I am at the end of a long journey. Many times I despaired, but then, on my dog walks a new strategy presented itself and I would try again, only to fail again. Twice I walked a way and promised not to try again, but both times I came back with a "What if" in my mind. Last night, I was crowned in laurels. Blood soaked and radioactive, but victory against the odds.
The journey began in February when between filling our resumes, I started up Darkest Hour and played as Nazi Germany. I thought it would be a quick game as I had won the game a few times on the previous version, but I was in for a shock. For something different, I decided to focus on a Germany enmoured of naval power. I started in 1933 and built a fleet of aircraft carriers. By 1939, I had a small elite army and a big fleet. I wiped out Poland in normal time, but then came crashing halt in France. Unlike history, the French did not waste their time in the interwar years, but had built up a large army and causualties mounted. No problem, I thought, so I sailed my fleet out to out flank the French. It worked well and the army advanced again, but I had taken my eye off the fleet. Suddenly I found it engaged against the combined navy of the United Kingdom and France. It the end, I had two damaged carriers left of my fleet of 6, and my armies were being pushed back. So, I did what Hitler couldn't, I reset the game back to 1933.
This time the army got much more emphasis, and I had a smaller carrier fleet. Unfortunately, by early 1939 I ran out of my manpower reserve and had to mobilise. Mobilising in peace time is very expensive, and you cop a nasty disaffection rating from your people. Strikes in the factory, production in disarray, I had to reset again.
In the third attempt, I got the balance right and was rewarded with swift victories in Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Norway. Further I cut a good deal with Yugoslavia and Spain and brought them in. That meant I could take out Gibraltar. I then unleased my carrier fleet on the Atlantic and destroyed the British convoys. By avoiding naval battle, I kept the fleet intact and the British impoverished. I invaded USSR on schedule and wiped captured the Ukraine and occupied Poland quickly. Then I died. The USSR had a higher production than me by 20% before I invaded. They got a massive hit, perhaps from the Americans, and my spies told me their production was more than twice mine. My casualties mounted. Then an American carrier fleet wiped mine out, and I reset.
In the fourth and fifth attempts I tried to really build up my production before the war started, so I could match the Russians. I even tried invading Turkey to outflank the Middle East and start with a salient in Armenia to try to outflank the Russians. No joy.
At this point it occured to me that it might be a good idea to ignore the Russians for as long as possible. So around the 6th attempt (16 march according to my save games) went south and south east. I took out Iraq, Persia, India and all of Africa. This left me with oil and resources to spare, a starved England, but still not within coo-ee of Russian production yet. I settled down to a technology strategy, and built elite armour and air force and equiped every infantry division with a brigade of support artilery or armoured cars. I also began to research Nuclear Power with intent. By 1944, I was dealing well with the US and English incursions and strategic bombers when the USSR ruined the party and attacked. Without the element of surprise, I could not destroy their forward armies. When Romania and Hungary surrendered, I saw the writing on the wall and reset again.
At this point, I gave up for the first time. The game was biased! On a train trip homeI read up on other's tactics. They suggested that an invasion of England has possible through a "bug". While all their beaches are well defended, their isolated ports are not. So I reset and made sure that after France fell, I had a paratrooper division ready in Antwerp. I dropped it on the Hull and raced in with my transports. I got three corp ashore when a concerted British counterattack destroyed most of my transports. My main fleet was intact, but the transports were gone!
The next few resets I tried different fleet compositions. The best was a few carriers and a swarm of destroyers to screen. So around the 9th attempt, I had England out of the war, but Russia was still a cliff face. I then read another article the advocated a massive factory building program starting in 1933 and finishing after the 1936 Olympics. That meant that I could have industrial parity with USSR and make up the rest on tactics.
The eleventh attempt looked promising, but I failed to properly garrison the USSR front. They launched a surprise attack in Winter 1940 while I was occupied in South Africa, and again causualites mounted and I was losing.
So attempt 12. I started on the 14th of April my time or March 1933 game time. Massive factory building increased my initial production of 135 to 240. With the Anschluss of Austria, partition of Czechoslovak Republic and invasion of Poland, along with some good policy, the became 360 (top right corner).
France fell quickly and I moved on to Britain. My production was now nearing 600 but the soviets were massing.
This time Spain wanted no part of me, so I invaded their country to take out Gibraltar. (Canada had taken on the mantle of the United Kingdom at this point.)
The quiet USSR frontier looked like a WW1 Map:
All the while, I was invading darkest Africa. It was November 1941 (or 20 April my time).
My fleet and submarines were patrolling the Atlantic to stop reinforcements:
And Erwin Rommel was having a rumble in the jungle:
I waited until May 1943 before taking on the USSR. My production was nearly 600:
Their's was a hundred less and still to spike:
But I had a lot of armour and and surprise. By June 1943 I was in Stalingrad, Leningrad and approaching Moscow:
The Soviet production was collapsing along with army and they surrendered two months later:
In 1944, I began to think about USA. Although my production was now a healthy 490 raised to 680 by good policy, theirs was 590 in peace time. It jumped to 800 when I declared war. Then I was very impressed to find that the Italians had snuck an invasion force into Newfoundland, so I raced over with my army. However, on the second crossing, I lost most of my transports so a clever Canadian counterattack. Fortunately, I had enough to force Canada out of the war. A few years later I had rebuilt the fleet and got a large fully mechanised force over.
I tried my hand in 1947 and crashed into a massive game bug. My convoys would not supply an Italian holding. The automated convoy builder had created a massive convoy between Caen and Exeter (in England), and thought that was good enough. Within a day of fighting, my forces were unsupplied and within a week retreating everywhere.
Rather than resetting, I quit and went back to the save game. (Well, it was a bug. Just don't mention the bug above that gave me Britain.) I found that one of my conquests had granted me French Guyana, so over the next 18 months I ferried my entire army there. I then began another rumble in the jungle and worked my way up to Mexico. (Crazy game. Each country took no action until I declared war on it, so I only fought one at the time.) By late 1948 I was on the Mexican border, fully supplied and ready for fun.
What's more, I had all turbojet bombers, which was cool!
Bt winter that year, USA surrendered, although it was a tough fight and I took surpising casualties. That just left Australia and New Zealand, but at this point it was over. What is more, I had two nukes.
So I tried to Hiroshima approach. I asked politely for a surrender and was told no. I then nuked Sydney and Auckland and asked again. (Hey, this is the Nazis. They don't have a conscience.) The stupid game said no again, so I had to sail an invasion force all the way to Nouvelle Caledonie. (I am unsure again how I got that.) I then had to fight a one sided battle across both islands. To my surprise I found the remains of the UK fleet in Melbourne, so we had a big naval battle to finish. I lost a few carriers, but I had them coming our my ears at that point of the game so did not care.
Then I expected a screen to pop up saying you win, but no. Nepal was holding out. I begged the British Raj (they went neutral when Britain fell), but they refused me passage. I had ICBM at this point with Hydrogen Bombs, so I launched those and hit another bug. ICBM do not fly over neutral countries. I told the game I was the Nazis and didn't care about other's neutrality, but it told me it did not care either - neutral was neutral - and if I didn't like it, I could guess what to do. So I launched a final invasion of India to get at Nepal. As soon as I declared war, I heard four big explosions as four ICBM hit Nepal. I had forgotten about them and as soon as India was no longer neutral, they launched. Well, you can imagine the rest. Armour across India finishing with a final rumble in the jungles of Burma. And an enormous sense of accomplishment (and not bad value for a $10 computer game).
Pale blue india shows that I gifted that to Bulgaria to administer
USA split into the Northern states, Confederacy, Texas and California after the surrender.
Australia with a boat people problem.
So now I can finally rest, or do I need to go back a try without the paradrop in Hull bug?
Oh, and a final summation. Praise God Hitler did not have a retry and stuffed his one shot!
That is a really fantastic description of a game, and perhaps has pushed me across the line to try HOI again. I am particularly impressed that you pulled off an Operation Barbarossa. Not sure what I think of nuking Sydney and Auckland though. Brisbane I would understand.
Posted by: Paul | Tuesday, 13 May 2014 at 08:04 PM
I got to work this morning and while drinking a coffe thought to check how this post looked, only to find it was not there. Arghh! If I lost it I could never look Joe Hockey in the eye again. Fortunately, when I got home it was still on the browser. I discovered that while you are allowed to paste a picture in a post, 18 is too much pictures. I had to remove all the pictures and insert them properly with the tool.
Anyway, a sigh of relief! Now to check what Ethelred the Unready has sent me...
Posted by: PythonMagus | Tuesday, 13 May 2014 at 04:32 PM