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Hearts of Iron IV >  Workshop > maverick's Workshop > BlackICE Historical Immersion Mod > Discussions
BlackICE Historical Immersion Mod
Description Discussions840 Comments20979 Change Notes
Belrick 2 Jun, 2024 @ 1:35pm
2nd German Run, still crushed like Dog
I did a lot more right this time, but the game ended in may 1942

-I was losing 70 trains a month despite heavy investment in fighters. Supply was constantly around 20%

-Low supply meant Barbarossa never had infantry on the front lines to push with the tanks. Once winter came and USSR counter attacked, the game was over. I hadn't inflicted anywhere enough casualties despite several large pockets. I never even made Minsk or Kiev lol

-Submarines were a waste of time. Achieved nothing . Ahistorical. Busted. Allies should suffer from subs until they tech up. (fun fact, Allies spent 5x what German did to win the battle of Atlantic. An economic victory in a sense for Germany)

-Britain's defence was iron. Was never going to achieve Sea lion. Can't complain.

-Norway campaign was super hard. Only won due to mountain infantry IMHO

-USA was doing excellent naval invasions along with Britain almost immediately. Too soon, too easy for them. Whack a mole but the moles got very large very fast indeed right when Germany needs to do well in USSR
Busted. Introduce delays to Allies being able to perform large Naval invasions.

-Axis. Japan did really well, with a small hand Italy did really well. All the Balkan states were useless. No idea how Hungary had 5k of losses by May 1942. Their AI is busted. For future playthroughs, best to invade and take their stuff

-Red Army vs. Wehrmacht. By May 1942 I had half a million losses to USSR 2 mill. But I had maxed out (and was in decline) 1.7 mill troops to USSR 2.5-4 million. and USA 2 million and Uk 1 million (after 1 million losses)
Ahistorical. Busted. I threw everything into maximising the Heer (Panzerwaffe was my only success until they weren't lol (i lost 8 full divisions to USSR counter attack because i stopped microing while defending)) and should of had 3 million by June 1941. Game doesn't let you produce enough units nor is the manpower pool anywhere NEAR big enough to do it anyway. Busted.

So in summary
Subs are useless, don't sink enough transports, take enormous losses.
Cannot produce enough units to matter vs AI free unit spawns
Trains are destroyed by long range bombing which is wrong. Trains suffered to CAS no level bombing and not early war either
AA and fighters do nothing to protect supply
Supply is broken causing the AI to just omit units from the from line. Sure supply problems DEEP into Russia is a real concern. But i had supply units in Poland!!!
Allies are ready to invade Europe too soon.
There is something broken about human player units Organisation. You cannot have units with even moderate org without having them without heavy equipment. Add Artillery and your infantry can no longer fight. Say what? (yes i had maxed doctrines)
Espionage is fun, way better than the base game and did a lot of good work for me.
Economy was also a whack a mole going from fixing one crisis to another lol. Never enough civ factories to get ahead of the needs of the Army.
German units are very poor on defence. I was warned ahead of time and sure enough...


Next attempt:
-Forget helping the navy with extra research and focuses
-Do build armoured trains.
-Could drop the medium bombers. Though i suspect they helped a bunch with their strikes especially vs. France and lowlands.


Ahhh not sure. If i stockpile way more trains and trucks, build more train tracks. I will have less units on the ground and i was already about half the number of required units.

On a final note, it was fun losing.
Lots of good things about this mod. Just doesn't feel as polished as Total War does.
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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments
Sol Inherent 2 Jun, 2024 @ 1:45pm 
That is too much for me to answer; you should join discord and ask specific questions there ^^ E.g. AI GER normally wrecks Allied Convoys with the starting subs

I find it very interesting you got invaded a lot. Against AI GER and a lot of players the AI is refusing to invade them. Could you maybe provide a savegame so I could check out what you did differently?
"-Axis. Japan did really well, with a small hand Italy did really well. All the Balkan states were useless. No idea how Hungary had 5k of losses by May 1942. Their AI is busted. For future playthroughs, best to invade and take their stuff"

Yes, you are correct. Axis Minors do not support anyone but each other, up until 1942 when theyre allowed to defend GER (against Soviets primarily but if Allies invade theyd assign units there as well). If they have planes they will actively support you though at any time (up to 1000 Fighters from what I generally observe in 1942, they just take a bit to get their air production up) Admittedly a bit hidden but there is a 2nd Diplomacy page, with a Diplomacy action which allows you to control which countries the AI is allowed to defend with divisions.

Generally, you REALLY need to do tremendous amounts of damage upon the Red Army during Barbarossa. That is the weakest they will ever be. But if Allies invaded you too soon its not particularily fair
Last edited by Sol Inherent; 2 Jun, 2024 @ 2:00pm
#1
Belrick 2 Jun, 2024 @ 2:03pm 
Originally posted by Sol Inherent:
That is too much for me to answer; you should join discord and ask specific questions there ^^ E.g. AI GER normally wrecks Allied Convoys with the starting subs

I find it very interesting you got invaded a lot. Against AI GER and a lot of players the AI is refusing to invade them. Could you maybe provide a savegame so I could check out what you did differently?
"-Axis. Japan did really well, with a small hand Italy did really well. All the Balkan states were useless. No idea how Hungary had 5k of losses by May 1942. Their AI is busted. For future playthroughs, best to invade and take their stuff"

Yes, you are correct. Axis Minors do not support anyone but each other, up until 1942 when theyre allowed to defend GER (against Soviets primarily but if Allies invade theyd assign units there as well). If they have planes they will actively support you though at any time (up to 1000 Fighters from what I generally observe in 1942, they just take a bit to get their air production up) Admittedly a bit hidden but there is a 2nd Diplomacy page, with a Diplomacy action which allows you to control which countries the AI is allowed to defend with divisions.

Generally, you REALLY need to do tremendous amounts of damage upon the Red Army during Barbarossa. That is the weakest they will ever be. But if Allies invaded you too soon its not particularily fair

Really appreciate your response
Wonder what i did wrong with subs then? Convoy raiding too close to UK? But even when i had air superiority they sunk little to nothing.
I guess i lucked out re: AI and its naval invasions in normandy! Don't get me wrong, love to see it. just prefer it in 1944 is all lol
#2
david_pna 19 Jun, 2024 @ 8:43am 
Helloo!!
I have played about 600 hours of Bice, I don't consider myself a noob, but this is the first time that the USSR overwhelmed me in the winter of 1941-1942.
In the summer of 1941 I made large encirclements of troops and destroyed more than 100 Russian divisions. I don't know exactly, but it seemed that in certain areas of the front the troops were already scarce.
What is my surprise that during the winter about 400 Russian divisions appear on the front and begin to push me in the direction of Germany... attacking me 10-3 or 8-4 in each battle along the entire front. At the end of winter my front is destroyed, including the panzer corps (no organization), I lack everything... total realism.
On the front, some 165 divisions are pitted against some 400 of the USSR.
The problem comes now, they don't stop pushing even in the summer with their army of zerlings and I am unable to stop them..
I'm playing on normal lvl. I need tips.
#3
Stolte 23 Jun, 2024 @ 6:45am 
Yeah buddy, same problem with me. I have about 4000 hours in the game 800 hours in BICE.

One or two weaks ago I wrote a comment that the SOV is too weak after trying 3 different runs. Operation Barbossa used to be very easy but now it seems like the SOV AI just cheats and spawns huge ammounts of Divisions.

I invaded with up to 2.5 Million men, 20 tank divisions, encircled 2.4 Million SOV with only 100-200k losses and still their divsion count rised. In my three different playthroughs as SOV I couldnt even train new divisions after Barbarossa started due to lack of equipment and my divisions still got clapped after the germans lost the modifiers even when I concentrated them against fewer german divisions.

It is now 12. july 1942 and the SOV pushed non stop from October 1941. They have 4.86 million losses vs 900k German losses. They have 3-5 million men in the army against my 3.3 million.

SOV units have a 31% country modifier on defense which I couldnt figure out why. My 4 medium tank divisions (focused on soft attack) struggle against 4 inf divisions.

My tip for your Navy. Do the bare minimum on research. Put every Dockyard you got on Subs and deploy them in 10 packs. Dont send them on the british coast, deploy them minimum 2 sea zones away from the home islands and check where most of the supply lines go through. (I have had them in Labrador sea, mid atlantic gap, Iberian Coast, african Coast and Cap verde plain through out the war)

My subs where the only thing that didnt disappoint me with only 11 destroyed while sinking 1360 convoys.

Also I would suggest that you fully train them up before sending them out if you didnt already.

I hope that helps.
Last edited by Stolte; 23 Jun, 2024 @ 6:47am
#4
Stolte 23 Jun, 2024 @ 7:31am 
Originally posted by david_pna:
Helloo!!
I have played about 600 hours of Bice, I don't consider myself a noob, but this is the first time that the USSR overwhelmed me in the winter of 1941-1942.
In the summer of 1941 I made large encirclements of troops and destroyed more than 100 Russian divisions. I don't know exactly, but it seemed that in certain areas of the front the troops were already scarce.
What is my surprise that during the winter about 400 Russian divisions appear on the front and begin to push me in the direction of Germany... attacking me 10-3 or 8-4 in each battle along the entire front. At the end of winter my front is destroyed, including the panzer corps (no organization), I lack everything... total realism.
On the front, some 165 divisions are pitted against some 400 of the USSR.
The problem comes now, they don't stop pushing even in the summer with their army of zerlings and I am unable to stop them..
I'm playing on normal lvl. I need tips.

Hi, as I stated above I have the same problem with my current run. I remembered now that I usually attacked the SOV in 1942 which was much easier. I think most of the units spawn in arround august 1941. So if you attack in 1942 they are already on your frontline which makes it easy to encircle them with the buffs of Barbarossa.

But note that I havent tried this tactic for years so I dont know if it is up to date. But I am trying it atm with a new run since my historical run didnt work whatsoever (details are above). I will inform you if it worked or not.
#5
Stolte 25 Jun, 2024 @ 7:26am 
Originally posted by Belrick:
I did a lot more right this time, but the game ended in may 1942

-I was losing 70 trains a month despite heavy investment in fighters. Supply was constantly around 20%

-Low supply meant Barbarossa never had infantry on the front lines to push with the tanks. Once winter came and USSR counter attacked, the game was over. I hadn't inflicted anywhere enough casualties despite several large pockets. I never even made Minsk or Kiev lol

-Submarines were a waste of time. Achieved nothing . Ahistorical. Busted. Allies should suffer from subs until they tech up. (fun fact, Allies spent 5x what German did to win the battle of Atlantic. An economic victory in a sense for Germany)

-Britain's defence was iron. Was never going to achieve Sea lion. Can't complain.

-Norway campaign was super hard. Only won due to mountain infantry IMHO

-USA was doing excellent naval invasions along with Britain almost immediately. Too soon, too easy for them. Whack a mole but the moles got very large very fast indeed right when Germany needs to do well in USSR
Busted. Introduce delays to Allies being able to perform large Naval invasions.

-Axis. Japan did really well, with a small hand Italy did really well. All the Balkan states were useless. No idea how Hungary had 5k of losses by May 1942. Their AI is busted. For future playthroughs, best to invade and take their stuff

-Red Army vs. Wehrmacht. By May 1942 I had half a million losses to USSR 2 mill. But I had maxed out (and was in decline) 1.7 mill troops to USSR 2.5-4 million. and USA 2 million and Uk 1 million (after 1 million losses)
Ahistorical. Busted. I threw everything into maximising the Heer (Panzerwaffe was my only success until they weren't lol (i lost 8 full divisions to USSR counter attack because i stopped microing while defending)) and should of had 3 million by June 1941. Game doesn't let you produce enough units nor is the manpower pool anywhere NEAR big enough to do it anyway. Busted.

So in summary
Subs are useless, don't sink enough transports, take enormous losses.
Cannot produce enough units to matter vs AI free unit spawns
Trains are destroyed by long range bombing which is wrong. Trains suffered to CAS no level bombing and not early war either
AA and fighters do nothing to protect supply
Supply is broken causing the AI to just omit units from the from line. Sure supply problems DEEP into Russia is a real concern. But i had supply units in Poland!!!
Allies are ready to invade Europe too soon.
There is something broken about human player units Organisation. You cannot have units with even moderate org without having them without heavy equipment. Add Artillery and your infantry can no longer fight. Say what? (yes i had maxed doctrines)
Espionage is fun, way better than the base game and did a lot of good work for me.
Economy was also a whack a mole going from fixing one crisis to another lol. Never enough civ factories to get ahead of the needs of the Army.
German units are very poor on defence. I was warned ahead of time and sure enough...


Next attempt:
-Forget helping the navy with extra research and focuses
-Do build armoured trains.
-Could drop the medium bombers. Though i suspect they helped a bunch with their strikes especially vs. France and lowlands.


Ahhh not sure. If i stockpile way more trains and trucks, build more train tracks. I will have less units on the ground and i was already about half the number of required units.

On a final note, it was fun losing.
Lots of good things about this mod. Just doesn't feel as polished as Total War does.

Attack in May/April 1942.

I had 24 tank divisions which were more than enough to crush them. Consider adding light self propelled AA. It helped a lot in regions with small airfields.

I had arround 3.2 Million men in the army, keep one inf army in reserve in order to kill encirclements.

In my game it is now 1. Sep 1942. SOV lost 4.2 Million men (there are still some encirclements left) and I lost 300k. Leningrad is taken. My tanks are at the gate of Moscow and the road to Stalingrad is open.

Also take the focus prepare for the Long Winter War. It somehow gives you the bonus of kick in the door as well.
#6
Bibb 28 Sep, 2024 @ 11:42pm 
I attacked in 1941. Supply meant I started to crawl forward after 1-2 provinces and Barbarossa was a failure. How do you improve you supply state? What about trains, rail improvements and supply depots? I havent played with those, and I suspect this aspect made me lose the campaign.
#7
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