I received a free copy of Hearts of Iron 3 from Paradox several months ago but, due to a large backlog of games, I never even got around to installing it as I'm not the biggest fan of Paradox games. Anyway, I've been reading a lot about Bomber Command lately and I wanted to play something with at least some element of strategic bombing so I picked up the Their Finest Hour DLC on sale at GG and fired up the game.
I've never played an HOI game before and I'm finding the learning curve to be pretty steep. I've been reading through and watching various tutorials on the net and I think I'm beginning to get a handle on things but I do have some questions.
I started the game in 1936 and decided to play as France. I figured it would be the simplest country to start with in that all you really need to do is try to survive the German onslaught. I spent two years getting the economy in order, extending the Maginot line, and building up a lot of infantry and artillery (as well as researching tech for them) as well as pulling all my colonial troops back to France.
It's now spring 1940 in my game and the Germans are starting to attack me now as they've just overrun the Low Countries and are in the process of knocking off Norway. My units seem to have better numbers than the Germans, are on the defensive, and have fortresses and terrain to their advantage yet they often seem to just retreat out of a zone with zero casualties. Their organization numbers are nowhere near zero so why are they retreating? I've got them well sorted in divisions/corps/ army/ army group/HQ hierarchy and have decent leaders at all levels.
As for air power, is there a way to co-ordinate it with ground forces for attack or defence? I tried using the battle planner tool, but I can't seem to get it to function. I send in tac bombers with fighter cover on daylight attacks but they don't seem to do much except get their organization knocked down to zero and then I have to order them back to base to refit. Any tips?
Also, the game seems to crash at random intervals on two different PCs (Win 7 and Win 8). Any idea why it crashes so much?
I'm enjoying the game more than I thought I would so far but much of the game's inner workings are still confusing to me.
I am not as familiar with 3 as I am with 2, so what I suggest may not apply. In 2, you could go to any battle currently being fought and hover over the screen for tooltips explaining what was going on. Usually, if a battle you thought was supposed to be going your way was doing the opposite, it had to do with overstacking. There is a severe penalty for having too many units under the command of an officer not capable of handling those numbers.
Yes, I get the tooltip for some battles and I've been very careful not to over stack. However, some battles end instantaneously with my units just retreating and zero casualties in either side. I have no idea why. They have supply. They're fully mobilized and at full strength. They have good organization. They're in command range but they just leave.
Without seeing your game, it is tough to know what is going on. Perhaps you have you time scale set really high, the moment you un-pause the game, the battle happens really fast. Otherwise I am not sure why the battles are happening so fast.
You have to realize, though, the organization bar is relative. Your units might be at full organization, but your max organization might be 30 while the German organization is usually 70+ max. If the enemy has a much higher organization and your organization is low, the battles will be short.
Airpower is a tough thing to properly control. Stacking is particularly important with airpower, because it is easy to over-stack and the penalties are high. Plus, if your A/C are operating in a non-air superiority environment, they can be mauled quickly and it is hard to detect in a timely manner. Plus you need to be careful not to set your A/C operate in 24/7 missions, that will also run down their organization. To me, airpower is work intensive, but it is also essential to ground operations.
Swatter makes a good point. Until you reach a state of war, organization levels are low. The research to bring your maximum org. up are spaced rather far apart and don't reach the level of the Germans until late in the war, like '43 or '44. A General with a trait, such as Panzer Leader or Offensive Doctrine for instance, can also gain signifigant bonuses in their bailiwick. Or it could just be that the French are cheese eating surrender monkeys (sorry. I lifted that from someone else and always thought it was a pretty funny dig.)
Most of my units have an I organization value of 54 when the bar is full. No idea what the Boche have. As my goal was to cower in my bunkers, I placed division lvl officers with defensive doctrine perks in command of my frontline units. I made most divs out of 3 Inf brigades and 1 arty brigade. I also put 1 div of 3 TD brigades and 1 engineer brigade in as many stacks as I could. It's usually these TD/eng divs that leg it back to Paris for the cheese.
On a brighter note, my navy has blown nine kinds of hell out of the German and Italian fleets. Seems to have stopped the Krauts from reinforcing their attack on Norway at any rate. They've been stalled for 3 months.
Not being familiar with the best Division setups, I can't say why or why not something works. I would think that 3 TD's wouldn't give enough, I don't know, bass, to keep the Germans at bay. Enjoy your cheese :)
Combined arms changed with Their Finest Hour. Now when you build divisions the best bonus appears when you have different types of units attached.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?627976-Hearts-of-Iron-III-Their-Finest-Hour.-DD-4.-Combined-Arms-and-Leader-Traits
It's really hard to find a good divisional mix. To get the Combined Arms bonus with Their Finest Hour, you've really got to mix and match units. I think having only 1 infantry brigade with 3 support units makes it pretty brittle. It may perform well in one fight, but it's not going to last two. Also, it really makes it hard to play as a minor power as you just don't have the leadership stats to spread out your research. It's all well and good to have an inf bde, some arty, light armour, and some engineers in your division but if your arty and tanks are still based on 1918 tech, they're still going to get ground up when they meet Mr. Rommel's panzers.
Damn it! I WILL find a way to stop the Boche at the Maginot line! I will!
I've been playing the grand campaign as France for a few weeks now and I'm having a blast.
After a few false starts when I was learning the interface and game conventions, I think I've finally cracked it as France.
France is a mess in 1936. National unity is in the toilet. The armed forces are numerous but with poor leadership, worse morale, and using WWI era weapons and tactics.
I figured the first and only duty of France is to survive the German onslaught long enough for the Allies to build up and turn the tide. As such, I pulled all colonial forces back to France, broke up the default organizational structure, and rebuilt the army organization from the ground up so that I had as much command control as possible. (4 brigades to a division, 5 divisions to a corps, 5 corps to an army, 5 armies to an army group, 5 groups to an HQ). I focused all my national leadership into research and expanding the officer pool and severely curtailed diplomacy and only put enough in espionage to build up a strong domestic network. Once that was done, I put my intelligence agencies to work manipulating the French populace in an effort to re-build national pride and unity.
From 1936 to Sept '39, I concentrated solely on modernizing the army with a defensive POV in mind. As such, I threw all my R&D into infantry, artillery, and AT weapons and tactics. I built as many reserve divisions comprising 2 infantry brigades, 1 arty, and 1 AT brigade as I could manage and stacked them along the Maginot line. I ignored Belgium's protest and extended the line of forts from the Alsace region along the Luxemburg and Belgian borders all the way up to Dunkirk. France's industrial capacity is pretty low in '36 so it was a juggling act to throw points into unit production to build new units and forts or into modernizing gear. At any rate, I was able to build up my army to enough of an extent that I had at least 2 divisions in every province along the border from the English Channel to the Mediterranean (expect for the Swiss border) and had 3 in several key locations.
When war broke out in Sept '39, I was able to get national unity up to 72%, had thoroughly modern infantry, arty, and AT units, an officer replenishment rate of 140%(even though the officers coming out of St. Cyr were a pretty middling lot), and enough spies in Germany to build up an insurgency network strong enough to attempt to stage a coup should the opportunity arise.
Germany rolled over Poland in less than three weeks and later that autumn Denmark fell in 6 days. Winter hit and the Sitskrieg started. I desperately threw more divisions forward and built up my forts along the Belgian border a little more. In the spring of 1940, I threw the majority of the quite robust French navy into the maelstrom of the North Sea. In a series of brutal engagements, the French and Brit navies got the best of the Kriegsmarine and the Bismark, the Graf Spee, and the Schleswig-Holstein were sent to the bottom for the loss of one French battleship and two heavy cruisers. The Tirpitz and the Prince Eugen were forced to hole up in Kiel and the Allies were able to stop the German invasion of Norway.
I continued to build up through the rest of the spring, cringing at the thought of what the Blitzkrieg was going to do to my lines (they ripped through me in a few weeks in my previous attempts). In late May the Germans hit the Netherlands with everything they had. With the French and Brit navies controlling the North Sea, the Brits gambled and landed their expeditionary force on the German coast and pressed toward Bremen. I resisted the temptation to throw my forces over the line and try to counter-attack and instead stayed in my forts. I sent the French air force to aid the Dutch but they were totally out-classed by the Luftwaffe. My flyboys didn't even last a day before being driven back to their aerodromes in disgrace. The Brits had some initial success and seized Hamburg and Bremen but they just didn't have the manpower to stand up to the full might of the Wehrmacht and were driven into the sea in September, a month later Holland fell just about the same time that Belgium finally gave up the ghost.
The British had shot their bolt and failed and I was on tenterhooks dreading my turn in front of the panzers and hoping that I'd delayed them long enough that they'd sit out the winter. Such was not the case and they hit the Maginot line in late September. I was expecting a repeat of my last playthroughs with the Germans slicing through my lines but all the effort I put into not only researching the latest gear, but also ensuring that my troops were all equipped with it paid off and I was able to hold the Germans at the border. It was a close-run thing and if the Royal Air Force hadn't come to drive off the Stukas, I could very well have lost but thanks to those Spitfires, I held the line and in mid-October, the Germans pulled back to lick their wounds.
About this time, the Italians decided to get stuck in and they went on a tear in North Africa. They drove the Brits back to Alexandria and pushed up to Tunis. I had stationed a few garrison units in North Africa in late 1939 and, while they initially held their own, they were eventually driven back by the Italian regulars. I'd caught a reprieve after the Germans pulled back for the winter so I sent two divisions of infantry and one of armor to Tunis in an effort to save our colonies.
The Italian navy might not have the professionalism of the Germans, but they certainly have numbers on their side. The battles of the Western Med were even more brutal than those of the North Sea but again, the Anglo-French alliance prevailed and the majority of Mussolini's capital ships went to the bottom. Unfortunately, not before they'd hammered my convoy of transports with battleship battlegroup escort. My armored div and one of the inf divs lost 50% of their forces during the crossing.
The remaining armor was more than the Italians could cope with and we were able to drive them back to Tripoli by November and take the city by December. In the east, the Brits and Iraqis pushed the Italians all the way back to Benghazi. During this time, the Germans launched repeated bombing raids against my naval base in Cherbourg and it quickly became apparent that the French planes were not up to snuff. I bought a license from the UK to produce a few squadrons of Spitfires. I also started building 3 divisions of marines and two of armor. In Feb '41, they were ready and I launched an invasion of Sardinia. Once again, the Italian navy made my life miserable and snuck past my battleship group and hammered my transports. I lost marine 3 brigades before we hit the beaches but they had only a token garrison unit defending the island and it quickly fell.
With Sardinia in Allied hands, the shipping lanes in the Western Med were secure and I was able reinforce my North African forces in the summer of '41. All this time, I was on guard for another German push at the Maginot line, but this never materialized. They limited themselves to aerial attacks but the RAF blunted much of this, and once I'd built RADAR stations along the Belgian border, the Luftwaffe's effectiveness was greatly reduced.
I continued building my forces in North Africa and Sardina and in the fall of 1941, I launched a two pronged invasion of Sicily with the marines landing at Palermo from Sardinia and my armor and infantry hitting Siracusa from Tripoli. The initial landings went off without a hitch but immediately the Wehrmacht reacted and began marching down the boot of Italy for the Straits of Messina. A pretty intense race developed as I sent my armor rushing forward while the marines mopped up the Italian resistance. I flung my antiquated French tactical bombers at the Germans in an attempt to slow them down. They were chewed up dreadfully but I won the race and got one armored division to Messina 2 hours before the Germans attempted their crossing from the toe of Italy with 5 motorized infantry divisions. They almost succeeded in driving my armor back, but fire from my battleships and the timely arrival of my 2nd armored division stopped the Germans cold on Christmas day.
In what I can only assume was a fit of pique at failing to cross the straits, the Germans launched a new offensive aimed at Dunkirk. And they came with new, heavy tanks. A very, very ugly fight ensured with 3 of my 4 divisions getting driven back. I sent some armor in to re-enforce Dunkirk and they, along with the final infantry division and the RAF, once again stopped the Germans.
It's now May 1942 and that's where things stand. I've just completed another massive round of upgrades to my infantry, arty, and AT. I've got the air force to the point where the fighters can hold their own on defensive intercepts but the bomber force is still useless. I'm simultaneously anticipating and dreading the next German onslaught. The sad fact is that they're out-producing me at a 2-1 ratio and none of my allies is really up to much. The Brits are doing a great job of controlling the air and sea, but they still haven't recovered from their losses in Bremen and have limited themselves to a few nuisance raids in Denmark to aid the partisans there.
I had hoped that the Germans would've turned east to the USSR but it looks like they're going to try to knock me out of the fight before they do.
The Russians have mobilized but are content to sit on their borders. The Yanks are steadfastly neutral and the Japanese have decided to leave them alone in favour of mopping up China.
Can't wait to see how it all plays out!
Wow thanks for the write up!
Very cool! Let us know how you fare next.
Would you say HoI 3 is worth learning now? Rhetorical perhaps? ;)
The UI and countless of screens are pretty daunting to me, but I have the game for ages now and really want to get into it.
What did you do to learn the interface? Just play and restart?
Hey SDR.. Have they improved the AI enough so that you don't have to micro-manage your masses of military units so much (in HOI3)?
I recall reports of the AI mucking up troop movements so much that HQ's subordinates were placed out of supply/command fairly regularly, and other such annoyances, when attacks were delegated.
Excellent AAR SDR, thanks for sharing!... Glad you didn't give up on the game!.. Makes me want to give it another shot now!
Quote from: Tuna on July 30, 2013, 05:57:07 AM
Excellent AAR SDR, thanks for sharing!... Glad you didn't give up on the game!.. Makes me want to give it another shot now!
+1.....well done, look forward to seeing how it plays out.
Quote from: Tuna on July 30, 2013, 05:57:07 AM
Excellent AAR SDR, thanks for sharing!... Glad you didn't give up on the game!.. Makes me want to give it another shot now!
Add another +1 for me. Great AAR! Thanks, SDR.
Quote from: Yskonyn on July 30, 2013, 03:24:07 AM
Wow thanks for the write up!
Very cool! Let us know how you fare next.
Would you say HoI 3 is worth learning now? Rhetorical perhaps? ;)
The UI and countless of screens are pretty daunting to me, but I have the game for ages now and really want to get into it.
What did you do to learn the interface? Just play and restart?
Yes, I'd say it's worth it. (Of course I might change my tune now that there are six divisions of Tiger tanks massing outside of Dunkirk and Cambrai and I don't think my 76mm AT guns can stop them.)
To learn the interface, I looked at various AARs on the HOI forums and when I found one with a lot of detail, I just tried to replicate what they did in my own game. I think the parts that are most problematic for me at first were how to set up proper chains of command and how to build divisions that would give a good combined arms bonus without losing too much robustness. Much of my confusion came from the fact that the way the game determines the combined arms bonus changed with the release of
Their Finest Hour and I was following older AARs.
Nefaro, I don't know that I've got enough experience to really comment on the AI yet as I've only played as France and I've been pretty defensive. For the most part, the AI for the various nations in my game have been pretty passive. I don't know if that's always the case or if everyone's just holding their breath to see which way the Battle of France is going to go before they jump in. The only issue I have with supply is that you can't select your own supply hubs and the AI doesn't seem to do a good job of picking places when you're on the offensive. I think it picks the biggest port in the general area rather than the most central so you sometimes end up with pretty tenuous lines of supply.
That was a fun read, SDR. Thanks for posting it!
Thanks SDR.
Great AAR. Enjoyed reading it.
I wanna know what the Soviets will do next.
Well, that moustachioed nutbag in Moscow has been supplying the Krauts with uranium and my spies tell me that their research into isotope seperation is going disturbingly well.
The summer of 1942 looked a lot like the spring of 1918. As I feared, the Germans had been busy building new Tiger tanks and supporting them with mechanized infantry divisions. These divisions charged across the Franco-Belgian border on the last week of May. I had 3 divisions of French heavy tanks but an up-armoured Char-B1 ter with a 6 lber QF cannon is no match for a Tiger. Thankfully the clever boys in the lab had come up with an improvement on the Bazooka, namely the RL-83 Blindicide. It was touch and go as to whether or not I'd be able to produce and distribute them quickly enough to blunt the German advance, but extra effort by the logistics boys (basically me going through each and every god-damned brigade and turning the prioritize button on or off) paid off and the infantry manning the forts along the Belgian border had the weapon that would prove to be a Tiger killer. The German offensive lasted 6 weeks with the heaviest fighting at Dunkirk, Cambrai, and Charleville-Mezieres. (Playing through this bit took me hours and hours. I found it a bit overwhelming at times even running at the slowest time progression rate. Couple of complaints about the game engine. Air power needs to have a few more control options such as allowing you to select at which loss rate they should RTB. Also, they need to do something about the up-down arrow slider in the battle interface as when one side has more than 4 divisions committed to a fight, this slider blocks out the unit organization level indicator. Makes it hard to determine how the fight is progressing.) As usual, the Luftwaffe dominated the French air-force and by the third day, the only planes in the skies over the Pas de Calais and Lorainne were sporting crosses on their wings.
I was able to hold the Germans at Dunkirk without too much trouble. Cambrai was closer, but we held them there as well. It was at Charleville-Mezieres where I ran into trouble. Unlike the other two areas, this one didn't have a river as a natural defensive barrier. The combination of Tiger tanks with massive amounts of close air support proved more than the four divisions I had stationed there could handle. After a week of intense fighting, French morale cracked and two divisions routed. I started pulling mobile divisions out of other parts of the line and rushed them towards Charleville-Mezieres. They didn't arrive in time and the remaining French divisions also routed and ceded the province to the Germans. I ordered my divisions on either side of the newly developed salient to attack into Charleville-Mezieres but the Germans countered by attacking into the provinces where my attackers were based, forcing them to abandon their push into Charleville-Mezieres and instead concentrate on defending against the threats facing them. In a last ditch attempt to prevent a German breakout, I sent my antiquated bombers to conduct nighttime bombing raids against the German supply depots around Charleville-Mezieres and Hirson. I also called upon my intelligence assets. Prior to the outbreak of war in '39, I'd built up a network of covert operators in Germany in the hopes of possibly assassinating Hitler and deposing the Nazis. Instead, I called upon my saboteurs to attack the German lines of supply.
I had earlier anticipated the need for the development of night bombers as my bomber force was hopelessly outmatched by the German fighters so I conducted some rudimentary research in 1940-41. This research paid off as my bombers used Gee and Oboe radio navigation systems to find and hit the German supply depots night after night with relatively minor losses. Between the bombers and the saboteurs, we were able to wipe out the German fuel reserves. With their fuel supplies in flames, the Germans weren't able to exploit their breakthrough and I was able to close off the salient. (Had I been playing against a human, that would've been the end of the game for France. I had to weaken my defences all along the border in order to retake Charleville-Mezieres yet the AI didn't capitalize on this and I was able to retake the province and reinforce the line with almost no interference at all.)
The fighting died down by the middle of July and by August, land forces were back up to full strength. The French air-force wouldn't recover it's numbers until mid-September. The Germans would launch the occasional attack with land forces but mostly contented themselves with daily bombing raids.
While the battles in NE France were by far the most intensive, they weren't the only ones occurring. The pesky Italians took the opportunity to wreak some havoc while I was preoccupied. In June, they launched a series of attacks towards Nice and Marseilles with some German and Slovakian units in support. The mountainous terrain worked in my favour and my alpine units easily held the line.
The Brits succeeded in clearing the last of the Italians out of Africa by taking Ethiopia but they left Malta wide open and Mussolini pounced. I missed this happening and didn't find out until Italian dive bombers started pounding the ports of Sicily where my battleship fleet was undergoing repairs. Bloody Mussolini! The Italian AI was proving very adept at being a thorn in my side. I gathered 3 divisions of marines in Calabria and sent them with bomber cover and a battlegroup to re-take Malta. That proved a very tough nut to crack! It took almost 6 weeks of fighting and some very heavy casualties on my side before we were able to hand the island back to the Brits. In the meantime, the Italians took advantage of my battleship fleet being tied down providing shore bombardment and launched nuisance raids against Corsica, Tripoli, and Sardinia. It was very frustrating as the AI had me constantly reacting to situations and putting out fires rather than pressing my own attacks. I'd send a squadron of destroyers or subs to drive away the invasion force and then the Italian air-force would show up and blast my ships. I'd send them back to port for repairs but the bombers would follow them and then bomb the hell out of port. Having to constantly repair ships and port facilities and trickle replacement men in ate up a lot of valuable resources.
I decided I'd had enough of the Italians so it was time to hit back. In the fall of 1942, I transported two divisions of heavy tanks to Sicily. I send 3 divisions of marines to launch an amphibious assault on the heel of the Italian boot in the hopes that they'd draw German and Italian divisions away from the Straits of Messina. It worked like a charm and once the Straits were denuded of defenders, I sent my heavy tanks along with 4 infantry divisions across the water. We were able to push up as far as Taranto and take the heel and toe of the boot but then massive numbers of Italian and German reinforcements arrived and we were forced to go on the defensive.
This was a depressing time for France as we really did seem to be going it alone. The Americans were still staying well out of the fight. Stalin was still acting like Hitler was his buddy and supplying him with uranium. The Brits were making a great show of sailing back and forth without accomplishing much of anything at all. The ANZACs made a landing in Italian controlled Albania and seized the main port but seemed content with that token effort. The Canadians landed several divisions in England and proceeded to get drunk. Apart from some plucky Danish and Polish resistance fighters, it felt like France was the only doing any fighting at all.
Thankfully, the Axis members weren't much more active either. Finland took the opportunity to grab up some worthless arctic provinces from the Norwegians but they were the only ones active at all. The Japanese were still busy slaughtering Chinese peasants and the remaining Axis satellite powers didn't seem to be up to much at all.
Again, it felt like the world was waiting to see what was going to happen between Germany and France before they were willing to pull their thumbs out and get stuck in.
After the failure of their summer offensive, the Germans started on a new tack. My spies reported that German research focus was shifting away from tanks and towards naval assets. I was thankful as, as I'd mentioned before, German industry was out-producing French industry by a 2-1 margin. It was only my tight focus on defensive tech that stopped the Blitzkrieg. Now that I was facing off against both German and Italian forces on 3 fronts, the Germans really should have no problem taking me out through simple attrition if they'd only stick to building more heavy tanks and infantry.
At least that's what I was thinking in mid to late autumn 1942.
Winter 1942-43 was relatively quiet. The Italians and I would take turns attacking one another in and around Taranto in southern Italy and the French air-force continued to cower under the bombs of the Luftwaffe in the north. I built up my armies in Sicily more and started putting more research into amphibious warfare with an eye to hopping up Italy's coasts in late '43.
In March, things started to go pear-shaped. The French navy, which had dominated the North sea and the western Med in 1939 and '40 now began to show its age. Apart from the carrier air groups, the fleet hadn't modernized at all and the French merchant marine began to pay the price. Reports of French convoy and escort losses started coming in with alarming frequency and the French navy was completely unable to cope with the new U-boat threat. We just simply couldn't find them at all. To make matters worse, new German naval bombers began to appear whenever my ships sailed close to home ports and these bombers were deadly accurate. Cherbourg and Marseilles were no longer safe harbours and my fleets were forced to take shelter in Le Harve or Algiers in order to affect repairs.
French shipping losses got to the point where I was no longer able to reliably re-supply French forces in southern Italy and fuel and supply shortages became the norm. We were unable to effectively fight and were forced to abandon the heel of the Italian boot.
I switched production from landing craft to convoy ships and cursed the Royal Navy. With both the French and British navies forced out of the North Sea, the Germans were finally free to make a play for Norway and they landed troops at Tronheim in early April. By mid-May, the were knocking on the door at Oslo and this success seemed to galvanize the Germans and the world was finally plunged into total war.
The Germans again launched mass attacks against my forces at Dunkirk but also decided it was finally time to put Barbarossa into play. They declared war on the USSR on June 1, 1943. The same day that Japan launched surprise attacks against Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, Guam, and the Philippines.
That's where we stand. I'm again fighting a holding action against heavy German tanks along the Belgian border. I'm being pushed back towards Sicily from southern Italy due to lack of supply. The Americans are getting their asses handed to them in the Philippines and the eastern Pacific Islands. The Brits have just lost Singapore. Norway's about to fall but things are not all bad. The Red hordes are on an absolute tear in the east. Looks like Adolf left it too long and the Red Army had recovered from the purges.
Uncle Joe has taken the offence and forced Finland to capitulate in 3 weeks, he has already taken Warsaw, and is poised to take Bucharest. The only place where Stalin's forces are facing defeat is at the hands of the Japanese in Manchuria.
It's now September, 1943 and France is about to re-invigorate its merchant marine and once again push for Rome.
Damn, sounds like things have tense as hell for France. Hopefully this widening of the war ultimately works in their favor!
Great AAR SDR!.. Insert some pics to enhance the story!... Hopefully the start of Barbarossa willl be all you need to turn the tide.. especially where they waited so long. hopefully Russia will have built up enough (and it does sound like she is strong).
That's some really good writing, SDR. I playe HoI 2 to death and wished I liked 3 better. This AAR might put me over the top. A quick comment on the A.I. based on observations of many hours spent on 2. The game is not hard wired to following history, but, it seems that some events will not fire if other events do not fire either. The fall of France would have started Barbarossa. Because you held off the Germans for Norway and France, it had to re-think its strategy. And for a computer, it's usually slow on the up take. Not a lot of aggessive behavior.
Do you find that if you load a saved game, the AI gets really aggressive and attacks as soon as you start the time running?
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on August 03, 2013, 03:41:34 PM
Do you find that if you load a saved game, the AI gets really aggressive and attacks as soon as you start the time running?
I remember that happening in HOI II. If you played for hours the AI would go dormant. You had to stop and start the game to get the AI to wake up.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on August 03, 2013, 03:41:34 PM
Do you find that if you load a saved game, the AI gets really aggressive and attacks as soon as you start the time running?
????
September has been ugly. The Germans hit the Belgian border and the Maginot line with everything they had. They punched through my lines and took Cambrai and Charleville. They whittled my unit's organization stats to zero and just kept hammering at my lines so that I was never able to successfully reinforce. I'm now racing back to Paris in an attempt to hold them outside the capitol.
My assessment of the situation in the east may have been premature. Never count on the German's ability to rally in the face of adversity. Despite the initial Soviet gains, the Germans successfully counter-attacked and took back Warsaw and about 80% of the other provinces as well.
I've produced a couple of Marine divisions that I'd originally intended to sent to Italy but I've since thrown them at Cambrai in the hopes that they can stem the tide. Being freshly produced units, their organization stat is zero though so they need a few weeks of peace and quiet to get sorted out before I throw them in the path of the Kraut panzers. I don't have the luxury of time though. It'll be interesting to see if they can hold their own.
Excellent AAR SDR. I really want to fire HOI3 up now, but things to do today.
I last played Nationalist China on HOI3, but was utterly stomped by Japan.
Sorry about the empty quote. Having problems with the forum software and didn't have time to correct it last night. I was basically just going to say that I am a bit dense at times, so I did not notice that being the case, but I am sure it could be.
I just reinstalled this. Let's see how far I get.
Tuna asked for some screenshots, so here they are. I am using two graphics mods, historical flags and Francesco's counters. The latter swaps out the NATO symbols in favour of silhouettes.
Anyway, the winter of 1943 was nuts. France and Germany slugged it out in a terrible war of attrition all along the Franco-Belgian border. Cambrai and Charleville changed hands multiple times but by New Year's day, 1944 the Germans were pushed back to their starting lines (albeit at a cost of 300,000 French lives).
I was able to make some good inroads into northwestern Italy and pushed all the way to Milan, seizing the city the week before Christmas.
In southern Italy, I retook Taranto and the heel of the boot but I feel I have overextended myself and I'm having trouble containing the counter-attacks.
In the autumn of '43, Greece joined the Allies and made great inroads into Yugoslavia and Albania. (Yugoslavia having joined the Axis several years earlier.)
In January 1944, the Canadians landed 8 divisions along the north German coast at Willhemshaven. this looked to be another Dieppe writ large as the poor buggers were slaughtered on the beaches. Their sacrifice did pull several German divisions away from Holland however and the Brits pounced. They, along with the South Africans and one brigade of US Rangers, landed dozens of divisions in Holland and started driving the Germans inland.
This was it! Liberation! I sent my armies across the line into Belgium and took Brugge in a day. The German battleships Tirpitz and Großdeutschland had been berthed in Brugge and they and their dozen cruiser escorts sallied out of port on a death or glory charge. A turly epic naval battle took place in which the pride of the French fleet, the battleship Courbet was sent to the bottom along with two heavy cruisers and a number of destroyers. The battleship Paris and the aircraft carrier Bearn were heavily damaged but only 3 destroyer squadrons of the Kriegsmarine escaped the guns of the French and Royal navies.
That's where I'm at now. February 1944.
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The Germans are getting pushed back from Belgium but they're stubbornly refusing to give up Luxembourg. I've taken it twice and they've counter-attacked and taken it back once already and they're currently trying again.
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Things are going well in NW Italy and I anticipate taking Genoa by March at the latest.
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Down in the boot, things are going less well. The Germans have arrived in Greece and driven the Greek armies back to their capital. German mechanized infantry are also making life tough for the French forces in and around Taranto and we're being slowly but surely ground down. I may have to retreat to Sicily.
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Convoy losses are getting critical. Things were bad enough with just the U-boats to contend with. Now the Japanese navy is weighing in as well and they've sunk anything flying the Tricolore from Madagascar east. Not only is this causing supply shortages for the troops, it's also beginning to tell on civilian morale. (You can see the negative mods in the top right of the screen. It also doesn't help having a barking buffoon leading the nation during a time of war. Oh well, elections are scheduled for May so hopefully they'll vote the idiot out this time.)
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Awesome AAR SDR, thanks for sharing!.. I'm sure your giving quite a few people an itch to fire this game up and learn it! (not just me ;) )
Hell, this is almost making *me* want to get the game, despite my never having had a particular interest in the HoI series. Good stuff SDR!
Well, it's 50% off at Gamersgate now. I think the sale ends today though.
Wow SDR! Great continuation. I am hooked to the screen and I am ploughing through the manual and the strategy guide once more to try and learn the game proper.
Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!
:) Keep it up!
Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?
Quote from: Yskonyn on August 05, 2013, 09:59:22 AM
Wow SDR! Great continuation. I am hooked to the screen and I am ploughing through the manual and the strategy guide once more to try and learn the game proper.
Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!
:) Keep it up!
Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?
I think this guy did a good job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ3D7qq61iw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ3D7qq61iw)
But I'd like to find something that goes into the HQ Attacks. how to set your objectives and such.. remember learning it before, but lol. Forgot it all! I guess you could just control them manually.
I like the silhouettes too, but thought it was weird how they have French Heavy Armor as a King Tiger!
Those are superb mods. Especially the counter silhouettes.
Quote from: Yskonyn on August 05, 2013, 09:59:22 AM
Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!
Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?
The link that Tuna provided is a very good one. I learned a lot from watching that guy's videos. One thing to keep in mind though is that there have been some major changes to the game mechanics with the release of
Their Finest Hour. The biggest one is how the combined arms bonus is derived. I think eyebiter provided a link earlier in this thread but I'll repeat here. In a lot of the tutorials you'll find online, they are still referencing the pre-TFH game mechanics and they'll tell you that you need to comprise a division with a certain softness percentage (I think 30-66% or something like that) in order to get the combined arms bonus. That's no longer the case. Now you need to have a mix of brigade types in your division to get the bonus. Thankfully, the units in the production screen are colour-coded (armour is purple, infantry is tan, artillery is red, AT and AA are blue, engineers and armoured cars are green, etc) You'll also see a combined arms calculator on the right of the division build screen which informs you of what your combined arms bonus will be. You always need at least one infantry unit to get the bonus (cavalry and garrisons don't count even though they're tan). I'd recommend at least two infantry brigades or one infantry and one armour and then two support units such as arty and AT.
Espionage is also different and expanded. In addition to the stuff you can do from the main espionage page, you can also conduct spy missions from the province tabs on the map. If you click on a province, it'll bring up the province tab and on the right-hand side a little less than half-way down you'll see a grey rectangle with a number in it right arrow tab. Clicking that tab will bring up a spy options menu such as sabotage supplies, steal local battle plans and so on. You'll need covert ops points to attempt these missions though and you can gain points from the main espionage menu.
Another site that helped me with the very basics is this one:
http://www.alteredgamer.com/hearts-of-iron/ (http://www.alteredgamer.com/hearts-of-iron/)
This one is good for some country-specific tips.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Main_Page (http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Main_Page)
This one was very helpful in explaining how to set up your armies so that they have optimal command structures. (although doing so is very, very tedious work.)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?508595-TutAARial-or-How-I-learned-to-Stop-Fearing-Hearts-of-Iron-3-%28Semper-Fi%29 (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?508595-TutAARial-or-How-I-learned-to-Stop-Fearing-Hearts-of-Iron-3-%28Semper-Fi%29)
Mods:The game creates a seperate sub-folder for
Their Finest Hour within the main HOI folder, so you'll have to put the mods in there to get them to work. The default folder name is
tfh.
Flag mod:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/einekatzes-hearts-of-iron-iii-flag-mod (http://www.moddb.com/mods/einekatzes-hearts-of-iron-iii-flag-mod)
Counters mod: (you need to be registered on the Paradox forums to see the post)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?549028-MOD-Francesco-s-Counters-Mod (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?549028-MOD-Francesco-s-Counters-Mod)
If you're not registered and don't want to be, you can get the .exe here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/36ep6qss6lz35fq/Francesco%27s+Counters+Mod.exe (http://www.mediafire.com/download/36ep6qss6lz35fq/Francesco%27s+Counters+Mod.exe)
The guy who made the counter mod also made a model mod that replaces all the black and white unit photos with some really nice coloured artwork but it's not fully fleshed out for Their Finest Hour yet and the placeholder art looks terrible so I don't use it.
I'd be interested in trying out an MP game but I wonder how long it would take to play out the war. My game's taken me weeks to play and I've sometimes played 4 hours at a stretch.
Tuna, I don't really know how to use the HQ battle planner either so I've been doing everything manually. About the only thing I do use is the HQ stance slider to select between offensive and defensive postures. Honestly, I haven't found it to be a hassle as France, but I suspect that trying to manage the massive armies that the USSR wields could be a different story.
can you still politically influence nations, i remember as germany spending a fortune on this for the US and right wing made great gains over in the US and they were very sympathetic to 'the cause'?
Yup. You do it through the diplomacy page. In TFH, it uses diplomatic influence points which you obtain by allocating some of your national leadership into diplomacy.
I do not know if MP requires the same mods, but, I do know that you must be playing the same version of the game in order to mp. Not sure where in III it is, but I know in II, at one of the selection screens before you started, the version you had was in the bottom corner. Left or right I do not remember, but in order to MP, all players had to have the same version code.
very tempted to jump in as Italy now, all testament to a) the game (which doesnt always receive good press) and b)SDR and his awesome story
Yeah I know! I am totally into Paradox grand strategy games now too.
Learning to play CK 2 properly, learning to play HoI 3 properly and EU IV being on the horizon.... ouch.. so much to learn!
It helps that the Clausewitz Engine offers much of the same control mechanics for each game at least.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on August 05, 2013, 03:22:43 PM
I'd be interested in trying out an MP game but I wonder how long it would take to play out the war. My game's taken me weeks to play and I've sometimes played 4 hours at a stretch.
Thank you for all the links!
Well at least MP games can be saved and continued later. Depending on your timezone that should be a workable solution, but it will take a loooong time to complete a game. I agree.
I'm in the Pacific Time Zone (GMT -8hr).
EST (GMT-5)
Another great video on AI Army control by that same guy who did the other tutorials.. .Boy it seems a lot easier, then what I remember 'before' FTM.
So is the AI competent in controlling your troops on your behalf if you give it assignments? Or do you still really need to control every unit? If so, that would help with all the micromanagement I fear when I try and play this game.
I think it was a lot different setting up the AI when I played a long time ago.. like you 'drew' your front lines.. with objectives beyond... It looks like now it does that for you, you just set your objectives and it does the lines for you, but it's cool that it shows you where they are.
I think like SDR said, if it's a small country with not a lot of fronts, you really don't need to do the AI, you can manage the battles yourself.
But I would think if you were something big like Germany with multiple fronts and you wanted to focus on one area and let the AI do the others, that would be a plus.. just depends on 'how much' you can trust it..
The Anglo-French offensive of February-June, 1944 saw France involved in the heaviest fighting seen since they turned back the Germans in '43. Sustained pressure ousted the Wehrmacht from Luxembourg and back into Germany. The British, Commonwealth Forces, and the armies of the occupied nations attacked north of the Rhine into Saxony and Westphalia while the French attacked south of the Rhine into Saarland, the Palatinate, and Baden-Wurttemburg. This was terrible terrain to fight offensive actions in and the French armies paid in blood for every foot. In late April, Aachen became the first German city to fall into Allied hands. This loss of this city seemed to galvanize the Germans and they threw everything they had at the French lines in a desperate attempt to stop the advance. The SS units and their new King Tiger tanks proved to be very formidable and pushing them back from the woods and hills was a very costly affair. Nonetheless, we did push them back and by mid-June, we were laying siege to Dusseldorf and Cologne to the north and Saarbrucken in the south.
On June 6, 1944, with the front lines now well to the east of the Low Countries, the French government formally returned control of Belgium and Luxembourg to their rightful governments. The liberated peoples of these nations immediately took up arms to fight alongside the French. In the north, the British took Hamburg, Bremen, and Hannover and were fighting along the banks of the Elbe.
French and Belgian forces attacked Dusseldorf and Cologne on June 10th and these cities were taken a week later as German forces were pushed back across the Rhine. I had hoped to stay right on their tails and keeping knocking them back before they had a chance to reorganize, but sadly this proved to be an impossibility. The heavy casualties suffered during this push drained French reserves to nothing and I no longer had the manpower necessary to replenish my forces (France had a manpower rating of 552 when the big German push in '43 happened. It was down to 156 when Luxembourg was taken and hit zero just after Cologne fell.)
It was a bittersweet moment to have to sit idly by when the German lines finally broke in the first week of July and the Brits crossed the Elbe. At the same time, the Soviets broke through at Breslau and Posen and the race was on for Berlin.
A combined force of British, Canadians, and Free Danes attacked Berlin on July 8th, 1944 and 3 days later the Nazis formally surrendered to the United Kingdom.
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With Germany now out of the war, the remaining European Axis members scrambled to get their forces back to their respective countries in the delusional hope that they could stop the Allied juggernaut. Rumania had already fallen to the Soviets before Germany surrendered but none of the other Axis nations were willing to capitulate.
France's earlier drive into Italy had stalled due to manpower shortages in the north around Milan and Genoa and to supply shortages in the south around Taranto and Naples. With Germany now out of the picture, we once again had the men and materiel to renew our advance. We may have missed out on Berlin, but there was no way we were going to let anyone else take Rome!
Our tanks in Germany cut through the now neutral Austria just ahead of the British. We caught the Italians in a state of retreat and Venice, Bologna, Florence, and Pisa all fell without a fight. Diehard Italian fascists rose up and formed partisan bands in Sicily but quickly learned to their cost that conviction and a bolt-action rifle are no match for seasoned marines with gun support from 3 battleships. Italian regulars put up some determined resistance in Naples and Ortona but this was short-lived and both cities fell within a few days of fighting.
In August, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia surrendered to the USSR. Britain liberated Crete and landed paratroops in Athens. On August 25th, French forces encircled Rome from the north and south and Italy surrendered to us unconditionally on August 29th, 1944.
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Great AAR -- congrats on subduing the Hun. I like that you made the non-conventional choice of playing France. (This from someone who never seems to be able to resist un-imaginatively playing as Germany or UK or USA.)
I haven't played HOI3 in over a year, but these posts are rekindling my interest.
I highly recommend the "BlackICE" mod -- adds a lot of nice flavor, although it's rather Germany-centric. Still, I wouldn't play HOI3 without it.
Great job SDR! From the sound of it, I bet you got a lot of satisfaction, from this win!
Occurs to me that P'dox has been awfully quiet on the subject of an HoI 4. With high-profile sequels like CK2+expansions and EU4 being rolled out, can an HOI4 be far behind? I'd love to see it.
Fantastic AAR! Very well done,
SDR.
You definitely have a certain knack for storytelling. I could feel the tension with how things were touch-and-go from the war's beginning through hard fighting that took place during the winter of '43-44. :)
Quote from: sandman2575 on August 07, 2013, 01:14:06 PM
Occurs to me that P'dox has been awfully quiet on the subject of an HoI 4. With high-profile sequels like CK2+expansions and EU4 being rolled out, can an HOI4 be far behind? I'd love to see it.
My personal hunch is it'll probably be a little while yet before the next HoI title is released. However, I agree it's inevitable we do see another one; the only question is whether it's already in the pipeline, or still just on Paradox's "to do" list.
Well, the war's not over yet. Slovakia and Hungary still need mopping up. Then there is the other side of the globe. While we were focused on eradicating the Nazi menace, the Japanese have been running rampant in Asia. They have pushed deep into Soviet territory and taken Vladivostok. Apart from a few bits of jungle, most of the French colonial holdings in Indochina are occupied. The Brits have lost Sungapore, Malaya, and Hong Kong. The Aussies are fighting in the jungles of Borneo but giving up ground. Most worryingly is the silence from the USA.
Apart from a few brigades of Rangers seconded to the Brits early in the war, we saw nothing of them in the European conflict. No lend-lease. No help with the U-boat menace or the Luftwaffe bombers. I think the Japanese navy must have bested them sometime in 1944. I didn't pay too much attention to the Pacific but whenever I did have a look, it seemed like the Americans and Japanese were contesting the island chains throughout the ocean. Wake , Saipan, Midway and several other islands seemed to change hands quite a few times. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think the Japanese navy got the best of the Americans somewhere near Guam because I had been surprised to see Guam back in US hands at one point even though all the chains to the East were controlled by the Japanese. A few months later, I got a message saying Hawaii had fallen to Japanese marines. When I had a look at the map at that point, the US had been pushed out of the Pacific almost completely. They still held some of their Alaskan islands but that was it.
Im torn. Part of me wants to continue the game just to see what happens. Can the US industrial might come back from this? Will the Soviets try to take the rest of Europe? They've massed a tonne of troops along the Oder. However, I think I'm going to end it here as it kind of feels right.
If I were to continue, I'll pretty much be playing as a spectator. I was forced to steer my research and production towards land warfare and as a consequence, my navy is still using WWI era tactics and technology. It'll be years before I can catch up.
I had a fantastic time playing this campaign. The sense of history really came alive for me and the sense of tension and drama were palpable at times. I think part of the reason for that was because I didn't know the game's mechanics all that well so I was never really confident that I'd taken the best path or made the best choices regarding R&D and army production. The game really is all about numbers and optimization so I think that, in my case, once I get a really good understanding, it'll lose that sense of drama and turn into more of a game of accounting. Thankfully I think learning to play as the Brits or the US or Japan and have to deal with multiple fronts and juggle armies, navies, and air forces and deal with long lines of supply will provide plenty of challenges yet.
Too bad you're ending the game. :(
A lot of interesting things may still happen.
I'm really looking forward to the Cold War version of this game coming up. What a great engine to play out a Warsaw Pact v NATO conflict. I have never played HOI but this is most anticipated game
^I have not heard anything about a Cold War game. Any links?
Also, has anyone taken a minor nation such as Brazil or South Africa and turned it into a nuclear state with long-range bombers or short range ballistic missiles?
I toyed around for a bit longer just to see what it would take to bring the war to Japan. I sent two fleets comprising 1 carrier, 4 battleships, and 17 light and heavy cruisers, destroyer squadrons, and some landing craft to see if I could retake Saigon. I lost 70% of the ships to a small Japanese battlegroup of two battleships and 10 cruisers and destroyers. I landed in Vietnam but the chronic lack of supplies meant I couldn't do much at all. The Brits did manage to gain a foothold in Kyushu and southern Honshu but it looked like it'd be a stalemate. I contented myself with a victory in Europe.
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Great AAR, SDR.
If you feel like writing up another one for your next game I am sure to be reading along again.
You played well and learned a lot. Good job!
Quote from: Staggerwing on August 07, 2013, 08:59:51 PM
^I have not heard anything about a Cold War game. Any links?
Also, has anyone taken a minor nation such as Brazil or South Africa and turned it into a nuclear state with long-range bombers or short range ballistic missiles?
East vs west
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/east-vs-west
Thanks!
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on August 07, 2013, 11:57:59 PM
I toyed around for a bit longer just to see what it would take to bring the war to Japan. I sent two fleets comprising 1 carrier, 4 battleships, and 17 light and heavy cruisers, destroyer squadrons, and some landing craft to see if I could retake Saigon. I lost 70% of the ships to a small Japanese battlegroup of two battleships and 10 cruisers and destroyers. I landed in Vietnam but the chronic lack of supplies meant I couldn't do much at all. The Brits did manage to gain a foothold in Kyushu and southern Honshu but it looked like it'd be a stalemate. I contented myself with a victory in Europe.
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Wow...your British allies who fought along side you on the continent need your help in the pacific! Can't quit now!
You've got the ground technologies researched!.... Invade Russia, you can get to Asia through there!
LOL! Alright you buggers. Your guilt trip worked. Although war weary and wholly unequipped for an offensive war halfway around he world, France never could say no to Mr. Churchill. Especially when he made those sad puppy dog eyes. (Of course, that could just be from the gin.)
After the fall of Italy, France's armies returned home expecting demobilization. When orders came for infantry to be ready to depart of SE Asia, the tankers breathed a secret sigh of relief and wished their comrades bonne chance. The marines just offered a Gallic shrug, picked up their rucksacks and started marching for the port in Toulon.
The Japanese had taken much of Indochina during the war but Hanoi was still nominally French. We had an operational harbour in Haiphong but simply getting there looked like a suicide run. The Japanese had taken Singapore and Malaya from the Brits and all of the Dutch East Indies. Getting through the Straits of Malacca looked like certain death. Nevertheless, the French navy set out from Toulon in November, 1944 with 6 divisions of marines,2 of infantry, and 3 of medium tanks. In addition, 3 wings of tactical bombers and 6 of fighter-bombers flew out from Lebannon and made a grueling series of flights to their new bases in Hanoi.
The fleet berthed at the French possession of Pondicherry, India in order to re-supply. The admiral contacted the British and asked for aid in running the gauntlet. The Brits, apparently questioning the sanity of such a move complied and dutifully sent some aging cruisers into the Strait. The French navy attempted to rush through during the dead of night on December 2nd but were spotted at dawn on the 3rd. An hour later, the first ships were lost to Japanese torpedo bombers off the coast of Rupat island. Dive bombers struck at noon as the fleet rounded the corner and passed by Singapore. Another 7 ships were lost before night fell.
The Japanese navy intercepted our flotilla somewhere between the Spratley Islands and Nha Trang. Six transport ships were lost, taking with them all 6 marine divisions. The remaining few shps docked in Haiphong a day later, disembarking the only two divisions to have survived the journey. The commander of the Saigon HQ's war thus far had consisted of three weeks of retreating from Saigon to Hanoi and then several years of sitting back and eating pho. Not exactly the most inspiring commander to lead the troops.
The Japanese hadn't placed too much priority on taking or holding Indochina. They had a half dozen or so light infantry divisions in the southern half of the country and they were mostly tied up with hunting down Vietnamese partisans.
The next few months turned into a war of manouvre as French and Japanese forces marched and counter-marched through the jungles attempting to cut one another's supply before striking. The jungle turned out to be more of an enemy than the Japanese. Luckily, one of the divisions to have survived the trip from France was an armoured one and the Japanese had nothing that could stop our tanks. We slowly but surely managed to cut each division off from supply, starve it, and then kill it. By June of, 1945 most of the colony was back under French control. We even managed to send a second fleet from France and land 6 more divisions on the island of Sumatra, taking control of naval bases at Medan and Padang.
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This effort really was a tiny little sideshow though as the Brits had managed to take Saipan, then Okinawa, and finally invade the Japanese home islands in 1945. The Japanese infantry were completely out-classed and the Brits just rolled them up. Osaka fell on June 1st. Tokyo fell on the 18th but the IJA refused to surrender. The Brits were forced to chase them all the way to the northernmost tip of Hokkaido before they finally capitulated and the war ended.
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A happy ending. Now I'm satisfied. :)
Thanks SDR! Let it never be said you don't go the extra mile for us. ;)
Outstanding, SDR! Love the outcome. It's one of the things about Paradox games I like. They make for good story telling if you are so inclined. And you, sir, are so inclined ;)