Operation Sea Lion

[mongoose]

I'm playing regular 1.3 HOI 2 Doomsday as Germany, and it's November 1939. Poland has been defeated, and all of my divisions except for 10 regular infantry are attacking France right now. While most of my divisions were still busy in the East, about a month ago, the French attacked my relatively week western border, and got all the way to Munich with about 43 divisions, including most of their armor. Luckily, they were dumb enough to leave parts of the Magino line partially unprotected, so I was able to capture enough provinces to cut off their supplies and trap them in Germany. Later, I finished them off with the troops returning from the Polish campaign. At the moment, I have: all of the Magino line provinces, and a couple of provinces to the north. I also encircled about 5 French divisions while taking those provinces. In total, the French western front has about 30 divisions at this point (that I know of).

At sea, I've lost the Deucsthland, and three U-boat flotillas, with out managing to sink any British ships except one destroyer flotilla. The British have also been air raiding me, but I managed to shoot down abunch of their bombers at the beginning of the war and they haven't been attacking me much lately.

France is doomed and should be finished after a few months, but I'm worried about the navy situation and I don't know what to do about the British. Also, I don't want to get Russia and American into the war. Any suggestions? Should I try to bomb Britain to keep their industry down? Invade them? Try to get peace after France is finished? If I don't attack Russia, will they leave me alone? Can America be placated? Is it worth it to build any factories? Should I be building AA batteries right now, or will history probably not carry out its course in regards to the bombing of Germany's industry?

Is it worth it to attack Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands? What about Norway? I sort of want to keep my belligerence low and just focus on defeating the countries that I'm already at war with. Since I don't have to worry about getting past the Magino line, is it even worth it? It isn't as if any of these countries have a lot of I.C.

[hellheaven1987]

1.3 right?? Ok, now all you need to do are two things.

1. Build a lot of transport and a corp of Marines (5 divisions are good). Build 15 U-Boats as for emergency.

2. Build some Naval Bombers, or Tactical Bombers. Prefer at least 12.

The strategy is using air superior to stop any Royal Navy run into English Channel. I figure out that Royal Navy would not dare to step into English Channel if you use a lot of bombers. Let your bombers fly around for two months, then put Marines landing on British as fast as possible. Once you land on southern Britain, send in armour divisions and push all the way to North.

You can also try to use paratroops too, but I normally prefer to parajump on Ireland.

[mongoose]

edit: nevermind.

[Heinz Guderian]

Without a decent local surface ship fleet, the Royal Navy will zomfgwtfpwn you. It will be a waste of young blonde men.

[King Edward III]

Your only hope is to beg for peace.

[Spart]

France is doomed and should be finished after a few months, but I'm worried about the navy situation and I don't know what to do about the British. Also, I don't want to get Russia and American into the war. Any suggestions? Should I try to bomb Britain to keep their industry down? Invade them? Try to get peace after France is finished? If I don't attack Russia, will they leave me alone? Can America be placated? Is it worth it to build any factories? Should I be building AA batteries right now, or will history probably not carry out its course in regards to the bombing of Germany's industry?

Is it worth it to attack Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands? What about Norway? I sort of want to keep my belligerence low and just focus on defeating the countries that I'm already at war with. Since I don't have to worry about getting past the Magino line, is it even worth it? It isn't as if any of these countries have a lot of I.C.

How the hell did the French get to Munich? You should always keep about 7-10 divisions in each of the provinces bordering the maginot line.

Anyways, it's possible to finish off Poland, France, Belgium and Netherlands without moving the troops from one front to another. Poland is usually gone in a couple of weeks, and for the frenchies you only need a nice stack of panzers going around the maginot line, cutting it off and a few more panzers to get Paris. Shouldn't take more than a month.

Your naval losses don't seem that big, although I don't know how big your navy is. For Sealion, you can stack the whole fleet in the channel for a while and hope your troops get over. Use all your bombers and fighters. Marines are overrated IMO since there should be some ungarrisoned provinces in south east of Britain. And the British army is useless anyway.
However, the British have VP provinces all around the world so annexing them is near to impossible in your situation. Occupying the isles should be enough for now.

The soviets will attack you after '41 if you don't do it first. I suggest doing it the historical way, before they build an insane number of infantry divs.

If you're allied with Japan, you'll have to fight the US at some point. Invading the US is extremely fun though.

Building industry is not necessary this late in the game, the easier way is to capture some more IC. AA is quite useless too when you don't have to worry about the RAF. You'll have to helplessly watch those Australian planes bombing random provinces though. Unlimited air range FTW.

Just get all of Europe, help Italians in Africa a bit (a few divs of panzers should do the trick). Ally with nationalist Spain if they managed to win the civil war, if not, invade republican Spain and make a nationalist puppet. There's your way to Gibraltar.

[mongoose]

British Egypt and the British isles have been defeated. Thanks for the tips.

The soviets will attack you after '41 if you don't do it first. I suggest doing it the historical way, before they build an insane number of infantry divs.

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I've made it to January 1942 thus far, so they should be attacking soon, right? Our relations are at about +100, will that give me any time? Their border army is actually fairly small. If you count the Romanian/Hungarian allied troops, I think my army is actually about the same size as the one that they have immediately next to me.

[Spart]

I'm not sure if it's possible to avoid the war with the soviets, I haven't succeeded in it, but you should start Barbarossa in 41/42, since the soviet hordes usually grow pretty fast after that (depending on difficulty level). Plenty of IC, oil and an access to Persia and India make it worth it.

Attack in spring when the mud dries down, encircle the soviet divs on the border and after that your armoured/motorized divs will get you to Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and Caucasus by the end of the year, hopefully.

Barbarossa is also recommended because it's probably the most challenging/fun campaigns available for Germany.

[mongoose]

I'm not sure if it's possible to avoid the war with the soviets, I haven't succeeded in it, but you should start Barbarossa in 41/42, since the soviet hordes usually grow pretty fast after that (depending on difficulty level). Plenty of IC, oil and an access to Persia and India make it worth it.

Heh, you were right. They attacked me one week into January 1942. It's September now and I'm about 2 provinces away from Moscow, but they're still fighting. I was only able to encircle about 20 of their divisions. Even worse, they actually destroyed two panzers in a blunder that I made. I've captured Kiev, but no other major cities. The front is based mostly on the river that seperates the provinces west of Kiev from the provinces east of them. Most of my army is really heavily disorganized right now, so I think I might have to just let them rest for a while. What's worrying me is that they're actullay attacking and winning in some areas (I've barely made any progress on the Romanian front, for example).

At the start of the war, the Soviets had more I.C. than me, but now they're down to about 270 and I'm at 330. In the long term I think that I'll be able to slug through them if I have to.

I built abunch of V1s, because they were cheap and I wanted to see what they could do. I'm guessing that since Russia's factories are really spread out they won't be able to do very much, though. Besides the 20 divisions I have protecting Britain and France (in case the British come back from India, which I think they've tried a few times already guessing by the number of transports I've been sinking) and 7 in Africa to babysit Italy, I don't have any other places to fight in and no one is bombing my cities. T.C. is the only thing that really worries me, just because I'm not very far into Russia and It's already at about 700/600.

edit: after a few more hours of playing I managed to push the Eastern Front a few provinces east of the Caucasus. The problem now is that is that Russia still has a massive army and my supply lines are shot (I'm at 1200/700). Even though I have basically all of European Russia they still have about 180 I.C. Mean while the Italians and the British are fighting in the Middle East and I think the British are winning slightly. American entered the war, though they haven't done much yet besides take a few East African provinces form Vichy.

What are the chances of American landing troops in western Europe?

[Spart]

edit: after a few more hours of playing I managed to push the Eastern Front a few provinces east of the Caucasus. The problem now is that is that Russia still has a massive army and my supply lines are shot (I'm at 1200/700). Even though I have basically all of European Russia they still have about 180 I.C. Mean while the Italians and the British are fighting in the Middle East and I think the British are winning slightly. American entered the war, though they haven't done much yet besides take a few East African provinces form Vichy.

What are the chances of American landing troops in western Europe?

The bitter peace event should launch pretty soon then.. Here's a few pointers for Barbarossa btw (excellent place for all the other info about HoI2 too).
For bitter peace you'll need Baku, Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad and Sverdlovsk or Vladivostok.

What's eating up your TC so badly? See the tooltip for more accurate info.

US builds up forces quite slowly, but you'll see them landing just about everywhere later on. Garrison troops are quite good at pushing them back in to the sea