HOI2: Problems with Germany

[Dinner]

I'm trying to figure out an alliance strategy for Germany in the '36 campaign. Today I played German and I spent big trying to convince other states to join my alliance so by '38 I had allied with Japan, Nationaqlist Spain, Bulgaria, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, and Austria (try as I might I couldn't get Italy to join). At first I was elated to have so many allies, however, my happiness soon turned to horror when my large alliance caused the USA to join the war in 1939! To make a bad case worse the Soviets started the winter war event bring them into the war as well.

Another problem is if you ally with Austria then the annexation of Austria event does not occur and if you ally with Japan then you are at war in 1937 so none of your good events are triggered so no Sudtenland & no Slavakia as an ally. So basically what I thought was a good game turned out to have me on a death kneel by Jan '41.

In the future I'm thinking about excluding Austria so the annexation event triggers plus I won't want to ally with either Japan or Finland until after France & Poland are defeated or else I'll lose events and/or end up fighting the Soviets to early. Does anyone have any other ideas for playing Germany?

[Nikolai]

I would never ally Japan, that's for sure. I'd recommend you to get historical allies at first. Oh, and +200 with USA can gives you the chance to get a non-aggression pact with them. Not an alliance, but an alliance breaker. Italy will switch AI files after you take Paris IIRC, from then on it's pretty easy to get an alliance with them. For my game(Normal/Normal), I get no allies other than through events until I had taken France. Then I got Italy. After that I attacked Jugoslavia, then Bulagaria and released the countries in that area. Especially Bulgaria proved a valuable ally, as they got a good number of units that I could use. I got Hungary early on, and they also gave me good unit numbers. Later I took Greece(difficult with Crete, but I was lucky with Italy taking care of GB's fleet long enough for me to make a landing after a while. Romania was an ally of Germany mostly in HoI1, but here I didn't get them, so I took them...

My rule number one was to keep most of the land I took, but some places(Balkan mostly) I released all land as soon as I could, to get the full use of the manpower of theirs. (note it being near Soviet and the Mediterrainian to secure my southern flank and help me against the great bear)

[asleepathewheel]

You have to wait quite awhile, iirc to get romania onboard. they have to have a coup, maybe in 41

[Grumbold]

I'm surprised you could get so many allies in a patched game, they are usually quite reluctant, even at +200. You definitely need to be more careful in HoI2 about ahistorical alliances or conquests. The "badboy" hits from either can rapidly sour relations with the rest of the world and derail events.

[Nikolai]

As mentioned, most of my "allies" are puppets I created to use for maximum use of manpower and such.

[Main_Brain]

It seems to me that he main problem is not to blame on your Allies but on Adolf himself. The Badboy/Belligerance he gets while a War is a Nuisance when playing Historically but seemed to ruin your Day: JAP is too soon at war which brings a Badboy of 0.5 Per Day.. {[Hateful Demagogue]}
Ugly.
USA needs GER at ~50 BB to declare war IIRC?
Ah well at least the Brits/French got no Gearing Up Events ;=)

[Dinner]

I thought both of them got the gearing up events when you retake the Rhineland.

[Nikolai]

I think there are more of them. I think I've seen some more in the event files, if I'm not confusing them with some others that is...

EDIT: With a short and hurried look in the files, I think I was wrong after all...

[Dinner]

The US gets three gearing up events which remove the handycaps on it's economy and dramatically improve IC. As I recall France and the UK each get one gearing u event when Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.

[asleepathewheel]

Are those permanent events?

Cause I played a game as the US, gearing to RULE THE WORLD and after I took out the axis I lost 75% of my industry due to peace. Is this how it always works, or did I break the game by joining the allies in 1939 (hence, not getting any gearing events)

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Main_Brain
It seems to me that he main problem is not to blame on your Allies but on Adolf himself. The Badboy/Belligerance he gets while a War is a Nuisance when playing Historically but seemed to ruin your Day: JAP is too soon at war which brings a Badboy of 0.5 Per Day.. {[Hateful Demagogue]}
Ugly.
USA needs GER at ~50 BB to declare war IIRC?
Ah well at least the Brits/French got no Gearing Up Events ;=)

After playing another game as Germany I have to agree with your assessment. My badboy was the reason the US joined. The other problem (the USSR joining in 1940) was a result of me having an alliance with Finland when the winter war event triggered. In the future I will release puppet states to lower my bad boy rating and I will not ally with Finland or Lithuania until after France is history.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Are those permanent events?

Cause I played a game as the US, gearing to RULE THE WORLD and after I took out the axis I lost 75% of my industry due to peace. Is this how it always works, or did I break the game by joining the allies in 1939 (hence, not getting any gearing events)

I'm not sure as I've never played the US that way before. There are big problems with many of the events and just today I found the Germany creates Croatia event is fubar. It releases Croatia as a puppet of... Croatia. It should be that Croatia is a puppet of Germany but I think the scripting needs to be changed.

[Main_Brain]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I think there are more of them. I think I've seen some more in the event files, if I'm not confusing them with some others that is...

EDIT: With a short and hurried look in the files, I think I was wrong after all...

I just checked the Files ;=)

There is indeed only a Single Event for UK and France each but it can be triggered several Times:
Rhineland,
Anschluss
Treaty of Munich
The End of Czechoslovakia
MR Pakt

Each Gearing Event increases The PeaceTime Production by 10% for them so it may be a better Choice to manually annex Austria? I think only Italy guarantees their Independence so it might be worth it. Anyone tried that Path?

[SirOsis]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I'm not sure as I've never played the US that way before. There are big problems with many of the events and just today I found the Germany creates Croatia event is fubar. It releases Croatia as a puppet of... Croatia. It should be that Croatia is a puppet of Germany but I think the scripting needs to be changed.

This bug is documented. There is a fix for it on the Paradox forum. The script is messed up and can be fixed relatively easy apparently.

[Dinner]

I'll wait for an oficial patch but I honestly think easy stuff like this should have been solved pre-release. I'm happy they'll fix it but the very fact that basic things like this are screwed up shows how little time, money, and play testing they put in this game.