HOI4 Poland AAR

Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2016-06-19 23:29:22 UTC

A short Poland campaign.

• I went Communist to make sure Soviets won't backstab me and I can focus on Germans only
• turns out that was pointless as Soviets got claims on my stuff via focus and wouldn't let me into the faction - I hate focus railroading in this game, it should consider context not do it blindly
• France started own alliance with Czechoslovakia (and later Estonia)
• Italy attacked Greece, Greece joined Allies, so Italy got into war with UK and friends, but Germany didn't join just yet - Italy of course underperformed and lost Albania to the Greeks
• Czechoslovakia told Germans to go to hell, getting Germans/Italy into war with France - somehow they didn't get overran instantly
• That of course wasn't enough, so Germany demanded Slovenia by decision, getting Yugoslavia into the war, and Allies as well
• In the meantime I fabricated on Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia - Estonia got last minute guaranteed by France, so I didn't use the claim, that apparently costs some national unity and mana
• I only built military factories, building civilian factories seems silly retrospectively
• Germany attacked Luxembourg for no reason, and they didn't join either UK's or France's factions, no idea why, so they got annexed
• As Germany was busy with everyone and unable to deal with even Czechoslovakia, I moved in November 12th, as fall of Czechoslovakia would make it a lot harder
• UK invited me to Allies right away, Communist or not - that was the only faction I could join as Soviets didn't like me
• East Prussia fell in a day or two
• German army offered fairly little resistance, I had Berlin by early December 1938 - all their units seem to be fighting elsewhere
• there were many small encirclements, but I didn't get any huge ones until Luxembourg / Saarland area very late
• Germany surrendered 20 March 1938, a bit over four months after Polish intervention
• that leaves Italy and Hungary in the war, and Bulgaria not in the war but in the faction
• I have sabotage everywhere, I don't have a single unit to spare for that right now, I start with some cavalry, but I turned them all into infantry divisions as fighting is more important than suppression - maybe I should have left a few

Two biggest risks would be:
• Soviets attacked Estonia getting into war with France, and broke non-aggression pact with me - they could do the dumb thing and attack me and get into war with UK, which would be fine after Axis is dealt with, but annoying now
• even worse Japan could do retarded thing and join Axis after fall of Germany - that would prolong war indefinitely as none of us has means to reach Japan ever unless US decides to join the war

Poland is so ridiculously stronger than Iran I played previously. I could actually research stuff I wanted (starts with 3 slots, I got 4th in a year, 5th was about to finish when Germany capitulated, there aren't any beyond that) and manufacture decent amount of equipment.

On the other hand war started very early. That means I could have some tanks or planes for war with the Soviets, for this war I built basically none. The way research system works it's much better to have homogenous army of whatever you're focusing on - in this case 7inf+2art+ton of supports divisions, which is default early game build for everyone except industrial powerhouses like Germany and US.

I'm not sure if there's any point trying to compete with armor or motorized - they're meant for breakthroughs, but massed infantry with artillery support works just fine against typical chaotic AI frontline - when I tried tutorial as Italy I had decent success with sending motorized to Spanish civil war and wrecking everyone, but they don't have real frontline there, it's all chaos. In most other wars I thought there was fairly clear frontline, and everybody (except France) seems to have far too much national unity for any kind of capital sniping strategy to do much. Inexplicably even Italy, which historically collapsed after losing just Sicily.

As minor power it's very difficult to achieve air superiority, so I have no idea if by game mechanics getting small air force is a good idea or completely pointless as they'll get shot down right away.

With navies, I did totally nothing. I assigned them to raid convoys and patrol around Baltic, they sunk a few convoys they got lost.

Weirdly battleplanner was doing OK this time - Poland was much stronger and Germans were offering far less resistance and had far smaller terrain bonuses than Iranian offensive against the Turks, so doing it semi-automatically wasn't completely pointless.

 #hoi4