"The Royal Backstab": 4-player MP AAR

[Tayran]

No problem

crilloan

Well, if you put it that way . Sorry to have doubted you.

What about the 70% strenght? Is it to simulate the incompitence of italy? I really must have a serious affect.

How can even germany and Italy win over UK and USSR? Is it even possible? History tells us that it wasnt, but in game. I have won as Germany when playing HOI, but mostly due to far worse resistance. I mean, if the the players are equally good, can Germany ever win?

 

[Crilloan]

Well, if you put it that way . Sorry to have doubted you.

What about the 70% strenght? Is it to simulate the incompitence of italy? I really must have a serious affect.

?

I think it is suppoced to model the fact that the italian divisions were only two battalions instead of three. When you build new divisions they will be full strenght.

Italy was a blast to play, but boy is it easy to overextend yourself. Im curious how our next game is going to play, this was our first real MP experience. we will probably mix the teams between every session.

I think the most important lesson for me was that the axis can not afford to lose any divisions at all when faced with hard opposition, since axis would be outproduced by both commonwelth and comintern.

Guess I better go finish my aar, hebos keeps naggin.

 

[unmerged(42855)]

the down fall

I want to thank all the readers of this thread for your interest in our game and your inspiring comments. This game was a blast although it was disappointing that i couldn't put up a better fight after the DOW on USSR. I was looking forward to long lasting strategic warfare against the Russians but instead it went fast in the wrong direction.

The story:

Gibraltar was captured. The Norway campaign was stalled by allied forces in Trondheim. In winter 1940 Bismark entered service and Germany now had a fleet that ruled the Baltic sea. Sweden was DoW'ed and a few weeks later both Norway and Sweden was captured.

USSR military forces was growing at an alarming rate and it was clear that we had to attack before they became invincible (there is no shortage of resources, IC or manpower in Russia). Germany spent the first month in 1941 to rearrange its troops into four major army groups each with its own HQ:

North (30 divisions , infantry and mountaineers winter specialist leaders)

Central (45 divisions, all infantry)

South (25 divisions of infantry + 10 garrison)

Spearhead (22 panzer's and 18 mot inf)

All those troops were on the front against Russia.

My original plan was to let the North army group go through Finland in March-April before Barbarossa. That would give me a new nice front line to attack Moscow from north. But the cumbersome work to rearrange troops and find leaders took too much time. The troops were not ready until June (I sould have done this from)

My defense on the western front was very sparse. Britain was looking weak in late 1940 having lost several divisions in Spain, Denmark and Norway. I was producing infantry at a high rate and everything Germany produced was to be deployed in France. I hoped that i would have enough time to strengthen the western font before the allies could launch a major operation there. We controlled Gibraltar so i thought it was very unlikely that Britain would try something in the Mediterranean. I did not think that Britain would be able to land more troops then what the Italian and spare German troops could handle. That turned out to be the number one misjudgment.

When i attacked Russia my spearhead divisions easily tore into Ukraine. But the Russians counter attacked at Koningsberg and Britain immediately invaded southern France with more than 40 divisions. I called full retreat on the Spearhead army group and tried to stabilize the koningsberg front as i strategically redeployed 30 of my Spearhead divisions to France. Now i just hoped that we could deal with Britain fast enough before the Russians broke through. 50 German divisions + some Italians managed to stop Britain but now Russia broke through into Hungary (Russia had more than 270 infantry divisions by this time of the game) It was too late to respond to the onslaught. The German defense had collapsed and everything went fast downhill. Italy did well though, they almost managed to take Hungary

I want to congratulate Hebos and Kingarnasking to a very well earned victory and an outstanding Campaign. Salute!

 

[Crilloan]

End of imperial dreams

The Rise and fall of the second Roman Empire

It is not known were the selfproclaimed emperor crilloan dissapeared to after the cataclysmic events leading to the ww2. Some say that he has taken up residens at the swedish doctor Munthes villa in San Michele. If so, we can probably be sure that he is enjoying life to the fullest with a bottle of chianti at hand and nefarious plans in his mind. For there is always a new parallell dimension to try a new approach to empire buildning.

In the spring of -41 it stood clear that time was running out if the axis of steel wanted to subjugate the russian bear. The sky in the eastern was darker for every day by the smoke from the enormous industries, working day and night building weapons for the red horde.
Matters got even worse when word reached that secred talks between bulgaria and sovjet led to bulgaria joining the comintern.

It stood soon clear that this was a grave threat when reports came from the bulgarian frontier that the red army had come in force to strenghten the southernmost possible front. This crisis forced italy to keep a strong precens, so as to close the backdoor to europe proper. But it also meant that forces were tied up on the eastern front that could have been used in the west.

When war finally broke out in june on german initative, strong advances were first made, several probes occured att the bulgarian border were the red army tested the roman defenses by throwing joint attacs of 20-30 divisions at the italians. The legions were of the finest quality and stood their test, in an effort to lighten the pressure on the northern front multiple attacs were launched against the bulgarian mountains. Roman legions advanced far into bulgaria when what should not happen yet happened.

The commonwelth had regained its strenght and came back in force, launching a massive seabourne invasion in the south of france that branched of with one arm down to spain and the other up toward the french heartland.

It was quickly decided by the emperor to abandon the efforts in yugoslavia and bulgaria and advance north with all haste. lest not berlin may fall.

In the western front the situation looked dire. In an herculean joint effort to throw back the invaders the axis forces throwed throwed themselfs at hte brittish forces. All in a vain hope to encircle BEF. Losses were horrendous and most divisions were far from 100% in strenght.

In the gap left at brest an american contingent landed tha twas momentarily beaten back by the italians, until the US troops reinforced with several rested armored divisions.

In the end, france were lost, but miraculosly hte gratest italian hero had his men push with their strenght the battered panzers across occupied europe. Oil had been a scarce resource for the brave roman armoured legions in thw whole campaign.

As it was in the beginning, so came it to be in the end

rome stand alone

War is over

Hope you have enjoyed my ramblings



I was not that experienced when we started this campaign but I have learned a lot. MP HOI2 is a complete blast and lots of things that you can take your time and do in SP is a luxury in MP.

I will never forget our session on sunday a week ago. It was draining, scary and left all of us zombies afterwards.

I wonder how it would be with even more players

crilloan

 

[Brasidas]

"I wonder how it would be with even more players"

"The Tactics of Mistake"

Not anything to do with Dickson's classic, imagine 8 players with their own diabolical megalomanical fantasies, and watching them all screw up. It's fun. Even when you (as Germany) lose the initiative.

 

[Tayran]

Did UK take military access of US? I mean America joining up on d-day?!!! ROFL. Or did you have tremendious luck with the AI?

 

[Crilloan]

Did UK take military access of US? I mean America joining up on d-day?!!! ROFL. Or did you have tremendious luck with the AI?

Nah, tremendous bad luck :rofl:

We had agreed to no military control over either USA or japan

I guess they just decided that they wanted a piece of the action before it was over

Guess my surprice when I had to divert one of my already beaten up italian armour corps to chase americans at omaha beach :wacko:

C

 

[unmerged(3879)]

Session 3 was a short one. Gibraltar was overrun by some 50 Axis divs. Sweden was attacked and soon surrendered. My troops are now evacuating from northern Norway.

Most things has already been said about our fourth and last session.

I successfully evacuated from northernmost Norway, only one MOT acted rearguard and had to be left behind. Now, after having been invading Europe several times, I decided it was time to wait for war between Axis and Russia before taking any offensive action. USA DoW:ed just after Norway was annected. I tried to organize my units in preparation for Barbarossa; some 10 ARM Corps containing 1-3 ARM and filling up with MOT for a total size of 3 Divs/Corps. Furthermore some 5 INF Corps including some Canadians. RAF in Britain contained at the time some 10 Fighters, 10 TAC:s, 8 STR and 3 NAV:s.

So

When Germany declared war I had decided to land at the "strip" between Vichy and the sea, and I chose Bordeaux. 3 lvl 2 Marines w ENG easily dislodged the single defending GAR. They then started to attack to the south. It was important to reach Bilbao before the Spaniards could reinforce this chokepoint. At the same time ARM started to move north. Two Transport units were moving constantly between Britain and France.

Now when I reached Loire valley things started to heat up. Some Italian armour was in my way and I managed to dislodge them and they retreated to Bretagne. For a short while, Bretagne was cut off but now I felt the pressure from reinforcing German armor from the east. I retreated to Cholet and Tours and set up behind the river. By now it was clear that Germany had sent a huge chunk of his armor to France and I heard that Hebos made good progress. I was satisfied with just tying up forces. Meanwhile, British units were quite easily mopping up Spain incl Gibraltar with just a few casualties. Clearing out Spain also gave me plenty of room to retreat from Axis troops. At one point Axis forces broke through at Cholet, luckily the units retreated backwards to La Rochelle. At this point, I pulled back to Bordeaux to reform. This lured Axis units forward and made them disperse. A few weeks later I attacked northward once more and this time I made good progress when Axis units were more spread out. Axis forces were made to retreat all along the front. Here I had good help from af few AI Americans who landed in Brest at just the right time and claimed most of northern France. Thank you Paradox!

My big break came when I managed to encircle and destroy almost the entire Axis force in Bourges, truly a Stalingrad of the west. ( The stack not just contains CAV but also a lot of modern ARM and MOT)

This encirclement was the difference between a mere pushback and a total collapse of the whole front. The way to Germany was open and the rest of the game was just a matter of determining the setup of the cold war
I also managed to land in Albania, claiming it and half of Yugoslavia for Democracy.



Some postgame thoughts on Axis play:

* Sometimes being non aggressive can be good! It keeps Beligerence down!

* Protect your fleets in port with ground troops! Fleets are useful as threats even in port. When the enemy ports are devoid of potential threats everything is much easier for Britain.

* Make the Italian player control all Axis forces in France!

* Remember to press the "Offensive supply" button often on all the units involved in the action. Made a big difference in my ability to regain ORG.

* An Axis Barbarossa in 1940 might have been good.


Otherwise everybody made the most to make this a great gaming experience, my best in a long time. Thx and looking forward to the next game!

HJ

 

[unmerged(42855)]

At one point Axis forces broke through at Cholet, luckily the units retreated backwards to La Rochelle. At this point, I pulled back to Bordeaux to reform. This lured Axis units forward and made them disperse. A few weeks later I attacked northward once more and this time I made good progress when Axis units were more spread out. Axis forces were made to retreat all along the front. Here I had good help from af few AI Americans who landed in Brest at just the right time and claimed most of northern France. Thank you Paradox!

My big break came when I managed to encircle and destroy almost the entire Axis force in Bourges, truly a Stalingrad of the west. ( The stack not just contains CAV but also a lot of modern ARM and MOT)

Interesting

When we broke through at Cholet i hoped that the British forces would have to retreat into toiru. Then i may have been able to trap them all. This did not happen and i had to strategically redeploy my troops back to the eastern front. The Russians had almost reached Berlin at this point. there were simply no time to see what happen with the few divisions that was left.

Britain and USSR won a crushing victory. Thanks for your advice

 

[Hebos.vU]

"Prolog"
CCCP AAR of the AAR

So what actually happened during this campaign? Based on many off-forum-board-discussions with the involved players I realize that opinions differ.

This was our first real MP-experience of HOI2 and I think all of us learned a lot. Playing against the AI is completely different. It might look strange that Axis fell so fast. How come Axis didn't held out until 1945 like IRL? Unbalanced scenario? Weak play by Axis? Here are my thoughts;

Important aspects and happenings of the "The Royal Backstab":

• We mostly played at speed level below normal.
  This is very demanding especially when you are fighting on several fronts. In this campaign, the events caused Axis to loose initiative early. The UK and SOV could control when and where to fight. I know this stressed the Axis immensely.
  
• The failure to fire the Vichy-event stalled the Axis.
  Neither of us knew that ITA couldn't hold Vichy if Vichy-event is to fire. This caused the Axis to get stuck in France for several extra months.
  
• The Warsaw fallos.
  The Axis player weren't fully informed of the grave difficulty it is to attack huge stacks in urban territories. This lead the Axis to push all Polish divisions into Warsaw and then surround it, thinking this would put them out-of-supply. The Axis got stuck in Poland from Oct 39-Feb 40. They lost almost 4 months.
  
• The Italian disaster in North Africa.
  Over 20 ITA div and the Italian Navy were destroyed in a daring ITA-campaign.
  
• In MP I believe that when one side gets the upper hand, it goes downhill for the losing players pretty fast. Why set up defences to stall the defeat another 2-3 years? It's victory that counts.

To summarize, I think that the major turningpoint of the war were mostly induced by minor game-mechanics-issues and less by allied strategical supremency. I think our next game will turn out completely different.

Agree? Other thoughts?

Oh, and remember that it is the victor that writes the history

 

[Hebos.vU]

What about the 70% strenght? Is it to simulate the incompitence of italy? I really must have a serious affect.

To correct my Italian friend (who doesn't know his own forces? ), the reason why Italian starting divisions are locked at 70%, is to simulate that the typical Italian infantry division at start of WW2 were composed of 2 infantry regiments, as opposed to the more common setup of 3 infantry regiments per division (as for the German Army).

 

[Hebos.vU]

Awesome end (though my condolences to the German player, of course )

So any plans on continuing the game, with the victors fighting each other?

Probably not. We thought of putting one former Axis as US and one as CCCP #2. But we think it would be more fun to start a new campaign.

Although it would be pretty cool to fight a Patton war. But of course Soviet Union would win

 

[Henry v. Keiper]

Of course they would win...or would they?

*chants under his breath* World War III...World War III...World War III...