HOI 3 Time: God save the King, and those useless Americans too

**Mike-KT** · January 8th, 2012, 10:38 PM

I play a lot of HOI3, and usually people who do that end up making After-Action Reports to explain the game a bit, describe the history they've made for themselves and have a bit of fun. I'm in the middle of a game starting in 1941 as the United Kingdom and though people usually start at the beginning of their game, I've chosen to start in summer 1942 because it's pretty exciting now.

Here's the world at the moment

If you'll remember your geography, you'll remember that Britain is near the top here, above Europe; it's the lighter red territory. As is understandable, I still own many of my colonies around the world. So far Germany has conquered France and the Balkans but not made much in Russia. They had conquered Norway, but the USA and I pushed them out of the south. So far, other than just giving me command of their troops (about 3 corps worth) this has been their big action. The USA seems to own Vietnam for reasons I can't explain (FYI they don't own Sweden, they just a similar colour, same with Canada and the USSR.

I wish America would do more, they're really cramping my style.

Speaking of stepping up, not only is the Soviet Union bravely fighting those fascist invaders, but Nationalist China has completely stopped the Japanese invasion. If Japan had broken through and started moving into India, I'd have a pretty big issue on my hands.

Here's a close up of Europe. The lighter coloured territories are territories that I have intel on, either from Radar or code-breaking

Other than pocketing and destroying large amounts of Axis troops in Italy (as any good British general should be able to do after a couple attempts) my main successes have been
1) Staying alive
2) Creating a bridgehead in Denmark
3) Conquering Italy and their colonies/territories

Invading Sicily is usually pretty easy, and I'd say also a requirement. The problems usually come in invading the rest of Italy, which is mountainous and doesn't have a lot of room for large flanking manouvers. Regardless I pushed my way through, capturing Rome, Milan and Genoa. Along with a Royal Marine landing at Tirane, I captured enough land to force them to surrender.

This surrender freaked out the Germans, who send the majority of the French garrison south to deal with me

Here's a picture of me attempting to break into Nice (It's a fortified French city on the coast) You can't see my overall plan here, but I'm attempted to either breakthrough Nice and surround German troops, or move my divisions to that little bulge in the line, with diagonal grey stripes. If I can get through there, I can pour troops through and blitz the Germans. Also cool, you can see in Nice that my attack is 69% completed, which isn't bad. I have a small pinning attack on the forces to the north of that, in Barcelonnette, to stop them from being able to reinforce the Germans in Nice.

You can see in the North East of Italy I've got some mopping up to do. I think really this is where I should put the majority of my troops, as I can march through Austria and up into Germany directly, but I'm mostly worried about too many Germans coming from France, breaking through my lines and surrounding me in the Alps. There were a large amount of Romanian troops helping the Axis to defend Italy, which seems silly to me, as the Soviets are walking through their homeland at this point

On the North End, Here's Denmark

I had huge supply problems in Denmark, because other than Copenhagen, the available ports are very low level and have mediocre throughput. To cope with this I rotated troops in and out, and also worked my way over to Copenhagen, to liberate it and give me access to the port, and the accompanying sea zone. If I can eventually get my hands on a North Sea port, like Wilhelmshaven, I'll be in good shape.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I'm readying a Normandy invasion force, made up of fresh recruits with the latest equipment. With the majority of garrison troops now in the south, I will sweep in, capture Paris and free the French and the Low Countries.

**Derfel** · January 9th, 2012, 06:47 AM

Wow. This game looks intense. Keep up the posts!

**aSydiK** · January 9th, 2012, 07:56 AM

Cool... you should totally keep playing this game.

**WiseGuy** · January 9th, 2012, 08:36 AM

KT you should start a HOI blog in the blog section

**Xzinum** · January 9th, 2012, 08:45 AM

I'm actually downloading this game right now. Is KT available for tutoring?

**Mike-KT** · January 9th, 2012, 10:08 AM

I am available for tutoring, this is one of my favourite games of all time, so I'm very willing to help anyone and everyone learn. I of course am still learning lots about the game, so more people playing will also help me better understand it too. I will keep posting updates from this current game, though the outcome is not really in doubt. Hopefully after the Germans are beat I can get in a big war with the USSR to keep things interesting.

I've been thinking about what I wrote earlier about focusing on Berlin, and I think I should forgo my Normandy landings in favour of putting my fresh forces in Denmark/Holstein and pushing to Berlin from there. Part of the goal is taking territory from the Russians after the war is over

**McPwned** · January 9th, 2012, 10:36 AM

This is quite interesting but I don't really have anything to say. So instead of thoughful input, you get a random image off my imgur account.

**Mike-KT** · January 9th, 2012, 01:21 PM

Luckily I haven't needed any dragons to come and help me fight against the Japanese Zeros. I still manage to hold Hong Kong and am able to push back any Japanese that try to take it from me, even though they still for some reason own Guangzhou