I downloaded Kaiserreich, but haven't actually tried it yet. I got distracted by other things, so now I guess I'll just try Kaiserreich after they update it to use the new systems. That will probably take some time (though I wouldn't be surprised if they gave the Kaiserreich team some help and/or advance notice on how to code for the new systems so hopefully not a huge amount of time), so I'll spend the time waiting for that update by playing the actual update and probably trying out the Asian nations for the first time.
So after watching the 3 Day War stream that Paradox did with a bunch of twitch/youtube people, I've been quite looking forward to playing HoI4 some more. So I figured I would give Kaiserreich a try finally, since it's reasonably different from the base game. I decided I would play as Russia, and it was my intention to stay a Republic and see what I could do, but while moving the window to choose a leader after the assassination of Kerensky I accidentally clicked on the Paternal Autocrats, and I eventually ended up with the National Populists in charge (who seem basically fascist). I rolled with it, because I wasn't sure which choice would lead to the path I wanted opening up anyway, and had some fun with trying to figure out exactly how decisions would influence the country moving forward. I went with the Mass Assault army reform since it gave the most political power, and I needed that to stabilize the country. I annexed my former vassal state of Alash Orda and then Turkestan south of them, and was pleasantly surprised when I got actual cores on the territory. I then started on the Caucasus states, and ignored the German Empire when they warned me against it. That seemed to be the right decision since they didn't do anything after that. I took the Don-Kuban Union, puppeted Georgia peacefully, and did a hostile takeover of Azerbaijan. The Ottomans handled their rebellions pretty well, and then ended up in a war with Persia, Egypt and some other guys, so I decided it was time to take the Bosphorus Strait for myself. I ended up with the Turkish State and Kurdish Empire as puppets, while I directly controlled the strait. I considered taking out the Axis powers of Egypt, Persia and friends but by this point the syndicalists were starting to make real gains against the German Empire so I took the European direction focus. While I was doing that, White Ruthenia demanded land from me (with their mighty 2 divisions), so they volunteered to be first. I declared on both them and the Kingdom of Ukraine at the same time, though somehow France sniped Sevastopol and some other Black Sea territory in the peace deal. I then took out Finland, taking some of the land for myself and making a puppet out of the rest, and then declared on France because I have a core on Sevastopol you jerks. France had pretty much finished up with Mitteleuropa, having turned Germany into a Syndicalist nation (and somehow not a puppet), but was still fighting Republican Italy (who had just recently finished uniting the peninsula under one government), the Empire of France and Canada. I rampaged across Germany pretty easily once the Syndicalist armies started running out of equipment (helped along by France moving to Scraping the Barrel, crippling their industrial output), and in early April 1942 Germany capitulated and I was able to surround a very large portion of the French army. Canada also was able to force Scotland and England to capitulate, so I didn't have to do a naval invasion, and just had to take down France (and hopefully beat Italy to Paris).
Unfortunately, something is happening April 20th, 1942 that is causing the game to crash. I have no idea what it is or if I can fix it somehow, so I guess that's where this game ends. I have no doubt that I can finish off France (I have more troops in the field than they do at this point, and they aren't just fighting me), though I'm not sure what the peace deal will look like. Presumably Italy will get a good chunk of stuff, and I have no idea what will happen with the German Government in Exile (who actually took some land around Danzig). My next conquest would likely be either the Belgrade Pact (Serbia, Romania, Greece and somehow the United Baltic States) or I could go clean up some of the mess in Asia, probably starting with the Mongolian Empire since I wouldn't mind getting my railroad back. Shame I'll never be able to actually do that, I've got ludicrous available manpower, tons of resources and lots of factories. I figure I would leave Austria-Hungary alone unless they do something to piss me off, same with Italy and Canada.
So far as China I have been able to hold the line at Beijing, and just recently actually pushed back into Manchuria. There is a break out on the south I am dealing with but once I close that up and shift troops back north I think I may be able to sweep into Korea.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I did a game where I got Kaiserin Victoria, which was pretty neat. The decision to form the HRE was visible, but there was no way I was going to be able to control the necessary territory since that tree doesn't have easy ways to get war goals on the necessary nations. The Kaiserin's portrait is awesome, though there really only ended up being two (three?) major wars because France, Spain and the PRC ended up in the Comintern, while Japan got stuck in their pro-Communist civil war (first time I've seen commie Japan) and couldn't kick the nationalists out of Tokyo. Manchukuo did jack squat (took the obedience path which screwed him pretty bad when Japan went unthinkable). China was free to do whatever it wanted, which turned out to be submitting to the southeastern warlord (Guangxi Clique I think? They ended up taking the name China anyway). Poland formed his own faction, as did Italy.
The first war broke out in late 1939 when I declared on France for Alsace, which worked out well because he was just about to win his civil war for Communism. The USSR had no real way to get to me, though he did have a wargoal on Poland that he used after I started steamrolling France. After I finished with France I noticed that Poland's faction had barely lost any land (about a 1 tile strip all the way across) and had caused massive Soviet casualties, so I asked all of them for access and moved everybody but Rommel over, since I had to send Rommel back to stomp a mudhole in the new Comintern member Spain. I reinforced the Polish (and friends) line as the Soviets kept attacking to no avail, and when Rommel made it back to the eastern front I started pushing back. Which was, of course, when Italy declared war on Greece, who Great Britain invited into the Allies, which meant there was an unguarded French-Italian border (apparently the French civil war took priority over my territorial gains there, so no Alsace for me) that I rushed the only available troops I had to, which happened to be a bunch of cavalry I made for unrest suppression. They surprisingly slowed the Italians enough for the French remnants to arrive, as well as some newly trained troops of mine. I managed to push them back to the original border, where their fortifications stymied me. I kind of let that simmer, as Yugoslavia was doing pretty well (saved Greece and held their own line) even when Bulgaria joined in, which could have turned out badly for Poland's friend Romania but somehow didn't (likely because I was keeping the Soviets busy on the other border). Eventually South Africa and Great Britain got some landings on Italy, and Yugoslavia pushed in far enough to convince Italy to weaken the French border, at which point I rolled in. Italy ended up capitulating very slightly before the USSR. I had right around 1 million casualties, the USSR was at 11 million (a good chunk to me, though Poland actually caused the most casualties of everybody). After the peace deal there didn't seem to be anything left worth doing, since I couldn't justify on Austria or Czechoslovakia because they didn't generate any world tension.
It was a pretty amusing (and quick) game. There were a few annoyances, as while the AI was noticeably better (Italy a legitimate threat, Poland's faction not crumbling to the Soviet war machine), I would have liked to have seen Japan's civil war reach a conclusion and the AI still trains up a far larger army than its industry can support (and possibly pushes them out only partially trained, though that is just a guess really). Spain was a threat for like a week and a half before all this stuff broke and he couldn't replace it, while the USSR had about a 4 to 1 ratio of divisions to factories. It'd be one thing if they were small divisions, but these were standard 18-20 width setups. This was also the first playthrough that I stepped the difficulty up to normal, having previously played on recruit because I didn't feel I was very good. I still don't feel I am very good, and there didn't see to be much difference between recruit and normal in how the game played out.
If I do Germany again I'll probably go down the path that lets me assassinate Mussolini. I'm not really sure how that whole thing plays out, but it sure sounds amusing to have Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy all monarchies and allied again. Next I'll probably try either Japan (for the first time ever) or one of the Chinas (only played a China game in Kaiserreich, where Qing was good fun).
Yeah Paradox will not stop making DLC for this until Hearts of Iron 5. If you want a relatively stable experience then hop on after an expansion and use their steam beta feature to stick with a version you want if it's changing too rapidly.
For reference, go look at the DLC for Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4. They're both older and still getting DLC.
Playing nationalist china is pretty painful. The Political support thingie is a pain in the ass. "I am china!" "No I am!" "I am china!" "I am china and so is my wife!"
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The most important thing is to divide Fascist Germany in half, which can usually be accomplished reasonably quickly if you push towards the Czech border. Then you can take out the south with Munich who will have severe supply problems due to being cut off from Berlin. Better players than me have managed to win that civil war before Italy took out Ethiopia, but I'm not very good and when I did it I took much longer. Another tip is to change the icon for your infantry so you can more easily see which ones are the event spawned troops, because the spawned troops are much weaker than the normal army troops. Unfortunately you can't change the icon for the event spawned troops currently, so you have to do it for your regular dudes.
Thank you chrisnl! I sent my experienced troops directly for the Czech border and managed to cut off the Bavarian forces from Berlin. It was a mop-up operation afterwards.
Thank you chrisnl! I sent my experienced troops directly for the Czech border and managed to cut off the Bavarian forces from Berlin. It was a mop-up operation afterwards.
I'm glad you were able to deal with those Fascist scum properly!
Today I played as Nationalist China, and my first run went poorly when I insufficiently guarded my ports. So I restarted, and the second run went pretty well, though only Sinkiang became a puppet. I was able to conquer Yunna and Guangxi Clique before Japan came calling, but was still dealing with Shanxi and hadn't attacked Xibei San Ma at all. I kept the Japanese out of my ports and out of Beijing even, and Shanxi joined the Co-Prosperity Sphere like the traitors they are. Shortly after I stabilized my borders, Communist China flipped a state and declared war on me, and they pushed a decent way in until my half-trained troops I pushed out could stop them. I spent quite some time just fighting defensive wars, and Japan lost tons of manpower and equipment attempting to push my line. Then Xibei San Ma started up with that popularity crap within my borders, so I had to spend a bunch of political power fighting that and decided I might as well attack them too. I was able to push them decently far before Japan was able to get troops to stabilize the line, which weakened the rest of their line and let me push back pretty much everywhere but Manchuria. Sometime during this Sinkiang became independent again, though this time not Communist. I hadn't called them into the war because they would have been completely useless anyway. Then surprisingly Manchukuo started their independence war during this mess, which screwed up the Japanese even more, so I took ruthless advantage. I capitulated all the other Chinas and had to fabricate on Sinkiang to get them into the war before Japan gave up, since I wanted them to join Japan's faction and not the Allies or Comintern (the Axis died a horrible death when Hungary created the Pact of Rome and then Italy left that to make their own faction, and then while Germany was trying to Conquer Austria they had a democratic revolution, which I had never seen before). Once I started pushing into Sinkiang I figured it was safe to kick Japan out of Korea, so I went ahead and did this. By this point Japan had maybe 100k troops in the field, it was a brutal war.
Then something funky happened. I have basically no navy, and almost no air force, and certainly no marine or paratrooper tech. I accepted the end of the war on the popup, and I got Mengkukuo and Manchukuo's lands as expected, and Korea was released. And also Shanxi, Xibei San Ma and Communist China re-appeared, and at peace with me. My armies were in exile, and I had no usable war goals on any of those nations. I could have waited for them to return from exile while I fabricated on each of them one by one, but they are still part of the Co-Prosperity sphere so if I went to war again I'd end up fighting Japan! I decided to close the game without saving (thankfully I don't play iron man) and bug report it. I can't imagine that was the intended behavior that when Japan gives up the war all the conquered territory from its own faction went back to those faction members.
Nice summary chrisnl! I'll have to give China or Japan a playthrough one of these days .. I've always focused more on the European theatre of war.
How is the default template for Motorized/Tanks nowadays for Germany or the Soviet Union? Do they need any further adjustments aside from support battalions? I'm conscious to not go over the width for design.
I've been playing Manchukuo and trying the Qing path, but there are a bunch of weird bugs with the tree. I was thinking of trying monarchist Germany, but the giant fronts and handling huge amounts of troops always feels like a lot of effort because I don't trust the front manager to not throw my troops into meat grinders (...but I still want to use the planning for the attack bonuses and commander exp). It's usually alright until I start having to push into the USSR.
Other than assorted bugs, the Manchukuo game is/was going alright. There are some ridiculously tough Japanese forces. There's also so much mountainous terrain that they take huge amounts of troops to dislodge. Veteran units on mountains with entrenchment bonuses basically require cavalry for encircling instead of direct fights. Also, I control Pusan but Japanese troops in South Korea were still in supply.
A Gran Colombia game also sounds like it might be interesting, if you can manage to get it done before the USA decides to stomp on your face.
Liking most of the new mechanics. The decisions give a bit more granularity to the game and the split into stability and war support also ups the management in a good way. Sort of messes with capitulation levels though. If you don't care about China at all, it's probably not worth $20, but there's a lot there to flesh out the world a bit.
I want to get the DLC, but I know I'm going to be sad when the new communist China tree winds up being a nerf compared to how fun they were with the default focus tree (alllllllllll the manpower, and easy bloodless flipping of China to your control over time). I think I'll adjust in time though, as the Paradox flavor text is always fun.
I'm mostly upset that I have to remember the way to update my mod on steam without duplicating it (I finally made notes and then my harddrive died), because no one will believe that it works until I edit the version number in a text file and reupload.
Edit: Oh shit they finally went the mod route and took Japan out of the Axis? That makes capitulation sooooo much better. Having to beat Japan to stop rebellion in Germany was the worst.
I generally go with 20 width divisions, though there is a strong argument to be made for 40 width because of how defense works. The AI is scripted to use 20 width, though, so to make things more even I stick with that. For infantry I go 7 inf + 2 art, plus support companies of engineers, recon, logistics (optional depending on doctrine/theater), anti-tank (optional depending on opposition forces), field hospitals (optional depending on how much manpower you have) and sometimes signal companies (obviously not all of these at once since you can only have 5). For light tanks I usually do 5 motorized + 5 light tanks, support companies of engineers, mechanics, recon, logistics and artillery or signal companies. I won't usually use light tanks unless I'm Germany and have the industry to support tanks right away. For medium and modern tanks I do the same as light, but often I'll put mechanized instead of motorized, especially now that mechanized have had their cost reduced. Some people do a 6/4 split one way or the other, and that works just fine as well. If you're willing to micromanage everything, you can make full tank divisions with full motorized divisions to hold their supply lines, but that's too much work for me. I also don't generally use heavy tanks, though an argument can be made for a 9 inf + 1 heavy TD division design, with usually engineers, mechanics, recon, artillery and optional signal company.
Then of course there is the ridiculously high organization you can get from 10 width divisions with Superior Firepower, and the ridiculous defense you can get with 40 width divisions that are basically just the 20 width with battalions doubled. Thankfully the days of armies of nothing but marines are over.
You can comfortably run 10 infantry or 8inf+1art+1at if facing tanks (with, at minimum, supp art+at) now after nerfs to line artillery and changes to soft attack. The divisions will be significantly better on defence and only lose a little offensive power but you shouldn't be using your infantry for offence anyway; that's what your tank divisions are for. Support artillery was significantly buffed to be 10% closer to line artillery but take far less guns
40 width divisions are essentially cheating against the AI because they'll never build anything that can compete. Because of the way defence and breakthrough work a single 40 width division is going to be superior to two 20 width divisions every time.
Pre DLC at least, Japan started with a 40 width division template. It always seemed odd given how much better they were than other starting templates -- it gets really cheesy if you toss in a heavy tank destroyer to a 40 width division because hardness and penetration aren't a simple average, unless the DLC changed it.
Nah they didn't change the combat formulas, just the numbers being fed into them. So line artillery took a big nerf (lower starting value, no hidden +25% modifier) while support artillery never got the +25% number and now takes way fewer artillery pieces. 40 width divisions with 1 heavy TD are borderline cheating against the AI, as they will never adapt their templates. Do note that while the HT1 itself is almost complete garbage, HTD1 is actually a solid unit, so you can do this very early on if you can afford to build HTDs.
They nerfed line artillery again? It got a big nerf in the patch before the DLC over 6 months ago.
Edit: Finally read the patch notes, and it looks like yes! They've nerfed line artillery and self-propelled artillery roughly 50% in the last year. I wish they could find a way to buff the AI without making division designing less powerful over and over again, but I get it.
Apparently that's "fixed" into "Why don't you just spam battlecruisers with some Carrier support".
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Hrm is it battlecruisers with carrier support? I have been hearing a lot of grumbling about pure battleship fleets being overpowered if you are within range of land based planes, or battleships with carrier support in open waters away from airfields. I could see battlecruisers working well, with their excellent speed.
Hrm is it battlecruisers with carrier support? I have been hearing a lot of grumbling about pure battleship fleets being overpowered if you are within range of land based planes, or battleships with carrier support in open waters away from airfields. I could see battlecruisers working well, with their excellent speed.
Basically you need air superiority, navalbombers and battlecruisers to maximize your industrial->firepower potential.
You can get almost 3 battlecruisers for every 2 battleships of equivalent development/era, their evasion and speed is significantly higher while their firepower and range is marginally less. Armor isn't really crazy effective in capital on capital combat.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Apparently the domination of battlecruisers comes with a caveat. You need to mod armor piercing to be better than your opponents battleships, so you need to put points into Reliability and Gun. Lots into guns.
But if you get Gun 3 Battlecruiser IIs before they get battleship 3s (and eventually gun 5 to prevent them from being able to uparmor their battleships). Victory at sea.
Unmodded BCIs->BB1s, but not BB2s
Modded BCIs can defeat BB2s, but not BB3s and BB4s.
Unmodded BC2s will crush BB2s, but need mods to beat 3s and 4s.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Playing my first Germany game with the new patch and decided to give it that ahistorical flavour.
Fuckin' Italy declares war on Yugoslavia and draws them and Czechoslovakia into the allies before I can demand the Sudetenland. About 2 months before that I got a request from Italy to join the Axis and decided I didn't need them because Italy just roots everything so I've at least dodged being drawn into the war.
I've actually seen Italy perform well on the battlefield this patch, like it's 50/50 whether the Vichy event fires or not (it doesn't fire if Italy takes enough territory). German AI still declares all the wars, but oddly enough it wins them, maybe because of the new MEFO bills thing which seems way too powerful for the minimal cost and eventual drawback. Like Germany ends up with ridiculous industry very easily. I honestly think they could halve the bonus and double the cost and it would still be worth using.
Apparently the domination of battlecruisers comes with a caveat. You need to mod armor piercing to be better than your opponents battleships, so you need to put points into Reliability and Gun. Lots into guns.
But if you get Gun 3 Battlecruiser IIs before they get battleship 3s (and eventually gun 5 to prevent them from being able to uparmor their battleships). Victory at sea.
Unmodded BCIs->BB1s, but not BB2s
Modded BCIs can defeat BB2s, but not BB3s and BB4s.
Unmodded BC2s will crush BB2s, but need mods to beat 3s and 4s.
When you talk about Battlecruiser spam do you literally mean just battlecruisers and no screens? Battlecruisers were usually what I went for anyway since they (Battlecruisers II) were easily capable of defeating the stock battleships that the UK/US/Japan/Italy have and were much cheaper, and more importantly, faster, to build than Battleships. But like did they nerf screens/buff big ships?
The naval mechanics are pretty messed up right now. The screen ships and submarines are not effective in their assigned roles, since subs are detected too easily (and are slow of course, which is proper) while screen ships have too high a chance to try and use their guns against capital ships they can't hope to meaningfully injure, as well as only the AA on each specific ship being attacked working against the planes attacking it.
Apparently the domination of battlecruisers comes with a caveat. You need to mod armor piercing to be better than your opponents battleships, so you need to put points into Reliability and Gun. Lots into guns.
But if you get Gun 3 Battlecruiser IIs before they get battleship 3s (and eventually gun 5 to prevent them from being able to uparmor their battleships). Victory at sea.
Unmodded BCIs->BB1s, but not BB2s
Modded BCIs can defeat BB2s, but not BB3s and BB4s.
Unmodded BC2s will crush BB2s, but need mods to beat 3s and 4s.
When you talk about Battlecruiser spam do you literally mean just battlecruisers and no screens? Battlecruisers were usually what I went for anyway since they (Battlecruisers II) were easily capable of defeating the stock battleships that the UK/US/Japan/Italy have and were much cheaper, and more importantly, faster, to build than Battleships. But like did they nerf screens/buff big ships?
Screens just seem. Unimportant. Submarines can never damage capital ships properly since they start out of torpedo range (have a secondary fleet of destroyers to wipe out submarines). Screens can't damage battleships for shit since 3/4th of the time they try to use their peashooter guns instead of torps (which means that capital ships will slaughter them).
Light cruisers can't really do their job either.
So, Just battlecruisers.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
They (supposedly) improved submarines by making them harder for fleets to detect. People have mixed results, but all subs at least seems semi-workable now (closer to the historical precedent where the Germans don't wrest control of the seas but do sink things the Allies consider important sometimes). They can achieve some tiny amount of something instead of just wasting your manpower.
Everything else is untouched (other than torpedo cruisers and other weird Japanese things I haven't actually seen). And my German go-to in the past has been DD + BB + land-based fighters and bombers. Cruisers are pretty useless and carriers are optional (unless you're in the Pacific and can't get land-based cover for your fleet; even then there is debate about their utility. They may still have the bug where carrier-based planes can only launch one sortie). Apparently DD + BC also works, but then I can't uselessly build SHBBs. The DDs are basically an anti-submarine screen and occasional damage sponge while your massive ships take their time getting in range.
The formable nations look pretty sweet! Browsing through the files and there are quite a few of them, and it looks like most of them give you cores as well. That's really strong! I love my alt history options though, so hooray for more viable paths for minor nations. Suddenly all of those Road to 56 focus trees look a lot less cheesy, and some of them are even relatively conservative compared to the Paradox options.
I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy the DLC, as I'm getting the itch to play again. Of all of the changes the formable nations were fairly quiet, and is huge if you like playing minor nations.
Utter victory over the allies was surprisingly simple as the German (imperial) reich.
It allows you to kick france and britains ass without the US getting involved (since world tension never got above 20% until me and Italy divvied the world between us), and once that was done the crazy industrial power of my reich (since I had the entire industrial might of britain, france and India under my heel while my steadfast royal ally Italy had the entirety of Africa) allowed me to easily crush the Comintern.
Once I had the Old world under my boot (and had incorporated Canada into the Central powers) crushing america was super simple.
!955 rolls around, and the Central Powers rule the world!
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The formable nations look pretty sweet! Browsing through the files and there are quite a few of them, and it looks like most of them give you cores as well. That's really strong! I love my alt history options though, so hooray for more viable paths for minor nations. Suddenly all of those Road to 56 focus trees look a lot less cheesy, and some of them are even relatively conservative compared to the Paradox options.
I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy the DLC, as I'm getting the itch to play again. Of all of the changes the formable nations were fairly quiet, and is huge if you like playing minor nations.
The Mongol Empire isn't one of the formable nations at the moment, though of course Mongolia is there. The only formable east Asian nations seem to be one in Indonesia and one in Thailand. Of course the Ottoman Empire is available, plus the Persian Empire as well, which are also technically in Asia.
-edit- Actually, does Indonesia count as part of Asia?
Well damn. I love almost all of the DLC changes, but the artillery nerf feels pretty dumb so far. It seems like there's no solid industrial middle ground between a bunch of guys with rifles and full on tank battalions now. I'm pretty grossly out industrializing my neighbors, but there's really not much point in it aside from having enough small arms to support your manpower base. It's a total manpower war until tanks -- having 3x as many factories is getting me basically nothing compared to my equal manpower but destitute neighbor. My small arms are easily covered, and cranking out artillery beyond support battalions is getting me pretty much nothing.
I have a ton of planes relative to them of course, but my manpower losses are really high without artillery being much good at breaking through lines. I guess it's tank rush every time now!
So last night I started a new game, and for the first time ever I turned on Ironman mode. Initially the performance was super sluggish, and I had no idea why, but it turns out another game was installing an update and when the notification that it was finished popped up things were normal. Silly auto-updating games.
Anyway, I decided to give Manchukuo a try, since I've seen some people on streams have some decent success as them. Holy crap you start with almost nothing, between giving up factories to Japan and consumer goods, I started with 1 military and 1 civilian factory available for production, though I did get another civilian from trade after a little bit. Taking care of the bandit problem wasn't too bad, I put my starting 9 divisions in the eastern bandit province and built as many guns as I could to handle the northern and western provinces. The bandits got one raid off, but I was lucky and it didn't damage anything. Really the only option that would have caused an issue would have been damaging the military factory. Also I am thankful that the Japanese AI prioritizes building up Manchukuo if a player is running it, otherwise it would have been way harder.
Bandits dealt with, it became time to try and build up to fight the Japanese. Thankfully I won't have to take on their entire army, just the bits not fighting China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Wait a minute, why is Japan no longer fascist? For that matter, why am I no longer fascist? Oh Japan took the Support the Kodoha option, so they won't be going to war with China, and won't go to war with Russia for ages. They will also be attempting to join the Axis. This isn't what I signed up for!
OK deep breaths, this is still salvageable. Japan has a big chunk of troops on the Korean-Russia border and nothing in any of my provinces. They've got a solid force on the border with China, and 3 small divisions guarding the port there. Only 1 small division at Dalian and 1 small division at each Korean port. I can easily pocket the troops bordering Russia, and can probably knock them out of Dalian and hold at the river nearby. Mengkukuo has 3 divisions so I can mostly ignore them. I have cavalry that should be able to push into Korea decently quickly. Might as well give it a go!
I start the war, and I pocket and kill off the force on the Russian border pretty quick (I think it was 8 divisions there) while my cavalry pushes south, I take Dalian and garrison it, but that port over near Beijing is holding out. Most of the forces from the Chinese border start pushing towards my capital while the Korean peninsula is flooded with reinforcements that stop and start pushing back my cavalry. I send the force that pocketed the Russian border troops to stop the advance on my capital and accept that I'm going to get pushed out of Korea. I push out some partially trained troops to slow down the Korean push while I finally take the port near Beijing and garrison it. My reinforcements then manage to cut off the main thrust towards my capital from supplies from Mengkukuo, such as they are, and I am able to take out those troops and capitulate Mengkukuo, while Japan has been busy sending more troops to Korea and pushing mostly northward, as I have them blocked from advancing towards my capital.
Alrighty, with Mengkukuo and the Chinese border forces dealt with, I just have to push Japan out of Korea. While outnumbered 2 to 1 with no planes or tanks to my name. Well they never said being Emperor was going to be easy. By this point I have a deficit of about 8k guns for troops in the field, and I'm barely keeping up with my artillery needs (despite only using support artillery). However, Japan is having some supply issues as well, since the Korean ports are pretty lackluster. I manage to push south along the western shore of Korea to take that port, and then my cavalry finally pay off as they are able to cut across the peninsula to fully cut off Japanese supply while I launch a series of distraction attacks (taking massive casualties in the process) to prevent them from reacting. Now I just have to hold the southern line while dealing with cleaning up the trapped Japanese, which I am barely able to do as Japan has yet more troops coming to try and save the rest of their army. Once I clean up the last of that big pocket, the Japanese throw in the towel and I am free!
Whew that was tough. Also I get that Korea becomes a free nation in the deal, but why are they Democratic? Both Japan and I are non-aligned at this point. Anyway I have my hard won freedom and all of Japan's continental holdings except Korea, plus Taiwan. Communist China has formed their own faction, while Sinkiang has joined the Comintern, but the rest of the warlords are just squabbling with each other. Oh and Communist China declared war on Japan for some reason, despite having no way to reach them. I choose to assert my authority to get war goals on all the other Chinas, and to start with I declare on Shanxi. Surprisingly they do not join any faction. When I'm about halfway done with Shanxi, Communist China declares on actual China, flipping several states and actually cutting China in half. The Beijing forces are now cut off from their capital. I wait for them to move about half their border forces away (possibly a mistake) and then declare on Communist and regular China. I am able to sweep south mostly unopposed, as Shanxi is basically done, Communist China has their army fighting regular China to the south, and what is left up north by regular China is out of supply for some time before they can reconnect to the capital. I annex Shanxi, followed not too much later by annexing Communist China. I'm feeling pretty good, I have about equal numbers in the field to regular China but have a big advantage in equipment, plus I don't have the army corruption penalty (though they are reducing it as fast as they can). China is about 75% of the way to capitulation when suddenly they are now part of Guangxi Clique and I am now at war with Guangxi Clique with 0% progress towards capitulation. Also I am now outnumbered about 2 to 1 (this feels familiar).
Alright, that was unexpected. Guangxi Clique was my next target anyway for their resources, so it's not a huge deal except for the whole being outnumbered thing. I stop my advances and my troops dig in. Guangxi Clique attacks my lines repeatedly but isn't able to make much progress, and then they finish their focus to become China so I'm back at war with China again. Thing is, they still have 17% of their corruption penalty left, and have to take two focuses before they can finish getting rid of it. They also have about half as many factories as I do, so they run out of equipment real fast and I start up my offensive again. The pause let me build up a bit of a stockpile of equipment as well, so I'm able to capitulate and annex them reasonably quickly. Xibei San Ma falls quickly, as does Yunnan. I still need Sinkiang to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven, which means fighting the USSR, so I prep for that. Thankfully Germany has already peaced out France's faction that formed when Germany declared on Czechoslovakia, so it's kind of a stalemate in Europe in the west as the Allies (basically just GB at this point, all of their allies on the continent itself are out) aren't able to land an effective naval invasion, so Germany decides to go after the USSR. By the time I'm ready to fight the line has stalemated just to the west of Kiev.
I declare on Sinkiang, and they call in their ally . . . Tannu Tuva. Alright well that's not a huge problem. The USSR takes some time to move troops to my border, as well as reinforcing Mongolia, before joining in. The joke is on them, though, since I added anti-tank guns to my infantry so their light tanks are useless. Mongolia takes quite a while, but does eventually join. I capitulate Sinkiang and Mongolia fairly easily and reclaim my Mandate of Heaven. Tannu Tuva gets annexed before getting overrun by me. I push the Soviets completely out of Eastern Asia, and I am now driving towards the Urals and, more importantly, Azerbaijan and its oil fields. Meanwhile Germany still hasn't taken Kiev. The Soviets have plenty of manpower, though their equipment levels in the east are atrocious so I can steamroll them. Germany has killed 4.5 million Soviet soldiers, while I have killed 2.2 million. Germany is also going to have to go to All Adults Serve in the near future, if they even meet the requirements, or risk running out of manpower. I am at Limited Conscription and sitting at 17+ million available manpower so I'm good.
So now the question becomes, can I beat Germany to Moscow? The Soviets are still holding strongly in the west, and have actually pushed Germany back a bit. Meanwhile they are unable to stop my relentless advance, which has only gotten faster now that I have some beefy medium tank divisions entering the war. I haven't seen anything above light tanks from the Soviets, and with how bad their equipment levels are on my flank I can't imagine them rolling out medium tanks. Then again part of the problem with their tank divisions might be that they are switching over to mediums, and all of those are fighting the Germans.
I will laugh if I take Moscow before Germany though.
-edit- Oh yeah, and for the first time ever, the USA joined the Allies. I have only once before seen the USA do anything other than lend lease and send volunteers, and that was in my first Germany game where I beat the Allies with a successful naval invasion of Great Britain, only for the USA to declare on me afterwards.
Posts
Unfortunately, something is happening April 20th, 1942 that is causing the game to crash. I have no idea what it is or if I can fix it somehow, so I guess that's where this game ends. I have no doubt that I can finish off France (I have more troops in the field than they do at this point, and they aren't just fighting me), though I'm not sure what the peace deal will look like. Presumably Italy will get a good chunk of stuff, and I have no idea what will happen with the German Government in Exile (who actually took some land around Danzig). My next conquest would likely be either the Belgrade Pact (Serbia, Romania, Greece and somehow the United Baltic States) or I could go clean up some of the mess in Asia, probably starting with the Mongolian Empire since I wouldn't mind getting my railroad back. Shame I'll never be able to actually do that, I've got ludicrous available manpower, tons of resources and lots of factories. I figure I would leave Austria-Hungary alone unless they do something to piss me off, same with Italy and Canada.
The first war broke out in late 1939 when I declared on France for Alsace, which worked out well because he was just about to win his civil war for Communism. The USSR had no real way to get to me, though he did have a wargoal on Poland that he used after I started steamrolling France. After I finished with France I noticed that Poland's faction had barely lost any land (about a 1 tile strip all the way across) and had caused massive Soviet casualties, so I asked all of them for access and moved everybody but Rommel over, since I had to send Rommel back to stomp a mudhole in the new Comintern member Spain. I reinforced the Polish (and friends) line as the Soviets kept attacking to no avail, and when Rommel made it back to the eastern front I started pushing back. Which was, of course, when Italy declared war on Greece, who Great Britain invited into the Allies, which meant there was an unguarded French-Italian border (apparently the French civil war took priority over my territorial gains there, so no Alsace for me) that I rushed the only available troops I had to, which happened to be a bunch of cavalry I made for unrest suppression. They surprisingly slowed the Italians enough for the French remnants to arrive, as well as some newly trained troops of mine. I managed to push them back to the original border, where their fortifications stymied me. I kind of let that simmer, as Yugoslavia was doing pretty well (saved Greece and held their own line) even when Bulgaria joined in, which could have turned out badly for Poland's friend Romania but somehow didn't (likely because I was keeping the Soviets busy on the other border). Eventually South Africa and Great Britain got some landings on Italy, and Yugoslavia pushed in far enough to convince Italy to weaken the French border, at which point I rolled in. Italy ended up capitulating very slightly before the USSR. I had right around 1 million casualties, the USSR was at 11 million (a good chunk to me, though Poland actually caused the most casualties of everybody). After the peace deal there didn't seem to be anything left worth doing, since I couldn't justify on Austria or Czechoslovakia because they didn't generate any world tension.
It was a pretty amusing (and quick) game. There were a few annoyances, as while the AI was noticeably better (Italy a legitimate threat, Poland's faction not crumbling to the Soviet war machine), I would have liked to have seen Japan's civil war reach a conclusion and the AI still trains up a far larger army than its industry can support (and possibly pushes them out only partially trained, though that is just a guess really). Spain was a threat for like a week and a half before all this stuff broke and he couldn't replace it, while the USSR had about a 4 to 1 ratio of divisions to factories. It'd be one thing if they were small divisions, but these were standard 18-20 width setups. This was also the first playthrough that I stepped the difficulty up to normal, having previously played on recruit because I didn't feel I was very good. I still don't feel I am very good, and there didn't see to be much difference between recruit and normal in how the game played out.
If I do Germany again I'll probably go down the path that lets me assassinate Mussolini. I'm not really sure how that whole thing plays out, but it sure sounds amusing to have Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy all monarchies and allied again. Next I'll probably try either Japan (for the first time ever) or one of the Chinas (only played a China game in Kaiserreich, where Qing was good fun).
But who am I kidding. I'll get Waking the Tiger this weekend and try everything out anyways.
Hah! If you wait for Paradox to stop releasing DLC expansions you’ll be waiting for years and years.
For reference, go look at the DLC for Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4. They're both older and still getting DLC.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The most important thing is to divide Fascist Germany in half, which can usually be accomplished reasonably quickly if you push towards the Czech border. Then you can take out the south with Munich who will have severe supply problems due to being cut off from Berlin. Better players than me have managed to win that civil war before Italy took out Ethiopia, but I'm not very good and when I did it I took much longer. Another tip is to change the icon for your infantry so you can more easily see which ones are the event spawned troops, because the spawned troops are much weaker than the normal army troops. Unfortunately you can't change the icon for the event spawned troops currently, so you have to do it for your regular dudes.
I'm glad you were able to deal with those Fascist scum properly!
Today I played as Nationalist China, and my first run went poorly when I insufficiently guarded my ports. So I restarted, and the second run went pretty well, though only Sinkiang became a puppet. I was able to conquer Yunna and Guangxi Clique before Japan came calling, but was still dealing with Shanxi and hadn't attacked Xibei San Ma at all. I kept the Japanese out of my ports and out of Beijing even, and Shanxi joined the Co-Prosperity Sphere like the traitors they are. Shortly after I stabilized my borders, Communist China flipped a state and declared war on me, and they pushed a decent way in until my half-trained troops I pushed out could stop them. I spent quite some time just fighting defensive wars, and Japan lost tons of manpower and equipment attempting to push my line. Then Xibei San Ma started up with that popularity crap within my borders, so I had to spend a bunch of political power fighting that and decided I might as well attack them too. I was able to push them decently far before Japan was able to get troops to stabilize the line, which weakened the rest of their line and let me push back pretty much everywhere but Manchuria. Sometime during this Sinkiang became independent again, though this time not Communist. I hadn't called them into the war because they would have been completely useless anyway. Then surprisingly Manchukuo started their independence war during this mess, which screwed up the Japanese even more, so I took ruthless advantage. I capitulated all the other Chinas and had to fabricate on Sinkiang to get them into the war before Japan gave up, since I wanted them to join Japan's faction and not the Allies or Comintern (the Axis died a horrible death when Hungary created the Pact of Rome and then Italy left that to make their own faction, and then while Germany was trying to Conquer Austria they had a democratic revolution, which I had never seen before). Once I started pushing into Sinkiang I figured it was safe to kick Japan out of Korea, so I went ahead and did this. By this point Japan had maybe 100k troops in the field, it was a brutal war.
Then something funky happened. I have basically no navy, and almost no air force, and certainly no marine or paratrooper tech. I accepted the end of the war on the popup, and I got Mengkukuo and Manchukuo's lands as expected, and Korea was released. And also Shanxi, Xibei San Ma and Communist China re-appeared, and at peace with me. My armies were in exile, and I had no usable war goals on any of those nations. I could have waited for them to return from exile while I fabricated on each of them one by one, but they are still part of the Co-Prosperity sphere so if I went to war again I'd end up fighting Japan! I decided to close the game without saving (thankfully I don't play iron man) and bug report it. I can't imagine that was the intended behavior that when Japan gives up the war all the conquered territory from its own faction went back to those faction members.
How is the default template for Motorized/Tanks nowadays for Germany or the Soviet Union? Do they need any further adjustments aside from support battalions? I'm conscious to not go over the width for design.
Other than assorted bugs, the Manchukuo game is/was going alright. There are some ridiculously tough Japanese forces. There's also so much mountainous terrain that they take huge amounts of troops to dislodge. Veteran units on mountains with entrenchment bonuses basically require cavalry for encircling instead of direct fights. Also, I control Pusan but Japanese troops in South Korea were still in supply.
A Gran Colombia game also sounds like it might be interesting, if you can manage to get it done before the USA decides to stomp on your face.
Liking most of the new mechanics. The decisions give a bit more granularity to the game and the split into stability and war support also ups the management in a good way. Sort of messes with capitulation levels though. If you don't care about China at all, it's probably not worth $20, but there's a lot there to flesh out the world a bit.
I'm mostly upset that I have to remember the way to update my mod on steam without duplicating it (I finally made notes and then my harddrive died), because no one will believe that it works until I edit the version number in a text file and reupload.
Edit: Oh shit they finally went the mod route and took Japan out of the Axis? That makes capitulation sooooo much better. Having to beat Japan to stop rebellion in Germany was the worst.
Then of course there is the ridiculously high organization you can get from 10 width divisions with Superior Firepower, and the ridiculous defense you can get with 40 width divisions that are basically just the 20 width with battalions doubled. Thankfully the days of armies of nothing but marines are over.
40 width divisions are essentially cheating against the AI because they'll never build anything that can compete. Because of the way defence and breakthrough work a single 40 width division is going to be superior to two 20 width divisions every time.
Edit: Finally read the patch notes, and it looks like yes! They've nerfed line artillery and self-propelled artillery roughly 50% in the last year. I wish they could find a way to buff the AI without making division designing less powerful over and over again, but I get it.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Basically you need air superiority, navalbombers and battlecruisers to maximize your industrial->firepower potential.
You can get almost 3 battlecruisers for every 2 battleships of equivalent development/era, their evasion and speed is significantly higher while their firepower and range is marginally less. Armor isn't really crazy effective in capital on capital combat.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But if you get Gun 3 Battlecruiser IIs before they get battleship 3s (and eventually gun 5 to prevent them from being able to uparmor their battleships). Victory at sea.
Unmodded BCIs->BB1s, but not BB2s
Modded BCIs can defeat BB2s, but not BB3s and BB4s.
Unmodded BC2s will crush BB2s, but need mods to beat 3s and 4s.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Fuckin' Italy declares war on Yugoslavia and draws them and Czechoslovakia into the allies before I can demand the Sudetenland. About 2 months before that I got a request from Italy to join the Axis and decided I didn't need them because Italy just roots everything so I've at least dodged being drawn into the war.
Screens just seem. Unimportant. Submarines can never damage capital ships properly since they start out of torpedo range (have a secondary fleet of destroyers to wipe out submarines). Screens can't damage battleships for shit since 3/4th of the time they try to use their peashooter guns instead of torps (which means that capital ships will slaughter them).
Light cruisers can't really do their job either.
So, Just battlecruisers.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Everything else is untouched (other than torpedo cruisers and other weird Japanese things I haven't actually seen). And my German go-to in the past has been DD + BB + land-based fighters and bombers. Cruisers are pretty useless and carriers are optional (unless you're in the Pacific and can't get land-based cover for your fleet; even then there is debate about their utility. They may still have the bug where carrier-based planes can only launch one sortie). Apparently DD + BC also works, but then I can't uselessly build SHBBs. The DDs are basically an anti-submarine screen and occasional damage sponge while your massive ships take their time getting in range.
I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy the DLC, as I'm getting the itch to play again. Of all of the changes the formable nations were fairly quiet, and is huge if you like playing minor nations.
It allows you to kick france and britains ass without the US getting involved (since world tension never got above 20% until me and Italy divvied the world between us), and once that was done the crazy industrial power of my reich (since I had the entire industrial might of britain, france and India under my heel while my steadfast royal ally Italy had the entirety of Africa) allowed me to easily crush the Comintern.
Once I had the Old world under my boot (and had incorporated Canada into the Central powers) crushing america was super simple.
!955 rolls around, and the Central Powers rule the world!
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Can I remake the Mongel Empire?
-edit- Actually, does Indonesia count as part of Asia?
I have a ton of planes relative to them of course, but my manpower losses are really high without artillery being much good at breaking through lines. I guess it's tank rush every time now!
Anyway, I decided to give Manchukuo a try, since I've seen some people on streams have some decent success as them. Holy crap you start with almost nothing, between giving up factories to Japan and consumer goods, I started with 1 military and 1 civilian factory available for production, though I did get another civilian from trade after a little bit. Taking care of the bandit problem wasn't too bad, I put my starting 9 divisions in the eastern bandit province and built as many guns as I could to handle the northern and western provinces. The bandits got one raid off, but I was lucky and it didn't damage anything. Really the only option that would have caused an issue would have been damaging the military factory. Also I am thankful that the Japanese AI prioritizes building up Manchukuo if a player is running it, otherwise it would have been way harder.
Bandits dealt with, it became time to try and build up to fight the Japanese. Thankfully I won't have to take on their entire army, just the bits not fighting China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Wait a minute, why is Japan no longer fascist? For that matter, why am I no longer fascist? Oh Japan took the Support the Kodoha option, so they won't be going to war with China, and won't go to war with Russia for ages. They will also be attempting to join the Axis. This isn't what I signed up for!
OK deep breaths, this is still salvageable. Japan has a big chunk of troops on the Korean-Russia border and nothing in any of my provinces. They've got a solid force on the border with China, and 3 small divisions guarding the port there. Only 1 small division at Dalian and 1 small division at each Korean port. I can easily pocket the troops bordering Russia, and can probably knock them out of Dalian and hold at the river nearby. Mengkukuo has 3 divisions so I can mostly ignore them. I have cavalry that should be able to push into Korea decently quickly. Might as well give it a go!
I start the war, and I pocket and kill off the force on the Russian border pretty quick (I think it was 8 divisions there) while my cavalry pushes south, I take Dalian and garrison it, but that port over near Beijing is holding out. Most of the forces from the Chinese border start pushing towards my capital while the Korean peninsula is flooded with reinforcements that stop and start pushing back my cavalry. I send the force that pocketed the Russian border troops to stop the advance on my capital and accept that I'm going to get pushed out of Korea. I push out some partially trained troops to slow down the Korean push while I finally take the port near Beijing and garrison it. My reinforcements then manage to cut off the main thrust towards my capital from supplies from Mengkukuo, such as they are, and I am able to take out those troops and capitulate Mengkukuo, while Japan has been busy sending more troops to Korea and pushing mostly northward, as I have them blocked from advancing towards my capital.
Alrighty, with Mengkukuo and the Chinese border forces dealt with, I just have to push Japan out of Korea. While outnumbered 2 to 1 with no planes or tanks to my name. Well they never said being Emperor was going to be easy. By this point I have a deficit of about 8k guns for troops in the field, and I'm barely keeping up with my artillery needs (despite only using support artillery). However, Japan is having some supply issues as well, since the Korean ports are pretty lackluster. I manage to push south along the western shore of Korea to take that port, and then my cavalry finally pay off as they are able to cut across the peninsula to fully cut off Japanese supply while I launch a series of distraction attacks (taking massive casualties in the process) to prevent them from reacting. Now I just have to hold the southern line while dealing with cleaning up the trapped Japanese, which I am barely able to do as Japan has yet more troops coming to try and save the rest of their army. Once I clean up the last of that big pocket, the Japanese throw in the towel and I am free!
Whew that was tough. Also I get that Korea becomes a free nation in the deal, but why are they Democratic? Both Japan and I are non-aligned at this point. Anyway I have my hard won freedom and all of Japan's continental holdings except Korea, plus Taiwan. Communist China has formed their own faction, while Sinkiang has joined the Comintern, but the rest of the warlords are just squabbling with each other. Oh and Communist China declared war on Japan for some reason, despite having no way to reach them. I choose to assert my authority to get war goals on all the other Chinas, and to start with I declare on Shanxi. Surprisingly they do not join any faction. When I'm about halfway done with Shanxi, Communist China declares on actual China, flipping several states and actually cutting China in half. The Beijing forces are now cut off from their capital. I wait for them to move about half their border forces away (possibly a mistake) and then declare on Communist and regular China. I am able to sweep south mostly unopposed, as Shanxi is basically done, Communist China has their army fighting regular China to the south, and what is left up north by regular China is out of supply for some time before they can reconnect to the capital. I annex Shanxi, followed not too much later by annexing Communist China. I'm feeling pretty good, I have about equal numbers in the field to regular China but have a big advantage in equipment, plus I don't have the army corruption penalty (though they are reducing it as fast as they can). China is about 75% of the way to capitulation when suddenly they are now part of Guangxi Clique and I am now at war with Guangxi Clique with 0% progress towards capitulation. Also I am now outnumbered about 2 to 1 (this feels familiar).
Alright, that was unexpected. Guangxi Clique was my next target anyway for their resources, so it's not a huge deal except for the whole being outnumbered thing. I stop my advances and my troops dig in. Guangxi Clique attacks my lines repeatedly but isn't able to make much progress, and then they finish their focus to become China so I'm back at war with China again. Thing is, they still have 17% of their corruption penalty left, and have to take two focuses before they can finish getting rid of it. They also have about half as many factories as I do, so they run out of equipment real fast and I start up my offensive again. The pause let me build up a bit of a stockpile of equipment as well, so I'm able to capitulate and annex them reasonably quickly. Xibei San Ma falls quickly, as does Yunnan. I still need Sinkiang to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven, which means fighting the USSR, so I prep for that. Thankfully Germany has already peaced out France's faction that formed when Germany declared on Czechoslovakia, so it's kind of a stalemate in Europe in the west as the Allies (basically just GB at this point, all of their allies on the continent itself are out) aren't able to land an effective naval invasion, so Germany decides to go after the USSR. By the time I'm ready to fight the line has stalemated just to the west of Kiev.
I declare on Sinkiang, and they call in their ally . . . Tannu Tuva. Alright well that's not a huge problem. The USSR takes some time to move troops to my border, as well as reinforcing Mongolia, before joining in. The joke is on them, though, since I added anti-tank guns to my infantry so their light tanks are useless. Mongolia takes quite a while, but does eventually join. I capitulate Sinkiang and Mongolia fairly easily and reclaim my Mandate of Heaven. Tannu Tuva gets annexed before getting overrun by me. I push the Soviets completely out of Eastern Asia, and I am now driving towards the Urals and, more importantly, Azerbaijan and its oil fields. Meanwhile Germany still hasn't taken Kiev. The Soviets have plenty of manpower, though their equipment levels in the east are atrocious so I can steamroll them. Germany has killed 4.5 million Soviet soldiers, while I have killed 2.2 million. Germany is also going to have to go to All Adults Serve in the near future, if they even meet the requirements, or risk running out of manpower. I am at Limited Conscription and sitting at 17+ million available manpower so I'm good.
So now the question becomes, can I beat Germany to Moscow? The Soviets are still holding strongly in the west, and have actually pushed Germany back a bit. Meanwhile they are unable to stop my relentless advance, which has only gotten faster now that I have some beefy medium tank divisions entering the war. I haven't seen anything above light tanks from the Soviets, and with how bad their equipment levels are on my flank I can't imagine them rolling out medium tanks. Then again part of the problem with their tank divisions might be that they are switching over to mediums, and all of those are fighting the Germans.
I will laugh if I take Moscow before Germany though.
-edit- Oh yeah, and for the first time ever, the USA joined the Allies. I have only once before seen the USA do anything other than lend lease and send volunteers, and that was in my first Germany game where I beat the Allies with a successful naval invasion of Great Britain, only for the USA to declare on me afterwards.