After Action Reporter

January 12 sees something very, very interesting happen. WW2 is over. Over for just about everyone except Republican Spain! Let me explain…

This map explains it best. The Soviet Union is re-constituted!

There’s nothing in the activity log to indicate what is going on, but this screenshot tells me that the world has declared WW2 over and that what is left of Germany sits there in Poland and it, and all its buddies, are pretty much solely at war with Republican Spain!

Eastern Europe is still at war with the Allies, but they’re a long, long way away from helping me, so we’re going to have to take on what’s left of the Axis powers on our own!

First task – reinforce our beachhead in Yugoslavia. To that end another armored corps is shipped that way and I’m starting to look at what I can stabilize in the North to free up troops for a great end-rush through Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavian forces are substantial and we make good progress, but the world receives some good news on the 24th when Poland is fully restored and Nazi Germany reduced to just a few provinces in what’s left of Prussia.

February 1950

In February, things start going very badly in Yugoslavia. It seems that Germany has a lot of troops stationed in the Balkans and it is sending all of them against my beachhead. Battles only last a few hours before my boys are turned back and sent running for the rear. I’m sending my transport fleet to try to shuttle out as many troops as possible, but I’m expecting we’ll lose a divisions!

I finally find a use for the port we built and deploy it to the bottom-most province we control as trying to evacuate from the existing port during battle has proven fruitless. This saves us a few divisions, but we lose more than we save. The final tally is 5 armored divisions (and a couple of HQs) lost and about 6 rescued. All up around 80,000 Spaniards enter German captivity. Not good.

But it gets worse.

March – April 1950

Early March everything goes wrong in the North as well.

It seems the entire German army is pushing back our huge Northern force without hardly batting an eyelid. The battles often feature two or three German divisions squared off against six to ten of our divisions and the Germans winning within a day or two.

The effect of the aggressive German moves and their supremely superior troops is that my lads can’t catch a breach to retreat and regroup somewhere else. Across the north I’m seeing Spaniards pinned by German attack and then sent falling to the rear in full-blown retreat, their organisation shattered and strength knocked back.

We do manage to catch a few breaks and freshly routed troops are able to board trains for the west while we also empty the rest of Italy, having given it up for a lost cause. Our only hope, I believe, is holding the French/Italian border which the French kindly fortified for us years before the war. If our troops get enough time to reorganize we might have a chance of holding the Germans back. Or we might not. I’m not counting on it.

Does anyone know anywhere nice in South America we might invade and set up Spain-in-Exile?

In a grim piece of good news the Austrians grant us military access and so two corps are saved by retreating across the Austrian border and then plotting to move on through friendly Switzerland back to the Spanish lines.

By April 11 Italy is free of Spanish troops (no one tell the Italians, ok?! I still want their industry and resources!) and we’re regrouping at the Maginot line.

In another piece of good news I found out how to fix my flying problem. Turns out it’s a scripting problem that Paradox has yet to patch. The game is supposed to end in 1948 (no idea why this one hasn’t!) and thus all plane missions are due to not continue post-1948. A quick script edit later and I have planes up and attacking the advancing Germans while my troops dig in.

I really wish I had these guys earlier. They might not have turned the tide, but they might have slowed the Germans down a bit.

I’ve set the Strat bombers to trying to knock out infrastructure in the hope that this might slow the Germans down (almost certainly won’t, but I have no other good ideas) and every other piece of tin we can fire into the sky is told to hit any and every German possible, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s not pretty, it’s not efficient, but if we can whittle down their numbers we might stand a chance in the long run.

We’ll find out next time in HOI3 AAR: Viva el Socialismo! – #14