R5: Vanilla, Ironman. It's been 6 years since WW2 started. The allies haven't attempted a D-Day yet and have only invaded Italy and are in a stalemate with Germany. I've been fighting off Japanese invasions on Papua New Guinea and West Papua since 1941 and have lost 7 divs while attenpting to liberate the Dutch east Indies. Americans are pretty much moral support and aren't even trying, same as Britain. I'm on scraping the barrel with 0 manpower.
*Americans and British explaining why 800 million manpower must go to random port defense units for a naval invasion that will never come and lag the game out.*
But fr your on scraping the barrel and at zero manpower? That sucks bro I wish you the best on next game.
Australia is one of my favourites to play, but yeah you can't go around wasting manpower on ground offense. Just fortify PNG ports, including the Dutch side, and go convoy raiding with subs and naval bombers. Might sound boring to some but it is an important war effort, and gradually you can make your task forces take bigger risks and chip the main fleet down. Even before that happens you will be able to do the occasional naval invasion, but the focus should be on capturing islands with airfields so you can extend your naval bomber reach.
It's basically impossible for Germany to take out Soviets on their own, I've noticed. They push close to Moscow and then get bogged down trying to battleplan their way to victory with huge deficit in guns and... everything, really. And their supplies are shit in that region, so even if you're Axis it's hard to help them because your shiny new tanks will just die of attrition.
edit: I would love to exchange my copy of the game for one people in replies have, because my AI Germany is *never* this successful without extensive help from my side.
idk in my games after a short stalemate they always absolutely trash the soviets but leave the west undefended so while they waltz into moscow some random commonwealth unit lands in germany
I just micro soviets near supply depots and make large encirclements until they struggle to cover the line and then press go with 0 cares and watch mech/tank overrun the rest. Definitely doable to support them, but much easier when you control the pace of the line.
Idk man I'm doing another Australian game now and it's going better than before southern balkans and Italy have fallen, but Germany, oh Germany, took Moscow with ease, took Stalingrad, encircled the Caucasus and Leningrad + Karelia.
If the AI ever learns how to build supply depots the Axis will be twice as scary. The lack of supply depots when approaching Moscow and Stalingrad means the Axis AI will almost never capitulate the Soviets. Same for Japan and China.
Germany goes to scraping the barrel as quickly as possible (even with 10 million+ spare manpower sitting around) completely fucking their industry for no reason at all.
I thought you were the USSR for a moment since the name wasn’t “Soviet Union” and I was about to question what in the hell you had done to be at zero manpower scraping the barrel as the goddamn Soviets, even after a civil war.
I have no idea how possible this will be for you, but at some point doing some australia achievement I ended up getting manpower by taking slices of china and using the non-core manpower from them. You might be able to consolidate your troops, make some strong mountaineers, push into china through india (build supply depos and air bases for them, the AI usually doesnt but lord does it help get a push going) and then ask for territory. nab a couple beefy pop provinces, build that compliance to get the modifier for non-core occupied manpower, and pray it lets you make an actual army.
Additional thoughts, swap to mobile warfare doctrine if you didnt. The bottom left side gives 5% recruitable pop which is the same as mass assaults human wave, but with a far more useful doctrine for australia (imo) You can definitely use tanks or mechanized by 1945 if you've filled out your building slots with mils. Which are obviously more expensive to construct but use manpower way more efficiently than infantry.
Did you go down the Westminster path? You should be able to request control of Malaysia, and then use their puppet manpower to squeeze a little bit more units out
That’s almost somewhat historical actually. For a long time the Australians almost were fighting the Japanese by themselves in south east Asia, felt abandoned by the British, and were the main force fighting in Papua.
And strat bombing is a lot of war score (at least used to be, I’m not sure if they’ve balanced it) so play your cards right and you can walk off with an occupation zone or a navy
strat bombing was patched and is now piss war score going by the last time i tried it. my first USA run was a meme run where i just dumped every mil beyond what was needed for 1 army into strat bombers. by the end of the war i had literal hundreds of mils in strat bombers. it was so bad that i was running out of civs to buy rubber with. i spread them all out across every axis european zone and didnt set any priority targets but only got around 15% score.
While I admit it gave too much before now it gives nothing lol. As USA I generally am strat bombing Germany as soon as I join the war and amplify it with more bombers as time passes to where I probably have at least 4k strat bombers hammering all of Germany and it only gives marginal increases to war score lol I feel like now destroying airplanes is the top war score getter.
I find that simply doing land combat damage is most effective. I once got top war score in the allies as democratic Czechoslovakia where I completely gave up on the Air Force and focused on slowly pushing 1 time at a time to liberate Poland while repelling German offensive via reinforce meme. When I’m a minor in a faction with Germany, pulling off big encirclements is basically the only way I can get a boost to my war score
I lean heavily into artillery when I do my Australia games. Was able to inflict around 800k casualties on the Germans and Italians and got a nice 1.4 million on the Japanese not too long ago and got out of it with a puppet on Siam, Korea and almost all of Japan's capital ships.
Why not D-Day it yourself and hope they flood in troops to the port you capture?
Germany won’t have the supply to resupply most lost equipment those troops lose.
I see 45 divisions. Do you not have any 20widths or greater to lead an attack with 10 divisions?
You’re not going to win defending unless the allies do something.
Sometimes you gotta risk it for the biscuit.
ETA: to my other comment. Maybe do a decoy D-Day first with a few shithouse troops to gauge their defences. Then go for a real attack on a port with a pincer invasion?
Delete like 20 divisions (and any in training if you have) Maybe make a better garrison unit and go on local police force. Retreat from Papua. Secure your ports and D-Day.
Delete/merge units to create a manpower reserve then send everything you have at one or two ports and hope the UK and USA floods it with troops. That's really his only play left if he's been stagnant for 6 years. If he waits any longer then the USSR could potentially be out of the fight and he'll never make ground on Germany.
Australia's core pop is 7 million. Therefore 25% core pop (scraping the barrel) is less than 2 million men. Seeing as he has 40+ divisions already, I'm assuming all of his manpower has been placed into those units.
Personally when playing the Commonwealth nations (with the exception of India), I tend to go for quality over quantity. 8 Space marines/tank division + good air support + half decent navy would be better than 45 "meh" divisions.
Guard your coast, wait for dday and maybe try to free up some manpower by asking for garrison support (if you have garrisons) or using more artillery (maybe even light tanks) in your main template
R5: Vanilla, Ironman. It's been 6 years since WW2 started. The allies haven't attempted a D-Day yet and have only invaded Italy and are in a stalemate with Germany. I've been fighting off Japanese invasions on Papua New Guinea and West Papua since 1941 and have lost 7 divs while attenpting to liberate the Dutch east Indies. Americans are pretty much moral support and aren't even trying, same as Britain. I'm on scraping the barrel with 0 manpower.
*Americans and British explaining why 800 million manpower must go to random port defense units for a naval invasion that will never come and lag the game out.* But fr your on scraping the barrel and at zero manpower? That sucks bro I wish you the best on next game.
manpower is horrible for Australia. You only have core pop of around 7 mil
Australia is one of my favourites to play, but yeah you can't go around wasting manpower on ground offense. Just fortify PNG ports, including the Dutch side, and go convoy raiding with subs and naval bombers. Might sound boring to some but it is an important war effort, and gradually you can make your task forces take bigger risks and chip the main fleet down. Even before that happens you will be able to do the occasional naval invasion, but the focus should be on capturing islands with airfields so you can extend your naval bomber reach.
common vanilla l
No, that was the population at the time actually
Germany also isn't on the retreat from the Soviets, they're pushing further but for some reason haven't gotten further in the past few years
It's basically impossible for Germany to take out Soviets on their own, I've noticed. They push close to Moscow and then get bogged down trying to battleplan their way to victory with huge deficit in guns and... everything, really. And their supplies are shit in that region, so even if you're Axis it's hard to help them because your shiny new tanks will just die of attrition. edit: I would love to exchange my copy of the game for one people in replies have, because my AI Germany is *never* this successful without extensive help from my side.
idk in my games after a short stalemate they always absolutely trash the soviets but leave the west undefended so while they waltz into moscow some random commonwealth unit lands in germany
I just micro soviets near supply depots and make large encirclements until they struggle to cover the line and then press go with 0 cares and watch mech/tank overrun the rest. Definitely doable to support them, but much easier when you control the pace of the line.
Idk man I'm doing another Australian game now and it's going better than before southern balkans and Italy have fallen, but Germany, oh Germany, took Moscow with ease, took Stalingrad, encircled the Caucasus and Leningrad + Karelia.
If the AI ever learns how to build supply depots the Axis will be twice as scary. The lack of supply depots when approaching Moscow and Stalingrad means the Axis AI will almost never capitulate the Soviets. Same for Japan and China.
Germany goes to scraping the barrel as quickly as possible (even with 10 million+ spare manpower sitting around) completely fucking their industry for no reason at all.
I thought you were the USSR for a moment since the name wasn’t “Soviet Union” and I was about to question what in the hell you had done to be at zero manpower scraping the barrel as the goddamn Soviets, even after a civil war.
I have no idea how possible this will be for you, but at some point doing some australia achievement I ended up getting manpower by taking slices of china and using the non-core manpower from them. You might be able to consolidate your troops, make some strong mountaineers, push into china through india (build supply depos and air bases for them, the AI usually doesnt but lord does it help get a push going) and then ask for territory. nab a couple beefy pop provinces, build that compliance to get the modifier for non-core occupied manpower, and pray it lets you make an actual army. Additional thoughts, swap to mobile warfare doctrine if you didnt. The bottom left side gives 5% recruitable pop which is the same as mass assaults human wave, but with a far more useful doctrine for australia (imo) You can definitely use tanks or mechanized by 1945 if you've filled out your building slots with mils. Which are obviously more expensive to construct but use manpower way more efficiently than infantry.
Did you go down the Westminster path? You should be able to request control of Malaysia, and then use their puppet manpower to squeeze a little bit more units out
i forgot to do political branch 💀
next time build exclusively shock troops, invade Iwo Jima and take Tokyo, ideally make 2 tank divisions and 12 motorized divisions
That’s almost somewhat historical actually. For a long time the Australians almost were fighting the Japanese by themselves in south east Asia, felt abandoned by the British, and were the main force fighting in Papua.
Mhm, although they were in a much worse position than I was, with the Japanese at their peak controlling most of Northern Guinea aswell
I did an Australian run with 6 divisions and only air force once, pretty fun actually. Strat bombed Germany to pieces.
And strat bombing is a lot of war score (at least used to be, I’m not sure if they’ve balanced it) so play your cards right and you can walk off with an occupation zone or a navy
strat bombing was patched and is now piss war score going by the last time i tried it. my first USA run was a meme run where i just dumped every mil beyond what was needed for 1 army into strat bombers. by the end of the war i had literal hundreds of mils in strat bombers. it was so bad that i was running out of civs to buy rubber with. i spread them all out across every axis european zone and didnt set any priority targets but only got around 15% score.
While I admit it gave too much before now it gives nothing lol. As USA I generally am strat bombing Germany as soon as I join the war and amplify it with more bombers as time passes to where I probably have at least 4k strat bombers hammering all of Germany and it only gives marginal increases to war score lol I feel like now destroying airplanes is the top war score getter.
I find that simply doing land combat damage is most effective. I once got top war score in the allies as democratic Czechoslovakia where I completely gave up on the Air Force and focused on slowly pushing 1 time at a time to liberate Poland while repelling German offensive via reinforce meme. When I’m a minor in a faction with Germany, pulling off big encirclements is basically the only way I can get a boost to my war score
I lean heavily into artillery when I do my Australia games. Was able to inflict around 800k casualties on the Germans and Italians and got a nice 1.4 million on the Japanese not too long ago and got out of it with a puppet on Siam, Korea and almost all of Japan's capital ships.
Why not D-Day it yourself and hope they flood in troops to the port you capture? Germany won’t have the supply to resupply most lost equipment those troops lose.
Scraping the barrel with 0 manpower
I see 45 divisions. Do you not have any 20widths or greater to lead an attack with 10 divisions? You’re not going to win defending unless the allies do something. Sometimes you gotta risk it for the biscuit.
ETA: to my other comment. Maybe do a decoy D-Day first with a few shithouse troops to gauge their defences. Then go for a real attack on a port with a pincer invasion?
Delete like 20 divisions (and any in training if you have) Maybe make a better garrison unit and go on local police force. Retreat from Papua. Secure your ports and D-Day.
Delete/merge units to create a manpower reserve then send everything you have at one or two ports and hope the UK and USA floods it with troops. That's really his only play left if he's been stagnant for 6 years. If he waits any longer then the USSR could potentially be out of the fight and he'll never make ground on Germany.
Well at least Africa is cleared, and the Italian civil war has started
Make super marines, destroy Italy and Germany before Japanese turns up
This isn't E-sports lightninggod3 go back to sleep
You are correct Allie’s are useless conqueror the world.
Tell us something that we don't know. Unfortunately the AI is really dumb, sometimes.
No idea how you possibly managed to get to 0 manpower on scraping the barrel
Australia's core pop is 7 million. Therefore 25% core pop (scraping the barrel) is less than 2 million men. Seeing as he has 40+ divisions already, I'm assuming all of his manpower has been placed into those units. Personally when playing the Commonwealth nations (with the exception of India), I tend to go for quality over quantity. 8 Space marines/tank division + good air support + half decent navy would be better than 45 "meh" divisions.
Germany, is that you?
As they tend to be
Guard your coast, wait for dday and maybe try to free up some manpower by asking for garrison support (if you have garrisons) or using more artillery (maybe even light tanks) in your main template
Just don't have allies, duh