The huge Hearts of Iron 2 commentary thread

[lila-laune-bär]

Good evening everyone on the forums,
inspired by SirLoinalot I've decided to open the huge Hearts of Iron 2 commentary thread. It's here to allow the HoI2 gamers of the TWC to ask questions concerning strategies, events and army compositions, to report their progress in their campaigns and to read After Action Reports of other players.
Have fun.


I'll start with my recently started campaign as Japan, 1936. I'll post any pictures just as links rather than [IMG] in order not to exclude modem users.
Japan: Situation January 1936:
edit: nearly forgot: Difficulty Normal, AI Aggressiveness Furios.
Half of our glorious army is dispersed on various islands in the pacific. Since these islands of little strategic value when not at war with the US and since they're all guarded by unmoveable garrisons, our great leader decides to disband them in order to retrain them to tough regular infantry. The rest of our army is on garrison duty on the border between Manchukuo and Russia and Manchukuo and China, every last division is outdated and at the technical standard of 1918. We've got a lot work to do if we want to change them into a force that is capable of conquering the world.
Our navy is large, but outdated and weakly organised. All naval formations are recalled to Tokio to reorganise, and three new armadas are formed: One four-carrier task force under Admiral Yamamoto, two battleship fleets of 20ships, one small submarine flottila and a huge naval transport force.
Japan in 1936

The japanese industries lack everything: Energy, Metal, Rares. The US trades Energy, Metal and some oil for supplies, the Netherlands trade Rares for supplies. Japanese industries may be working for capitalist pigs, but when the japanese forces have grown strong enough, they'll curse the day they helped Japan with their resources!
Japan needs a bigger army and navy to oppose their capitalist enemies, so our wise government decides to form 30 extra infantry divisions with pioneer brigades to support following conquests. 2 light cruisers are also being produced, the foundation stone of another carrier fleet.
The japanese building order in February 1936

Now that the supply of resources is ensured and the army is being increased, it's time to enlarge the japanese Empire. Realising, that the creation of Manchukuo in 1931 was a mistake, Japan decides to get what belongs to Japan. All armies on the russian border in Manchukuo are recalled to Korea and some divisions from the japanese mainland are transferred to Dalian. On February 4th, 12 o'clock Japan officially declares war on Manchukuo and the country is invaded by three army groups in the south-west, the south and the south-east heading for the capital and the provinces containing victory points.
Japanese DOW on Manchukuo, February 1936


to be continued...

[Kanaric]

nice, was waiting for someone to start a thread like this. Too bad my Chinese game is sooooo far off or else I would post mine as well, lol. I basically conquered all of real-life china plus korea and indochina and have invaded Japan and made them my puppet. After that I joined the allies so that I could get technology to catch up and prepare for war against the soviets and fortress-europe. They were the only nation to advance on Germany and they created a bunch of puppet states throughout.

[Dutchpower]

Ok i played it today and i found kinda sucky it all goas way to fast and its not really fun.

[EeSang]

You can set how fast time progresses.

My First full game of Hoi2 on Easy/Easy France 1936
France started mass producing infantry and made light tank force with 6 divisions. For the infantry France put 2 groups of 13 divisions on the border of Italy, incase they attacked with Germany, and on the Marginot line were placed the Light Tank force and 2 groups of 15 infantry divisions and another group of 9 divisions as support. By Late 1937 France had upgraded her Infantry to 1939 and Light tanks to Improved.

By the time 1939 came around France had 1941 Infantry and Advanced Light Tanks. When Germany had invaded Poland, France decided to immediately strike at Germany, rolling between Belgium and Switzerland. After conquering several provinces there was a problem. Though our forces may be mighty, it was too concentrated. In order to compensate for this, more infantry units were to be produced, and 8 divisions of infantry were transfered from the Italian border to reinforce the German front. While this occured, the dastardly Germans annexed Denmark and began to overrun the Belgiums and the good people of Luxembourg. Before long, the Germans were in the undefended northern provinces of France!!

Quickly mobilizing, the French forces began to liberate their kin and pushed the Germans back. However, the Germans soon began pushing towards the Marginot line! Since many troops had been sent to northern France, the eastern forces, though valiantly, began to withdraw back towards the safety of the great French fortresses. Suddenly and without warning, the Italians began to take our colonies in Africa! So without mercy, the 18 remaining divisions of infantry suddenly advanced into northern Italy, quickly conquering and isolating the forces of Mussolini.

Heartened by the southern victories, the other French forces quickly advanced back towards the heart of Germany, liberating Belgium and Luxembourg. Soon, though, the French forces have advanced too far! Unable to defend all of the territory they had conquered, a stalemate had ensued, repetitivley losing and regaining land in the German front. Advancing into the rest of Italy was out of the question, as the southern French forces soon had to defend against both the Italian and Nazi forces on the southern front. The attrition eventually ended, and the French forces began once again to advanced into German territory.

1940, Suddenly lacking a concentration of enemies to fight, the French forces swept through the western half of Germany, and in a joint effort between the tank force, reinforced to 8 divisions of Advanced Light Tanks, and a force of 9 infantry divisions the great French army had taken Berlin! Splitting the northern force up, the French began advancing into Denmark and liberating Poland, who had valiantly managed to keep their Capital, Warsaw. Slowly, by 1942, France, alone, had advanced into the Russian border and annex Germany, Hungary, and began to turn their fury onto Italy. The army that had devastated Germany began assaulting Italy, and before long, annexed it along with all of it's African colonies.

By 1945 France was the strongest nation in the world and was well on it's way to creating nuclear weapons when, suddenly my stay at my Father's hosue was over and I couldn't finish it to 1947 ;_;

[Carousel]

Guys I'm extremely interested in this game, but I'm just a little wary of how deep it is. Would you say that its TOO deep? How long does it take to get a hang of?

I'm considering buying it with my next paycheque since it looks extremely tactical (something I like)

[Kanaric]

Guys I'm extremely interested in this game, but I'm just a little wary of how deep it is. Would you say that its TOO deep? How long does it take to get a hang of?

I'm considering buying it with my next paycheck since it looks extremely tactical (something I like)

It isn't too deep at all. You just need to get used to the game and know what to build and then its quite fun. It took me personally a couple of days to get a hang of it, i usually haven't played games like this. Played through a few nations so far...

I think its funny that one guy says the game is too fast when I usually leave it on extremely fast the entire game and pause it when i need to.


The only gripe about it is that I wish it would go farther in time than December 30th 1947, sure it takes a WHILE to get that far but I think it would be cool to continue on complete with research and content into the cold war.

[Scrima]

The only gripe about it is that I wish it would go farther in time than December 30th 1947, sure it takes a WHILE to get that far but I think it would be cool to continue on complete with research and content into the cold war.

Get the no time limit mod, and play forever.

[EeSang]

It took me a good hour to learn all the stuff.

The tutorial is great in this game.

[Scrima]

I think I'll pick this game up today, RTR 6.0 has tested my patience too much and I need a game to play.

[ShangTang]

Started a multiplayer campaign with two friends a week ago. I'm Germany, another's Italy, and the last is Japan.

It's 1939 and so far Japan is having trouble pushing into Nationalist China as he doesn't have the manpower to press the united front.

I obliterated Poland in 2 weeks and am currently strolling through Belgium with panzers aiming at Calais to streak onwards towards Paris.

Italy's fleet was totally destroyed by the British but is currently eating up Africa. With help of my motorized divisions.

I'm not too sure on what to do with the USSR. I'm thinking of buiding a line of fortifications and fighting a defensive war by getting supplies from African and possibly pushing through Turkey to take Baku while Japan siezes up Siberian oil for the Axis. Currently working on researching strategic rockets and building lots of strategic bombers with escorts to hit Russian industry as soon as the war comes. Pressing on Russia would not be wise.

Germany's technical advantage is far superior than the manpower afterall. If I can control the skies. I can control the Russian steppes.

[mib]

Guys seriously you should just go to the paradox forums for these...

[visphilos]

I'm having a wonderful time reading these posts from my fellow, open-minded, clever, expressive TW folks! I've been modding HOI 2 (DD) off and on for about two years now. I'm a poor, but enthusiastic player at many games. I'm a much better coder than player. I do have fun testing the mods, though. If anyone wans some mods made for vanilla (so I don't have to reconcile others' mods, e.g. TR, Stony Road) please post here or chat me on MSN (visphilos@hotmail.com) so we can consider it.

My personal mods are experimental, not intended to be balanced or for distribution. I am willing to consider trying to balance them, if I can get interested folks to advise on what constitutes balance. By "balance", I don't mean "fair", so much as I mean "realistic". As example, should folks get to mix & match doctrines if, despite some engine shortcoming, such a thing could be scripted?

Guys seriously you should just go to the paradox forums for these...

[ShangTang]

If we all did that there would be no point to this whole gaming forum in the first place.

[HunterKYA]

I'm nearly into my sixth year in a Germany 1936 campaign on Med/Med.

It's winter 1941, I have well over 140 divisions that have overrun Poland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and shocking enough as it is, I currently have nearly all of the UK occupied, except the northernmost islands off Scotland and Northern Ireland. Saved Italy from being trampled by France, surprising enough as that sounds, and almost as soon as Italy has been saved from the French, I had to ward off an American invasion before they ruined in a week what took me 4 months to complete, but they still control Corsica and Sardinia. And with a little bit of convincing, I managed a coup in the Soviet Union, reverting them back to being Russia and turned them into a massive National Socialist bastion.

Will the two largest armies and the two largest Fascist states forget their common similarities and plunge themselves in a war unlike the world has ever seen? Stay turned to find out more.

[Cain The Kohan]

Hey Kanaric you play on extremely fast all the time, even in war??

As for more time there is mod that lets you play till 1990 me thinks, just look on paradox forums.

[SirLoinalot]

OK, this is how it stands at the minute.

I stared my game with Germany with the view that I could (and probably would) be even more aggressive than is historically accurate. With this in mind an eighteen month industrial building programme was introduced in early 1936 with the intention that I would be able to outproduce the Allies.

This proved more effective than I had originally planned allowing me to start preperations for the war aginst my natural and national enemy France. I made sure that my diplomatic relations with the East were relatively positive by opening diplomatic relations with Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union and creating the Axis by bringing Austria into an alliance.

I decided that the Maginot line was probably too formidable for my pretty underdeveloped tanks so it began looking like history would play itself out predictably when I started my campaign by invading the Benelux nations of Belgium and Luxembourg (a campaign that lasted a grand total of eight days). France also predictably did nothing to aid thier suposed protectorates and moved more forces in to the defensive line of forts on the German/France border, a move that would prove fatal. I took military control over the Austrian forces and moved the bulk of thier small army to a position immediately facing the French defensive position, whilst keeping my German infantry and Armour safey supplied in Brussels and Antwerp.

December 26 1938: The invasion into France was launched with the utmost ferocity, German Armoured divisions thundered towards Paris in the North while Austrian part timers fought teeth and nail to keep the French hemmed in to the South. No thought was put into defence, I knew that if my attack faltered in the North the invasion would quickly turn into a stalemate reminicant of WW1. The attck however did not falter and Paris fell soon followed by all of the Northern coastline.

The speed that Northern France fell left Britain with no chance of aiding the French forces in the North, but that did not mean that they would not influence the war. In a stroke of Masterfull British diplomacy Poland agreed to attck into Eastern Germany with the bulk of their armed forces leaving me in an increasingly precarious position. Not being able to pull and Divisions out of the attack against France Eastern Gerany would likely fall and my designs on world domination would be over before 1939! The mechanised cavalry forces of Poland pushed into Germany facing only reservists and home guard units.

In a moment of extreme good fortune The Generals of the French army took control of the French government declaring Germany to be the true masters of Europe. France was gone - a new regime 'Vichy France' was created. Northern France remained in German hands while southern france was to be run by the political puppets of Germany. Poland sensing the precarious position they were now in moved to the outskirts of Berlin in the East...

[Carousel]

It's been a while since I've been excited about a game but I'm psyched about this one. I'm getting it next friday.

I just hope playing it is as much fun as reading these stories

[SirLoinalot]

The game is one hell of a lot of fun as long as you choose a Socialist or Communist country. I've always thought that it's too hard to start a war with a democratic country.

I'd advise against going the USA for your first game.

[ShangTang]

The game is one hell of a lot of fun as long as you choose a Socialist or Communist country. I've always thought that it's too hard to start a war with a democratic country.

I'd advise against going the USA for your first game.

It's fun being USA if you can manage to get them Authoritorian by 1940. I managed to conquer all of North America in one year!

[Carousel]

I'll probs play all the tutorials and then pick some backwater easy-to-defend country and just watch how things play out and take my chances if the coast (excuse the pun) looks clear. Then I'll start getting my hands dirty with one of the bigger countries