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Mindworks - trial run: Project France

Daipeter · 2005-08-22T21:47:28+00:00

Version: Historical Stony Road v.2.04 Diff.: Normal/HSR Normal Date: February 1, 1936 Goals: Resist Nazi occupation. Conquer as much land as possible. I have entitled this AAR ‘mindworks’ for the prosaic reason that I mean to show how I have arrived at every material decision that I take – in other words, to show how my mind was working as I played. I hope this will encourage others whose minds work differently to agree, question, or challenge as whimsy takes them, and that the series will develop as a kind of masterclass of different styles of play. Reports will begin in Feb 1 1936 as the first month was spent gauging my resources, planning IC use, and setting up trades. The formatting is still imperfect, and I haven't yet worked out how to make my screenshots into insertable files. I will, though, eventually. This is my first AAR. Please be kind to it, and forgiving if the exigencies of my real life and job cause me to miss posts. Thank you for your patience. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. File #1 February 1, 1936 As this report is my first AAR, for sloth’s sake I have set the relatively modest goals of resisting the German onslaught and then seeing how much land I can reasonably grab. The priority is resisting a German attack. What will it take to resist the disembowelling of France? Both vanilla HOI2 and the HSR mod do a very good job of modelling France’s utter collapse in the summer of 1940. After a few dismal tries as France at the vanilla 1938 and 1939 scenarios, and bearing in mind the Great War mindset tech tree to which France is committed, I decided on the following strategy: Overall plan  Fortify strongly against Germany and Italy, allowing them to exhaust themselves attacking across the overlong border from Dunkerque to Marseilles.  Maintain a powerful close-range airforce to mitigate or nullify the impact of the Luftwaffe and support later expansion.  Build a core army of hardened veterans with a strong armoured component, ready to counterattack when the time is right. Execution Forts The Maginot line will be extended to cover Reims, Valenciennes, Lille and Dunkerque. Each will be fortified as much as is practicable, probably up to level 3 each. This will leave 7 provinces to defend. Hopefully the right choice of units to defend will make French losses along the front almost negligible, and weaken Germany sufficiently as to make a strong counter-punch. Units A maximum of 24 full-strength units could potentially be brought to bear against any of those areas. Ideally, each would be maintained with 24 units, 15 infantry and 9 armour, for a total of 105 Inf and 63 Arm by May 1940. For the airforce, I mean to try the following: 20 divisions split into 5 full strength squadrons, enough to cover the entire front. Choosing flexibility over specialisation, each squad will contain two of the best interceptors and two of the best CAS I can build. The existing tactical bombers will be set aside and upgraded if the resources become available. I do not plan to build any ships. The British navy, with a little help, should be quite sufficient to hold off the Germans. Indeed, to conserve supplies and oil, the vast majority of the French navy will be disbanded. Tech The major battles will be on land and in the air. I am therefore not going to research any naval units or doctrines. This cuts it down to land, air, and industrial techs. France has 5 research slots and as teching up is so important, all 5 will be constantly in use. In the pre-war period, the industrial techs will be key. As France does not have a huge industrial base, it will be extremely important to acquire the two machine tools upgrades for the extra IC. The planned land fortification programme makes Advanced Construction a very tempting option. If there are any excess slots later, resources can be diverted to acquire radar and computers. Turning to France’s land techs, the scenario makes some of my choices for me. France is committed to the Grand Battle Plan, which leaves only four possibilities for further advance, all quite some way distant. Pre-planned defence is a necessary step, but cannot be realistically researched before 1940. Of the 3 paths to follow, I decided that my slow, hidebound forces wouldn’t benefit from Operational Stages. After some deliberation, I opted for Infiltration Assault over Attritional Contain. Whilst the cheaper Heavy and Artillery brigades would be nice, they would come too late in the day to be useful. If the army got its infiltration skills up, then in 1941-2 I can counterattack by night, catching most European enemies on the hop. However, all of these techs can be left until 1941, before which research in these fields will be depressingly slow. Looking at the Infantry, only one research tree is really crucial, and that is the Infantry itself. To resist the Germans will take large numbers of fortified Inf ’39 units, so Basic infantry is absolutely crucial. Cavalry, Airborne, and Marines can be safely ignored for now, although I may turn back to them quite a bit later for some fast advance units. The logistical advances will be handy but are not a priority. At least the first mountain upgrade will be important if I am to mount a strong defense. Armour is a tricky one – should I try to build up my defensive strength early, or invest heavily in light tanks, hoping that they can hold off the opposition and mount a decent counter-attack? After some though, I opt for a light-tank based force – it will build faster and I’ll need at least some tanks quickly to bolster the defences in 1940. Artillery is a much easier decision though – my heavily infantry-based force will rely heavily on this and I’ll need SP-Art to get improved infantry, so raching as fast as possible towards good AT, Art, and eventually tough heavy brigades will be key to the overall strategy. Looking at the air techs, I decide that the doctrines can wait for a while. The planes, however, cannot. As the strategy calls for good interceptors and CAS, most research will be in these fields. So, which are the top 5 techs right now? I went for: 1) Early field artillery 2) Basic Infantry 3) Basic Close Air Support 4) Improved Machine Tools 5) Advanced Construction Engineering Number crunching Time to get in touch with my inner accountant. I should freely confess at this point that I turned to the law because I’m awful at maths, so if you notice any mistakes below, please do point them out. First things first – work out how much it would cost to build the army that I’d really like to have. Then see how I can pay for it later. Expenditure Looking at the stats, 1936 infantry (the best we can currently build) cost 5.8 IC each and take 77 days to complete. To have a full complement of les pauvres bloody infanteries in place by, say, 1 Feb 1940 means a total expenditure of 609 IC between now and then. Given that I’m going light-armoured, the Hotchkiss H-39s that I can currently build are as good a guide as any to the cost of making up the French Army’s armoured contingent. They cost 17 IC each, which means that the 63 I’m looking for will set me back 1071 IC, which is a worryingly high number. For the aircraft, my interceptors cost 10.2 IC each, and I can’t yet produce any CAS aircraft, so don’t know their cost. I estimate that they shouldn’t exceed 10 IC each, and might be a bit under, so for the purposes of simplifying this calculation, I’m planning on 20 air divisions of 10IC each, for a grand total of 200IC, which is at least relatively affordable. As to the fortifications, that’ll be a grand total of 4 provinces x 3 levels x 5IC a pop, equalling 60IC before the goose-stepping Wehrmacht hordes come knocking. That’s 1071 + 609 + 200 + 60 for a grand total of 1940ICs by 1940, and that’s before any extras such as Artillery or Brigades are put into play. 1940 for 1940. Spooky. Let’s see how much I can reasonably expect to have in hand by then… Income France has an industrial base of 138 IC, currently 94 due to the poor preparation of the nation for war. Given that we will be forced into war relatively early, there’s not much point building extra factories – every spare IC will be needed for building a tough defensive force ASAP. Paying for my tech and keeping the plebs happy currently costs me 30 IC. I’ll need about 20 for supplies. Given France’s woeful social policies, upgrading isn’t practical. Worse, most of our infantry are 1918-level, meaning a doubled upgrade time for them. The final sum available for production as of 1/2/36 is therefore…44ICs I’ll up that to an average 50 to reflect the wartime increases. Assuming one average unit is produced every 100 days (in fact it probably works out a bit less than that, but bear with me), and that I have 4 years to prepare that means that I’ll be able to manage 50 x (365x4/100) total ICs’ worth by the date of the outbreak of hostilities. I make that 730 IC – about a third of what I think I need. The calculation is on the pessimistic side, but it still holds true. If I have to make do with only 1/3 of what I’d like, what do I sacrifice? To the extent that there’s a surplus I can rebuild later. The first decision I made was a tough one, and in retrospect maybe a wrong one. To cut down supplies needed to only 20, I’ve disbanded all obsolete (pre level 3) ships, and the greater part of my army (I reckoned I wouldn’t have spare ICs for upgrading for a while, and it creates manpower for more advanced troops). After my cull, France’s land army is organised as follows: 1st army: 1 light arm, 2x 1936 inf. with arm car attachment 2nd army: same 3rd army: 3x mountain inf in grenoble So not too well-placed to do any fighting. How can I use my 730 ICs most effectively? For starters, I’ll need to make do with not enough troops straight away in 1940, and hope that I can hold out until the extras come online. Even then that’s still too little, so the plan changes: rather than fortifying the entire front with what they need to survive, I’ll fortify each of the 7 German-facing provinces with only 12 units, with an extra 3 mobile reserves of 12 units each to plug any gaps. Spare troops can be diverted to the Italian border if and when they decide to join the fun. A Halving the total ICs needed (but not the forts – I’ll need all 3 levels) takes me to 1000 ICs – just 240 over. Those can be made up in 1940-41, so long as I can hold out that long. The plan then is to build: 52 inf, 31 L.Arm, 10 squadrons of planes and 60 IC’s worth of forts by 1940. As time is crucial, I’ll try to gear up as much as possible to get those extra days. My initial build run will be: 4x 1936 inf. sequenced 6 times, for a total of 24 to come online by 22 Feb 1937 4x forts, to come online by April 12 1937 1x Int-2 sequenced twice, to be finished by sep 13 1936. That gets me just under halfway towards my infantry total, and 1/5 towards the planes. Tanks can come later, as can any divisions that I need. Of course, I’m a bit under right now, but only a little bit. I’ll review the situation in Feb 37 to see where we’re at. Just two more things to consider today: diplomacy and politics. Diplomacy I’m not planning to mess around with this too much, other than to make ad hoc trades to meet demand. Politics As France will eventually be played as an aggressive country, I’m hoping to turn her into a dictatorship. It will take awhile, but the reductions in needed consumer goods will certainly help. Other sliders may be changed with events, but until I can DoW with impunity, there are no other real imperatives. Thanks for reading!

Thread starter Daipeter
Start date Aug 22, 2005

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GAGA Extrem

Per Ardua Ad Astra

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Aug 26, 2005

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#9

Okay, here is my short question:

How can france win a MP game vs Germany and Italy?
('36 scenario, war declaration allow after Munich event '38)

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