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Mindworks - trial run: Project France

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File #3 - February 1938

File # 3
February 1938
Overall Plan
No cause for change. We won’t outnumber the Germans. We will outnumber the Italians, and although their positions are easy to defend, I’m confident that the AI won’t be equal to the task of defeating us. A swift strike at Rome, aimed at knocking Italy out of the war for all practical purposes, still seems like a decent option. At the same time I’ll maintain as strong as possible a defence force in Strasbourg and Mulhouse to keep the Germans at bay until March-April 1940 – long enough to push Italy aside.

Military
43 Infantry units, 4 Light Armoured units. The order of battle won’t really count until war itself is a lot closer.

Technology
1937 saw France develop the following techs:
Operational Destruction Doctrine; Advanced Construction Engineering; Early Tank Destroyer; Adv. Machine Tools; Agrichemistry; Rear Area Vehicle Shop; and Basic Infantry Division.

Next stop better armour and artillery.

Events
Japan has bitten the bullet and invaded China, unleashing a staggering amount of unpleasantness upon East Asia. The Spanish Civil War rages on, neither side seeming to gain the upper hand.

A quiet year for France, to be honest. Not much going on.
 
So you really are planning to move to Italy? Sounds kinda silly to me, to be honest. France is your country, really. Doesn't it feel sort of a gamey move to just leave it and keep on fighting? I vote for keeping the Maginot and keeping the belgium out of the war if any way possible. Then, with possible extra troops, taking down Italy...

Good stuff, nice to read. Keep it up!
 
Well, assaulting level 10 fortesses with just a 3:1 ratio is still ridicule, unless of course you're talking about 3X lvl III panzers with air support against 1 lvl 1 militia...
 
File # 4
February 1939

Overview
Bloodshed on the streets! Mutiny in the Army! Government collapses! Yep, you’ve probably guessed – on 12 September 1938, we had a “ x Policy attacked from all sides” event. Apparently the government’s Constitutional policy was not particularly popular, and Rightists, Ultraleftists, and Liberals all attacked it. Well, given my goal of turning France into a dictatorship by any means possible, this was an opportunity not to be missed – and thus fell the Third Republic. France is now a left-wing radical dictatorship. Long live the second Directoire!

Overall Plan
The Director of the People’s Revolutionary Army has a much more formidable force at his disposal than was the case a year ago. 60 Infantry divisions and 6 armoured divisions can mass upon any border chosen – the greatest problem is now diplomatic. Still, France has been in a similar position – about 150 years previously – and she did alright then – albeit with much weaker neighbours.

With an example like that, though, an aggressive strategy recommends itself to the Directorate. The first act of the new government was to withdraw from its international entanglements with the capitalists (leave the Allies). The second was to combat massive dissent (15% as a result of that choice) by cancelling military production and embarking upon a major social works programme. Dissent is now all but ended (2.91% and falling at 0.10 per day), and I have to decide what to do next.

Germany is still massively stronger than France, and the obvious risk at the moment is that they will wipe out the fledgling country before it can finds its feet. To prevent this, I will leave 30 divisions defending the German border, and take the remainder to go expand.

First target must be Spain, as that front absolutely has to be secure if the army is going to be trying to (potentially) fight both Italy and Germany together. So: 30 infantry (and all the armoured) Divisions are even now taking up positions in the Pyrenees, ready to take the war to the fascists. If this works, I’ll try to keep out of the main European war for a while – at a minimum, until Germany has a common land border with Russia.

Military
Infantry – 60 divisions
L.Arm – 5 divisions
Arm – 1 division
Mtn – 3 divisions

No HQs yet…I’ll want one before invading anywhere.

Technology
Slow progress in existing areas – the main target now is to get assembly lines up and running.

Events
World’s still going to hell in a handbasket. What do you expect though, with the power in the hands of brutal fascists and feeble liberals? While Paris was convulsed with the rise of the proletariat, Czechoslovakia has been partitioned and Germany has united with Austria. Time to shake things up a bit.
 
Relocation

Elbasto, Karakka

If it comes to a fight with the Germans before I'm ready, and if (the second if is quite a big one) I can win a war with Spain or Italy before then, I'll pull my troops back to the most defensible land barrier. France has a couple of decent ones - the main defensive line is awful because Reims and Strasbourg can both be attacked from 3 directions, and the next obvious line (behind the Seine) is mostly easily-attacked plains. Whereas the land barrier into Spain is but 3 provinces, one of which is a mountain, none of which can be attacked from more than 2 directions so long as the others hold.

So that's the reason for relocating the country, with the captured IC from the new nation hopefully enough to keep supplies and reinforcements flowing.

Is it gamey? Yes and no. War - at least in the context of this period - is about winning. Holding the main defensive line against Germany's 160 divisions (all at 90-102 Org. thanks to the superior Blitzkreig lane doctrines) with the motley French army is going to be damn hard - I can probably hold Strasbourg until early 1940, on a historical timeline, but I just won't have the troops to hold the full line. So - absent Germany leaving me alone long enough to build up a sufficiently strong defensive force - it's a question of finding a place where I can keep my army together long enough to hold out until the Germans get occupied elsewhere, or I can build enough troops to keep them at bay indefinitely.

I might come back to this save though, and try to hold the line with some extra forts (which build a good deal quicker these days).
 
Excellent, now the Germans won't DoW you in the forseable future (after all, you aren't part of the allies any longer...)
 
Who knows what the AI will do. But too hold out against 160 germans will be quite hard. But if you can encircle them then its gonna be mucho easier, i would try this in belgium etc, AI will attack and you can make perfect encirclements.
 
Whoa...you're going after Spain AND Italy? Good luck, sir... ;)

The one lacking a name.
 
The best and the worst of times

File #4 - Downfall

Well, it was worth a try. Spain didn't hold out for long, and I was able to move around 40 divisions (35 Infantry, 5 Armoured) North to hold the line against a possible German attack, whilst building up another 6 stacks of 5 Infantry and 1 armoured group each to attack Italy. In the first week of the war against the Italians, all was well. In the second week, we ran into trouble taking Venice.

After that, collapse came swiftly. The attack on Italy had been predicated on a swift drive to Rome, either forcing the Fascists to surrender or so disrupting their lines of communication that their main armies could be eliminated without too much trouble.

Alas, things are rarely quite so easy. In week 2 of the invasion, my troops made it to the gates of Rome before Germany declared war. The USA, appalled by French belligerence, quickly joined in. This wasn't immediately worrying as the aforementioned 40 divisions were holding the fort along a hastily extended Maginot line, but it made a quick victory in Italy imperative. In week 3, Venice finally fell to a combined assault from 3 full army stacks, but it was too late - German panzers were now steaming down through the Alpine passes, and the armies besieging Rome were forced to retreat to ancient Savoy to avoid being cut off from Paris.

Meanwhile, back in France itself, the plucky soldiers of the Third Republic had planned to hold off the Fuehrer's finest for a couple of months while the bulk of France's forces retreated to the Pyrenees. The Germans were just too quick, though, and smashed through the defensive lines, beating the French into submission before the battered soldiers could withdraw to new defensive positions. The final stand of the Army of the New Revolution was in the area around Marseilles. For two whole weeks they fought off combined assaults from Germany and the revitalised Italian forces, but to no avail. Ultimately, the Wehrmacht goose-stepped through the ruins of Marseilles as Italian tanks drove in triumph through Tunis. France was finished.

Lessons learned
Well, three major lessons for me in this.

The first: France's land doctrines are abysmally bad. Truly, honestly, shockingly bad. So bad, in fact, that France will only win land-only battles against Germany where (i) the Germans are outnumbered 3:1; (ii) the wily froggies can outmaneuvre the Germans and encircle them/attack while they're marching, or (iii) the French are in an unassailable defensive position with enough troops to hold it, no more than two provinces that afford the Germans room to attack, and no weak points in the line in either direction.

The second is that I changed my mind too much. Had I stuck to the initial strategy of holding out against Germany (or at least stopped at annexing Spain), it might have been possible to avoid the crippling defeat that I was handed.

The third is that I shouldn't have disbanded the early French divisions - upgrading is much quicker and cheaper than I had expected, and a significantly better option than building new troops.


Well, that's all for this pilot. Now I'm a bit more familiar with the setup I'll try a few more tricks for the next in the series - possibly a smaller scenario, more pictures, and a more consistent format.

Thanks for reading!
 
too bad to see that you fail... But I'd rather lvl 3 forts to a mountain chain any time of the year! (except perhaps for Trezibod...).
 
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