Grand Campaign V1.00

[macroeconomics]

OK, I think I'm going to write one of these up. Gives me something to do when the AI is calculating it's moves.

I'm going to play as the Germans since I think the Allied AI is better than the German AI. Normal difficulty, with a twist. Once France falls, I'm going to bump up the British AI to "Easy" which gives the British a 50% bonus to their PP. I'm going to do that because in a lot of WW2 big strategy games the British AI is often bewildered. So we'll give them a little kiss and see what they can do with it.

The actual custom game I'll play is the "Germans Grand Campaign". That allows the human German player to deploy his mobile divisions manually and provides a couple of turns of peace time to move his units around a bit before the balloon goes up. In any event I intend to proceed with Case White (invasion of Poland). But I'll use the 2 turns of peace to bring all my far flung Kreigsmarine assets back to the safety of the Baltic Sea.

[doomtrader]

Looking forward.

[macroeconomics]

Any suggestions for a screen capture utility program?

In the meantime, I'll give a quick rundown on what to expect. This won't be a RP style AAR. Instead I'm mostly going to write about tactics, game impressions, event options and the like. I played the GC as the Germans only once previously, getting to about May 1940 before this start. So the game is still quite fresh to me. I'll likely make numerous strategic errors. But such is the voyage of discovery.

At the start of the game Germany deploys its panzer and motorized units near Poland. Aircraft are moved up. Kreigsmarine assets are recalled to the Baltic Sea. The 80 PPs that Germany starts with are used to beef up the Luftwaffe. In particular the fighter wings.

First tactical tip: the Luftwaffe starts at tech level 2. But it owns a single obsolete fighter wing at tech 1. It's also understrength. You'll want to both reinforce it to max strength and upgrade it to tech 2. Do the former first. Tech 2 reinforcements cost more, but the cost to upgrade the tech is the same regardless of how depleted it is. So rule of thumb: get your units to full strength before you upgrade them.

[doomtrader]

Usually most of the programs are not working with the full screen, thats all what I can say.

[macroeconomics]

I run the game in windowed mode, but there's not a great need for visuals early on, so....

On Sept 1, 1939 an event triggers that starts war between Germany/Slovakia and Great Britain/France/Poland. The Wehrmacht surges across the Polish border. Most of the Polish army is set up in divisions spread across the border. Around 10 Polish divisions are wiped out on the first turn. Indeed, the Wehrmacht's strategy is to kill enemy units rather than seize terrain or cities. However as the Germans advance, they do find two Polish fighter airbases within attack range of German panzer divisions. Both are rushed and destroyed. The Heer is quite pleased with it's initial attack. But despite the destruction of the Polish fighters, the Luftwaffe is not happy. Almost every Luftwaffe tactical bomber wing takes two steps of losses from unnaturally accurate Polish AA fire. Something like 16 total step losses of tactical bombers are taken.

For those who haven't played the game, an explanation: Tactical bombers generally have two (2) action points or APs. Which means the can conduct two ground strikes per turn. These are best used to disorganize enemy ground units that your army will attack that turn. Each ground strike can be intercepted by enemy fighters and shot at by enemy AA gunners. Aircraft losses generally occur in 10% strength increments, although a particularly bad result might result in a 20% loss. So the Luftwaffe just lost more than an entire wing and a half of tactical bombers. That's equivalent to about 100 PPs (Production Points, the industrial currency of the game), or over 5 turns worth of German industrial production at this stage of the game. That's not good, and it's over twice what we'd normally expect. Yikes.

[macroeconomics]

On the second week of the Polish campaign, Polish resistance seems to coalesce around Krakow in southern Poland. German intel has identified about 12 divisional equivalents in that area. In central Poland, resistance has crumbled with isolated Polish forces holding out in the cities of Poznan and Lodz. Warsaw is defended by a moderate force estimated at about 4 divisions with more Polish units slowly making their way down from the northeast. The city of Katowice was captured this turn after a bloody assault by 8 German divisions (I count a corps as equal to 3 divisions). In general taking cities is quite difficult in this game. It's best to surround the city hex on all six sides before assaulting - this also gives a bonus chance in between player turns that the defenders will suffer an event that either weakens their defenses or forces them to surrender outright. In this case I didn't want to wait, and hit the city from four sides after two rounds of preparatory air strikes. Even then it took two follow up assaults (units can make multiple attacks in a single turn if they have enough APs) to take the city. Luftwaffe casualties also continue to be extremely heavy.

[macroeconomics]

On the third week of the Polish campaign, the end is in sight for Poland. An undefended COP falls to the panzer spearheads. Poznan and Lodz are nearly completely surrounded, while Warsaw's defenders have been thinned out. The Luftwaffe's bombers have been benched. It conducted four air strikes this turn and lost 4 steps. No further bombing missions were flown as the bombers lick their wounds. The Krakow salient is nearly pocketed, but I think I'll try for a coup de main on the city itself rather than deal with all the troops to the east. Here's how the Polish front looks at the start of Turn 6 (4th week of campaign, before any German moves):

[macroeconomics]

Poland surrendered the following turn. In ToF, countries surrender when all of their cities that have victory points are captured. A series of events followed Poland's surrender, the most important of which was an option offered to Germany of whether or not to honor the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with the USSR. I chose to honor it. So eastern Poland goes to the USSR, but Germany ought to get a window of time with which to deal with France.

Another event option was this one regarding completing construction on the heavy cruiser Blucher. Germany gets a number of these "Do you want to finish constructing a cruiser?" events. Completing these ships actually sucks up a lot of your PPs during the period prior to going on the offensive in the West. On the other hand since a cruiser normally costs 90 PPs, accepting these build events is the cheapest (and fastest) way to build up the Kreigsmarine. I accepted this event and will accept all the other build cruiser events - but I'm not going to be building any other ships.

[macroeconomics]

With the campaign in Poland over, German units begin transferring to the West. All excess PPs are used to rebuild the depleted Luftwaffe. While there is a multiple turn Seitzkrieg, i thought I'd show what's going on in some other parts of Europe.

Here we see southern Finland. Notice the Finnish troops concentrated along the Mannerheim line ready for the inevitable Soviet aggression. In ToF, the map extends north all the way up to Petsamo and Murmansk. Obviously unit density up there is lighter. On the left side you can see the unit window which shows attributes of the currently selected unit. You can see that units can have customized names.

[macroeconomics]

And here's Hungary, with it's army making the slow walk to the Yugoslav border where they'll likely next see action some 18 months from now. In ToF, each country pays a maintenance charge in PP - larger the bigger your armed forces are. So Hungary, like Rumania is simply stockpiling it's PPs rather then spending them. Unlike Finland...

[macroeconomics]

Continuous air strikes from British and French tactical bombers against front line German ground troops in the west. Our AA gunners only hit the bomber on perhaps 5% of the air strikes. We need to hire some Polish AA gunners. The Luftwaffe is intercepting the bombers occasionally however, so total PP loss equivalents are still in our favor (assuming the unknown Allied fighter losses are the same as ours).

Meanwhile here's Northern Italy, where the Italians are gearing up for war. All the Italian builds so far have gone into the navy. No new ships though. Instead, existing ships which started out at less than full strength were repaired and refitted to full efficiency. Only now, some three months after the outbreak of war in Europe has modernization of the Italian navy been completed and other branches of the Italian armed services can begin to be beefed up. The Italian air force is probably next to get more toys.

[macroeconomics]

After many turns of Seitzkreig, husbanding of PPs and slow rebuilding of the Luftwaffe, visible progress is being made. All 12 of the Luftwaffe's tactical bomber wings are at full strength, the understrength Panzer Divison Kempf has been brought up to full strength and the Luftwaffe's three new fighter wings have (more or less) reclaimed air superiority over the upper Rhine river valley from the French air force. There are now some PPs available for fresh builds, and so a Fallschirmjager (airborne) division is built. In the screen below you can see the production screen, with tabs for the various branches of the armed forces. Every unit built from scratch requires a period of time to pass before the unit is available to deploy.

[macroeconomics]

The fireworks are starting. The Soviets are attacking the defending Finns. I'll play the Finns in this mini-drama. Right off the bat, a number of countries give Finland material support, giving them a one time windfall of over 90 PP. This is used to upgrade the Finnish divisions on the Mannerheim Line up to corps size.

[macroeconomics]

More material aid pours in from Sweden and France for Finland. Another 90+ PPs. A veritable bonanza. The Mannerheim Line is fully garrisoned now. We'll build up our little fighter wing and get some more infantry. Here's the situation in central/eastern Finland. I know there are some Soviet divisions out there outside my Fog Of War vision. But i think we'll advance and see if we can't cut some rail lines.

[macroeconomics]

The events are coming fast and furious now. The one below is part of a set of three that adds 120 PPs to Germany's production pool - IF you didn't launch an early invasion of the west in 1939. As we'll see there are others on the way that in total provide a pretty big incentive to stick closer to the historical schedule.

[Flaviusx]

The economics in airpower are drastically improved in this iteration.

In Wrath, I'd disband all the Soviet air on turn one and never build any during the entire game. It just wasn't cost effective. The AI would drive itself into bankruptcy doing airstrikes against me. As the Axis I built the bare minimum of fighter cover on the Eastern Front and no more. As the western allies I'd build the bare minimum of fighter cover on the western front, and also no more. Neither tac nor strategic bombers made any sense from an economic standpoint. Even fighters were iffy, and the Soviets in particular could treat them as a luxury item.

In Fury it's far cheaper to build and maintain, and tac air is really handy against armor in particular. I'm less sold on strategic bombing, but it's relatively inexpensive to buy and can cause a surprising amount of fighter damage. (They must be decked with machine guns or something...)

The other thing I like the tweaks to tech. You can customize your forces a little bit this way.

[macroeconomics]

With the Allied aerial bombardment slackening and a decent pile of PPs onhand, Germany decides to spend some of its PPs to speed up R&D as seen below. On that screen you see Germany's current technology level (a lowly 1 for both infantry and armor). The stars represent "money piles" or scientists working on that tech area. By spending 102 PPs, we increase the speed by which we can attain tech level 2 for infantry. Finally we see that we have advanced about a third of the way towards tech level 2 in infantry (48 out of 150). It's worth noting that once you achieve the next tech level, all your "money piles" are zeroed out. From an efficiency standpoint then, the optimal time to spend PPs on research is just after you've reached a new tech level. So my spending 102 PPs at this time wasn't entirely efficient...

EDIT: I'm going to take back what I said about it not being efficient to pay PPs into a research subject that you have already made progress on. It seems as if the PP cost decreases linearly as you make progress on advancing to the next tech level. So it's just as efficient (on average) to spend PPs when you are halfway towards your research goal as it is when you've made no progress.

[macroeconomics]

In late March 1940, the first consequences of our decision to prepare to attack Denmark/Norway and the Low Countries occurs. As seen below, war is declared against Denmark and Norway. Immediately following that, other events fire. One is that Denmark surrenders without a shot. All Danish territory becomes German controlled. As this is pretty much what occurred historically, it wasn't entirely a surprise to me. However another event is that Norway surrenders. Again all Norwegian territory is now German controlled. That is somewhat surprising and I'm guessing will be a controversial event effect amongst the player base.

The practical effect of that event however is actually to spin German actions closer to what historically occurred. Namely Germany needs to transport ground troops into 1) southern Norway to garrison Oslo and the other southern cities and 2) Narvik, since that city has no rail connection with southern Norway. The transportation of troops to Narvik will be dicey.

[macroeconomics]

In ports across the Baltic Sea, German infantry divisions load into transports as they prepare to sail for Norway. In ToF, sea transportation on ground units is a three step process. On turn one a unit in a port loads onto a transport, temporarily consuming a sea transport point (or points for larger units). On turn two, the transport moves from the port to a destination sea zone. Since it ends its turn in open water, this is the point at which it is subject to interdiction by enemy naval units. On the third turn, the transport can enter a friendly port within its movement range. On that same turn, if the transport is selected while in port, the cargo ground unit can disembark into the port or a hex adjacent to that port. The sea transport point(s) are then available for use once again next turn.


Thus if I had been thinking ahead, I would have loaded my transports up two turns ago, sailed my transports last turn, and this turn have been ready to land in occupied Norway. Hindsight....

In any event, the transports are loaded now. Meanwhile in western Germany, the panzers are moved up into their assembly areas, as can be seen below. We're just about ready for the festivities to begin in earnest...

[macroeconomics]

Mid-April, and what you may ask ever happened to the Soviet-Finnish Winter War? Well, not much actually. The Russians have been strat bombing Finnish cities and occasionally using tac bombers to hit the Mannerheim Line. But no ground troops have attempted to assault that line. I used the massive material aid provided to the Finns to buy a new fighter wing and about 20 infantry divisional equivalents. With that infantry, I began probing the Soviet lines in the Karelian pennisula and eventually approached the key rail line supplying Soviet forces in the far north. In some places (see below) that supply line is now cut, and Finland now seems to have a realistic chance of holding out until 1941 when German intervention could turn the strategic equation for the Soviets upside down.