American AAR : AI Experiments In HoI3

[roverS3]

Hurray for the first Naval Battle, and the first US Navy Victory of the war, against Yamamoto no less! Let there be many more.

Bullfilter has been very active indeed, all of our Turkeys are moving towards the warm embrace of the Soviet Union and the Comintern...

 

[markkur]

The Question Of Guatemala

<LOL> Gotta love that...all by its lonesome.

Love this experiment! Can't want to see the grand A.I. invasions. Off to a good start - good luck.

 

[stnylan]

Bullfilter indeed has a lot to answer for.

 

[Bullfilter]

Mwahaha, the tentacles of Agent Bogafiltresi are everywhere - as RoverS3 (or should I say Odin himself, the Secret Stalinist) has noted above, the same has just happened in Odin and the Secret Committee, where Turkey has also begun aligning to the Comintern!

An interesting naval battle there - you probably didn’t get an opportunity for damage assessment on the enemy? But if you ‘won’ the battle, it would be reasonable to expect your battle wagons dealt more damage to the IJN than they did to you.

That extra org regain rate from MacArthur as CoS could be pretty useful in the naval war, for starters. Well done AI Roosevelt, do you reckon?

PS: always good to have an efficient sociopath in charge of your security - an inefficient one would be double the trouble!

 

[Bullfilter]

Bullfilter indeed has a lot to answer for.

Indeed he does, the scoundrel!

 

[Wraith11B]

2. And according to this map I live next to Warsaw? What? WHAT?!?!?

Spoiler

Yeah, I live near Richmond, myself, but according to this, that's "South" of the James... and Warsaw should be where Fredericksburg is... They really messed up the map... When I first moved to Richmond, we had just moved back from Warsaw, Poland, and so everyone we met thought we had come to our senses and moved out of the boondocks and into the City. Took a bit of convincing.

 

[roverS3]

Yeah, I live near Richmond, myself, but according to this, that's "South" of the James... and Warsaw should be where Fredericksburg is... They really messed up the map... When I first moved to Richmond, we had just moved back from Warsaw, Poland, and so everyone we met thought we had come to our senses and moved out of the boondocks and into the City. Took a bit of convincing.

In the Defence of Paradox, I'll have you know that there is a 'Warsaw' in the area marked 'Warsaw' on the Paradox map, though it is in the boondocks... (population 1.500). Also, as Richmond sort-of straddles the James, you could argue that Paradox had to pick either north or south.

Warsaw, VA, population ca.1.500. Seems all right to me. Of course, Google's maps could be wrong
​

In any case I think one has to accept that as long as part of the city is within the Paradox province, it's sort-of ok. Even being this lenient, you probably have a point about Fredricksburg. Otherwise, most of the map is simply wrong because the place the provinces are named after often aren't the biggest towns in the area, nor the most central ones. It would be fun to make a Paradox map and overlay the actual locations of the places the provinces are named after... though that would be very low on my list of interesting and useful things to do...

 

[Eurasia]

AI Experiments In HoI3
Chapter Ten : A Quiet Period

More M3s Come Off The Factory Floor​

On the 16th of November I had noticed that the 2nd Army HQ, which had been on its way to Florida, had stopped and I had no idea why. I assume it wanted to stop to allow the 7th and 8th to get up to 100 % Manpower. They even needed men for their HQs.

At this point I remembered that LA needed a ton of supplies and fuel to help the West Coast Marine Theater's Transports and Divisions prepare for...whatever they were planning to do. So I created a convey from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles with nine transports and two escorts. I also ordered more infrastructure built between it and the States that were bright green with supplies. I hope the conveys speed up the process NOW and the upgraded infrastructure solves the problem for future Fleets visiting LA.

A few days passed before we had something happen. The Navy sunk a Japanese cargo ship and an escort. Which was good. The Japanese could ill afford to lose one ship or the cargo it held.

I also created another Corps for the 2nd Army. It has four Armored Divisions. Two Divisions were three Light Armored Tank Brigades and a Self-Propelled Artillery Brigade and two Divisions were two Light Armored Tank Brigades and a Self-Propelled Artillery Brigade.

The Light Armored Brigades were made up of more M3 Stuarts and the SP Artillery Brigades were made up of 75 mm M3 Gun Motor Carriage.(1)

I must point out that I will likely use only Light or Medium Armored Tanks for much of the AAR. The American policy throughout much of the war, in general, was that Tanks were designed to support the Infantry. You wanted your Tanks to be mass produced, cheap, easy to repair, and armed with weapons to help the Infantry. And if you built a Heavy Armored Tank to fight other Tanks then that was what the Tank crews were likely to do.

And having your Tankers run off, leaving the Infantry behind, to get blown up by German Panzers didn't seem like a good way to win the war. Nor was it a good investment of the Army's time and men.

Sadly, the 9th Corps was created for the Marine Theater but the 1st Marine (Army) could not hold any more Corps. So now the poor 9th Corps had to march across the US to get to the East Coast. Oops. Sorry about that. And I better start thinking about making NEW Army HQs for both Coasts. Or maybe giving the Navy more ground troops?

At this point, still the 18th of November, I noticed that the waters around Truk Island was becoming crowded with a LOT of UK, US, and Aussie patrols.

In fact I noticed that the Island of Truk had two Garrison units and FOUR Air units. Of course I don't know the aircraft type or their condition. I am not sure what kind of aircraft they had and they seemed to NOT wish to engage the 4th Battleship Fleet as it floated by. And no, I don't know how the Light Cruiser Milwaukee got damaged. I assume it was related to drunk driving. Milwaukee is known for beer. Tsk.

The Navy reported another sinking. Another Japanese cargo ship will not be delivering its trade goods to Mexico.

Also some Australian Destroyers were able to show me the Island of Ponape. A Japanese controlled island with only a port. The port was empty and there seemed to be an Infantry Division there. But without ships the Japanese troops there are pretty harmless to me.

The reason this island interests me if because it is east of Truk and may become a objective later on when I am picking the NEXT wave of invasions. Maybe I can order the Navy to take it?

In the early hours of the 19th of November I was alerted to the Navy stinking another Japanese transport and its escort. Lulea? Sweden? Interesting. I didn't know they liked Japanese toys.

Almost right after that they reported another attack on a convoy. Another transport and escort had been sunk. And by noon another report - another transport destroyed. I am sorry Honduras and Chile but no anime for YOU.

Getting somewhat bored I paused the game to peek around the world. It looked the UK was being pushed out of Norway.

And it looked like Siam was grabbing territory faster than the UK could react.

And I will close this, somewhat slow chapter, with a BAD report from the Navy. We lost a transport and a escort to Japanese convoy-raiders. Ouch. Still, it seemed the Navy was doing more damage to them than they were doing to us.

And in our next chapter another victory. Or two.

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Author's Notes:

1. In fact, the M3 GMC was thought of as a Tank Destroyer, and could both be used as a anti-tank gun and as fire-support. It was used in the Philippines in 1942 and also North Africa. And was completely useless in the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Uh oh....

 

[stnylan]

So things are heating up in the Pacific.

 

[Eurasia]

So things are heating up in the Pacific.

Yes. It becomes interesting. And I find out some of the things I thought were true were LIES! LIES!

 

[Eurasia]

AI Experiments In HoI3
Chapter Eleven : A Close Call

USS Wasp - A Reduced Yorktown-Class Carrier
​

So, it was the 20th of November, around 4:00 (which is 4:00 AM), and I was just chill-laxing, as they say, when I got report that the 2nd Carrier Fleet had found a Japanese Fleet during its patrol. The Battle of Southeastern Mariana Basin was about to start.(1)

The Carriers, the Ranger and the Wasp, lunched their CAGs to attack the enemy ships. The target Fleet was two Heavy Cruisers and two Destroyer Divisions under Rear Admiral Nagumo. I must point out that the 10th and the 11th CAGs were made up of Boeing F4Bs. Yes, the Biplanes. I had not noticed that before. While the 5th and 6th have been correctly identified as the next generation of Grumman FFs.(2)

I will also point out the 3 Kuchikukantai (Destroyer Division) already looks disorganized. Maybe a attack from an UK or Aussie unit? Anyway, this aerial attack was just an opening greeting as the 2nd Carrier Fleet moved closer. By 5:00 (5:00 PM) the ships could see each other. It looked like the Asma was having some issues. Yet I didn't notice any exchange of fire between the warships.

By 7:00 (7:00 AM) the CAGs had returned reporting they had damaged some of the enemy ships. And to be fair one of the Japanese Heavy Cruisers, the Myoko, seemed to have lower Organization now. Maybe the Cruisers had lost some it trying to fight off the American aircraft?

By 8:00 (8:00 AM) the planes were ready for another go and launched an attack. But at this point the Japanese had enough and broke off from the engagement. It was counted as an American victory though I don't think any shells were fired at each other. I think it was all American aircraft against Japanese anti-aircraft guns.

Checking the 2nd Carrier Fleet I found no damage anywhere. Everything was at 100 %. Even the aircraft.

The 21st of November started off with a Mexican spy being shot. Yeah, I just found that weird.

To be honest I thought it was going to go quiet on me again but nope. I was wrong. At 16:00 (4:00 PM) the Navy started a bombing run with its Naval Bombers. It looks like they had the good luck to run into Rear Admiral Yamamoto during one of their patrols!

An hour later I got a report of the 2nd Carrier's launching a CAG attack! It seems that the 2nd Carrier Fleet was being approached by the Japanese this time.

Rear Admiral Kaga with four Heavy Cruisers, two Light Cruisers, and two Destroyer Divisions outnumbered Read Admiral Spruance and his ships. The Battle of Northwestern Ponape Approach had started.

To be honest I was a little worried about this. But it seems the Navy had everything under control. For within an hour the 1st Battleship Fleet joined in! King had shown up with the Nevada, the Arizona, and the Pennsylvania and a additional three Destroyer Divisions.

As the CAGs did their job the Naval Bombers reported in. Their attack run had ended and they stated they had damaged some of Yamamoto's ships. But, of course, I don't how much damage was done.

At 20:00 (8:00 PM), back at Ponape Approach, the CAGs finished their attack and returned to the Carriers to refuel and rearm. At this point the 21 Kuchkukantai and the Heavy Cruiser Nachi were showing some wear. Once again I didn't see any exchange of fire. I think, once again, this is a battle of American aircraft vs. Japanese anti-aircraft guns.

At this point I am starting to wonder - where are the Japanese Carriers?

An hour later the CAGs are launched again but it is already too late. The Japanese Fleet has broken off already. Another victory.

The Japanese ships went to the nearby port of Ponape, which was right next door, and I NOW really want to mark it as a objective for the Navy. Of course now they are in a sea of Allied submarines and convey-raiders so I am not too sure how much in the way of supplies or fuel the Japanese ships will get. And when they do get supplies they will have to share with the Japanese Infantry.

At this point I paused the game to check on damage. First I checked on the USN Patrol Bomb. Group 1 (which had been renamed because the "ing" was bothering me) and found them already back at Guam. They had lost a total of four planes or 1 % of their total Group Strength. Not bad.

Next I decided to check the 1st Battleship Fleet. All I could notice was the USS Nevada had 1 % damage. What is that - a railing dent? And how did it even get hit? I don't think any surface ship fired on each other.

I then checked the ships of the 2nd Carrier Fleet. None of the ships were touched. So I next checked the CAGs. Two Wings are combined into one CAG and two Wings are separate. Just happened that way.

The 5th Air Wing and the 6th Air Wing are both made up of Grumman FFs. They lost a total of 12 aircraft. Which is a 6 % loss of Strength.

The 10th CAG is made up of two Wings of Boeing F4Bs. They lost a total of 12 aircraft which means they also lost 6 % of their total Strength. Please remember this is after TWO naval battles in which these four Wings did ALL the fighting. Not bad.

So we close this chapter with two victories at sea which could be credited to our CAGs. And once again I ask, where are the Japanese Carriers?

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Author's Note:

1. Chill-laxing is combination of chilling and relaxing. Like chicken-waffles.

2. The USS Wasp was a mini-Yorktown-Class Carrier. A product of the Washington Naval Treaty. It seems after the construction of the Carriers the Yorktown and Enterprise the US was still permitted 15,000 tons to build a carrier. So the Navy made a Yorktown-Class Carrier with 25 % less displacement. To save weight and space the Wasp was constructed with low-power machinery and was launched with almost no armor, modest speed, and no protection from torpedoes. I don’t think this is reflected in the game.

 

[Wraith11B]

Think of Org like expending the ability of their crews to continuously race to General Quarters, fight off enemy attacks and continue to act as professional soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines

 

[stnylan]

The carriers are no doubt lurking somewhere, waiting to be annoying.

 

[Bullfilter]

When I first moved to Richmond, we had just moved back from Warsaw, Poland, and so everyone we met thought we had come to our senses and moved out of the boondocks and into the City. Took a bit of convincing.

Hah, I liked that! Visited Richmond on a family holiday with the kids back in around 2006. Haven’t been to either Warsaw, though my late Dad was born in the Polish one - but left it in about 1948. I’ll get there one day.

Re the recent battles: the AI seems to be handling them pretty well so far. So things are bound to go to custard shortly! And I wouldn’t like to have been on board the Wasp with such a compromised design as that.

Really enjoying the updates.

 

[racebear75]

Nice AAR so far, and, of course, subbed.

 

[roverS3]

These are textbook examples of well-lead CTF battles. As long as your fleet's average speed is above that of the enemy fleet, and you don't have any big gun ships, your ships will stay out of range of the enemy's guns, launching one wave after another of CAG, now you only need to develop better CAGs, and upgrade them too...

You have to watch out for large and fast (average speed) fleets. When the enemy's average speed is higher than that of your CTF, he will dominate the engagement and close the gap. Then it's up to the firepower of your escorts to attempt to protect the CVs... so if the enemy fleet is large enough, they can sink CVs without using aeroplanes, though this is a rare occurrence. Now that I think about it, your CTFs could do with one more escort to make them really impregnable.

Oh, and if King's fleet had arrived earlier it would have definitely closed with the enemy fleet. The Japanese just pulled away before Nevada could get within range. Also that railing dent is just random attrition, like a piece of railing falling off, you're right, there was no contact at all, and you want to keep it that way...

This is going great. What I don't get is why the AI doesn't follow fleets around. It's a logical tactic for a CTF, especially if you have Radar. Once you hit an enemy fleet without air support with CAG, they try to run to get out of range, and if your CTF can keep up, it makes sense to follow them. When you have Radar on board, you know more or less where they are going, so you can conceivably follow. I've done this playing as Japan with three CVx3, CLx9 fleets, chasing around huge USN stacks which either had no carriers, or when they had them, their CAGs had been shredded by mine. I even got the coveted Veteran Navy bonus that particular game, because I had at least two of those fleets fighting one battle after another chasing after enemy units while my Battleships had been split between several naval invasion squadrons. It was a good game, I didn't take any screenshots, but I took most of Asia and all of the Middle East, Germany won Barbarossa, with my help through Persia from 1942, the Italians actually did ok, and I had to race them to take the Suez canal before them, which I just did, though Italy got Alexandria, and it was very close. Once Eurasia was in the bag, and I took all Islands the Allies had in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, including all of Oceania, sinking most of the USN in the process, I put the game on hold as I wanted to start an AAR on the Soviet Union.

 

[Eurasia]

AI Experiments In HoI3
Chapter Twelve : Another Quiet Period

Our Time To Shine!​

At this point I did not know what was going to happen. Action? Quiet? A mixture of both. What did happen was mostly the regular heart beat of war!

First the Navy announced the Japanese had attacked a convoy on the Manila-San Francisco route. I lost two cargo transports and a escort. NO! Our fruits! Where will we get our supply of fruits? What? South America? Oh yeah, forgot.

​

But it seemed the Germans wanted to get in on the act also and destroyed one of our cargo transports on the way to Goteborg. Looks like Sweden will not get that delivery of Boston's Famous Baked Beans. Oh well.

Then I got a report that the Navy's Patrol Bomb. Group 1 was attacking some enemy ships but it turned out to be a false alarm as the Japanese escaped before the bombing run could end properly.

Then there was another report of losing another transport on the Manila-San Francisco route. Sad times for the fruit lovers in all of us.

In the afternoon I really started to worry about my supply issues. I had 94151 units of supplies. What is that...tons? Mega-tons? But my infrastructure had been totally neglected in the early years of the game and many of my units, mostly Divisions still within the US, were all in poor supply. Little whiners.

At this point I got bored with just watching and decided to take action. So I tried to split the 3rd Marine Transport Fleet - who in fact had a total of FORTY ships. It refused to split even when under my direct control. So I attached it back to the 1st Marine (Army). So I may have done nothing but screwed up their timetable.

In hindsight it may have refused to split due to having troops onboard. Just a warning for future players. I also know units sometimes hate to split if they are not ALL 100 %.

We got another report from the Navy. Our convoy to Guam had been attacked and we lost one transport full of supplies and fuel. As Guam was the tip of the Navy's spear I was not happy with that.

Then I took my second action. I gave the Navy the Objective of Ponape Island - the only Objective I have given it that was under Japanese Control. They have their own Infantry Divisions and I figured I wanted to see how the Navy could handle its own naval invasion of an enemy target.

I also changed the Navy's Defensive Stance for its ground forces to Attack Stance. Then I changed the 1st Marine (Army) from Attack Stance for their ground forces to Blitzing Stance. I was told that by changing a AIs setting to Blitzing they were more likely to carry out invasions across water. I guess the idea is they become more aggressive?

I plan to leave them both with different settings and see what happens. Then, in the morning of the 23rd, something happened that was good news. The Navy hit Saipan with their Naval Bombers. While Yamamoto was in port with his ships. I knew Naval Bombers had anger issues! Seems our pilots don't like Rear Admiral Yamamoto.

Saipan was just north of Guam which put it within easy reach of the Naval Bombers. It has a port, a airport, anti-aircraft guns, and no defenders. It made me wonder if I should add it to the objective list for the Marine Theater AFTER they had taken their first three. Or maybe give it to the Navy if they take Ponape and show me they can handle island invasions. We would see.

Just before noon the Port Strike ended and seemed the Bombers did some damage to the base, the guns, and the ships. The Patrol had lost 10 Bombers or 2.5 % of their total Strength in the run. Not bad.

Then we got the good news that the Navy also destroyed a cargo ship and a escort ship on the Tokyo-Tegucigalpa route.

At this point I jumped over to Wake Island to check on the 3rd Battleship Fleet to see how they were doing. The 13th Destroyer Division was still recovering but the rest of the Fleet looked serviceable. I have a feeling I may have to expand on the port there.

The Naval Bombers hit Saipan again. As you can see, if you compare Yamamoto's Fleet in this image to the earlier image some of the ships have been damaged along with the base and the guns. I assume that is from the earlier attack. While the Naval Bombers had fully recovered. If he does not leave soon he might not be able to leave at all.

The Bombers returned to Guam by 20:00 (8:00 PM). They had lost 18 Bombers or 4.5 % of their total Strength. Maybe the Japanese gunners were gaining experience?

Either way I am assuming the Japanese ships are even more damaged and the Saipan port is not going to last very long at this rate.

What will happen next? Well, Rear Admiral King gets on my bad side. Sadly, the flaws of my Fleet combos will start to become painfully clear and I will have to rethink everything.

 

[roverS3]

In hindsight it may have refused to split due to having troops onboard.

That's exactly what happened, you can only reshuffle fleets when all the transports are empty. I've never had an issue with all units not being 100% though, that's definitely a bug. I even tend to swap around fleets at sea to send damaged units back to base and keep the main fleet in fighting condition.

You seem to be loosing quite a lot of convoys...

Huzzah for the Navs, if they keep going, they could really sink all of those ships in a couple of days...

I'm waiting to see how the aggressiveness settings change things where Naval Invasions are concerned.

 

[Eurasia]

That's exactly what happened, you can only reshuffle fleets when all the transports are empty. I've never had an issue with all units not being 100% though, that's definitely a bug. I even tend to swap around fleets at sea to send damaged units back to base and keep the main fleet in fighting condition.

Your are right - that last part happens when I try to split and couple Brigades. The Divisions refuse to split unless everything is 100 %. At least that is how I remember it from my France AAR. Maybe I am wrong?

 

[roverS3]

Your are right - that last part happens when I try to split and couple Brigades. The Divisions refuse to split unless everything is 100 %. At least that is how I remember it from my France AAR. Maybe I am wrong?

You can usually force the division to split anyway you want by using the shortcut ctrl+R even if the button is inactive in such cases. That's also how you can add already existing brigades into a hq unit.