Further Writing by the Victors- A Hearts of Iron III German AAR

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Further Writing by the Victors- A Hearts of Iron III German AAR

The Prologue (Writers Ramblings)

Many years ago I wrote the Hearts of Iron II AAR, Written by the Victors. In this, I played a game I was very comfortable with and quite expertly conquered the entire world. Well, Europe. That’s all that matters.

This time however, I am playing Hearts of Iron III, a game I have…not played that much. In fact the few times I did give it a shot I detested it. Maybe it was how comfortable I was with HoI2, maybe it just wasn’t that great a game, who knows? It’s now been almost a year since I’ve played any Paradox game though, so hopefully I’ve gotten it all out of my system. I’m using the most up-to-date version of the game, Semper-Fi and all.

Of course, this means I have little to no idea as to what I’m doing, and as such the Council of Doom will come in much more handy this time. Any advice, suggestions or just plain support will be handy. It will be a tad embarrassing if the Russians are on the eastern front, the Allies are landing in the west and I still don’t know how to redeploy my troops…

The set-up:

Scenario: 1936 Grand Campaign
Country: Germany
Difficulty: Normal


BUT WHERE’S SWITZERLAND, DAMMIT!?

I shall fight with this:

Spoiler:

Brigades? What happened to my lovely divisions? Oh my stars and garters.


Well that’s clearly not enough air units. What’s my Air Marshal doing?


And about the amount of ships I would expect.

Council of Doom is, as always, in effect. Take whatever post you might want, it’s pretty carefree here in, er, 1930’s Germany. If you don’t take a post, I’ll throw you to the front-lines, so I have someone to blame for anything that goes wrong…

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I hereby claim my rightful place as the Minister of Silly Walks!

[Maniacal]

Luftwaffe Reichmarshall Prince von Scamp flying in from the Flying Circus!

[Jos Ballenbak]

Commander of Land forces? ( This time I don't want to be bossed around by PrinceScamp)

[ZeletDude]

Commander of the navy please.

Cannot wait for this!

[Captain2]

I request to be a General in India....

I mean, Head of Foreign affairs

[carmen510]

I shall take my place of "His Excellency, Minister of Internal Security for Life, Field Marshal, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the World in General and Germany in Particular."

[Dachs]

Requesting the post of American Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Germany

[serek000]

I'll be Himmler's Secretary for Horoscopes and Astrology, if that's available. Because he was into that stuff. Goebbels too.

[LightSpectra]

Secretary of the Reich's diplomatic and public relations to Liechtenstein, reporting!

[nodikus]

Panzer commander on the eastern front please.

[Kozmos]

Kriegsmarine plox.

[Volum]

Having never played HOI3 at all, i think I'l take a quiet position as a General in charge of the Western front. I don't see anything happening there at all so Ill just spend my days driving around in a tank checking up those fine ladies.

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Additional Writing by the Victors- A Hearts of Iron III German AAR

Part One

Being the sort of hands-on leader that I am, I begin my German career as Fuhrer by coming to terms with the new methods of control at my disposal. Naturally my first instinct was to visit the production department.



“SuperBeaver, get over here.”
“What is it, Kan?”
“They’ve swapped it all around. The production sliders - consumer goods and production should be at the top, reinforcements and upgrades at the bottom.”
“I’m sure they had good reason.”
“It’s confusing! I could have ordered my tanks to be upgraded when what I wanted was to make sure the population was getting enough food. I’d have riots on the streets and only a nice shiny tank to show for it.”
“Well you caught it before anything bad happened.”
“It’s an unnecessary switch. How about I invade Sweden instead of Norway this time around, see how Paradox like that?”

At any rate everything looks fine. I set things to how I’m used to in HoI2 and decide not to start building anything new just yet. I head over to research and discover a brand new ‘Distribution of Leadership’ slider. This is a little more confusing to me, as I have no context to base my decision here on. So I bring up an advisor.



It’s a wonderful feature Paradox have added, this ‘advisor’ thing. Plus everyone can all blame him if things go horribly in the next few years.

I decide to leave research for now, come back to it in a few days once everyone has made a few suggestions on what to do and then I ignore them and choose what I want to research. Finally for now I head over to the diplomatic quarters in order to get an idea of what the world thinks of us. Unfortunately I’m intercepted by a distinctively non-German member of the Council.

“Hello there, Kan.”
“Oh no.”
“Name’s Dachs, just arrived in Berlin today”
“Look, I’m sure everything around here is historically accurate, we don’t want any trouble.”
“Oh don’t worry about that, everything looks fine. Anyway, I’m the American Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Germany.”
“You made that up.”
“The position? No I didn’t.”
“No. Plenipotentiary. That’s not a real word. It’s practically Welsh.”
“Uh huh. Listen, you wouldn’t know where to find the rest of the Council?”
“Sure, we hold all official meetings in the Reichstag.”
“Ah…I think you’ll find that since 1933 all party meetings have been held in the Krolloper, just across-”
“Oh for goodness sake. Look, have this genuine Prussian flag from 1892 and bugger off.”

Which is about as diplomatic as I can get for today, being a bit confused about it all. The nice big triangle on the screen does bring back some fond memories of the very first Hearts of Iron, though it does make me wonder how ahistorical things might get in the coming years, judging by that version.

Finally though, something catches my eye: A Quest!



I don’t know how intelligence manages to work out that having two more brigades will tip the Allies hand towards letting us have the Rhineland, but I don’t mind. It’s a goal, and a quick and easy one at that. I order the training of three new infantry divisions, which will be finished in April, and decide to figure out just how to move my troops about the map.


Council Advice: What to produce? What to research? Any suggestions at this early stage of the game is completely welcome.

[SuperBeaverInc.]

All research needs to go into silly walks. And of course you should recruit more infantry to perform said silly walks.

[Captain2]

My, what a dashing advisor feature there. Nothing artificial about that intelligence.

Build infantry, research infantry related weapons

[Jos Ballenbak]

Invest in superhuman soldiers, if anything goes wrong you can hire professional zombie hunters to fix everything!

For starters we need a solid infantry backbone for the Wehrmacht!

[Maniacal]

We must rules the skies mein fuhrer so that we may rain terror and destruction down upon our enemies!

[ZeletDude]

We need a strong surface fleet to rule the seas. (battleships and carriers) and their support ships (heavy, light cruisers and destroyers) submarines are also needed.

[Jos Ballenbak]

Lots of spam!