
- Likewise, keeping fighters for home defence, though having something to protect your channel fleet from attack is a good idea.
I'll probably add some other words of homegrown wisdom when I think of them
Here's Europe as it finally ended up. I just noticed there is still a tiny Japanese island in the mediterranean
I love your two land locked providences north of Italy :rofl: , what are you going to do with them?
Black Lotus said:
I don't know. Maybe I could sell them to Switzerland? Or let there be a tiny free Germany if they promise to be very very good in future?
Plessiez said:I don't know. Maybe I could sell them to Switzerland? Or let there be a tiny free Germany if they promise to be very very good in future?
I was thinking more along the lines of making it a secret weapons facility, other than that, I wish you could sell your territory...
Black Lotus said:
Well in the coming cold war that'll be prime real estate for American ICBM's so I guess I should keep it.
And Zanza, I'm glad you enjoyed reading. I don't know what to do for my next game. I'd like to play the UK again and hope the AI acts a bit differently this time.
What do people think of the 1939 scenario? I thought that seemed like an interesting place to start.
What Next?
Download CORE 7.1 and try again as UK. See if the AI can do a better job there and ... let us know your progress. A3
Download CORE 7.1 and try again as UK. See if the AI can do a better job there and ... let us know your progress. A3
Good AAR. Definitely not bad for playing UK the first time. Of course, it's a shame the Reds beat you to the punch with Germany but still not bad. I also enjoyed reading this AAR and kept an eye on it almost daily.
Why quit?
I think a cold war with the Sovs would be quite interesting.
And the war with Japan hasn't finished yet, has it?
I think a cold war with the Sovs would be quite interesting.
And the war with Japan hasn't finished yet, has it?
Vincent Julien said:Great AAR. Four more years? Please?
Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone.
As for a cold war against the Soviets and finishing off Japan, we'll have to see. I guess I need something to do while I wait for 1.06 to come out
Plessiez said:I guess I need something to do while I wait for 1.06 to come out
If you wait much longer, it will be here and we will be left alone, still eager to know what will happen to the UK in the coming years
Update, please Plessiez??