Kaiserreich Bulgaria

Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2017-07-01 15:31:18 UTC

#hoi4 #kaiserreich Bulgaria - country with 200k total manpower, and half of its focus tree locked behind DoWing Serbia, who's by that time faction leader with Romania and Greece.

Of course that was of little importance, as Serbia preemptively attacked me, with Romania joining. Fortunately nobody told Romanians beforehand, so I rushed Bucuresti, getting my troops bleeding hard, but eliminating them amazingly quickly.

That opened a one tile gap in Serbian frontline just far North, so I railroaded all my Romanian front troops there, and rushed Beograd (suffering the usual losses to keep Serbian army pinned), winning that in weeks and paying -300pp for the privilege of not just white peacing them.

After that came long wait until world tension got high enough that I could start fabricating. I got Albania, Greece, and after that choices were very limited - Russia/Ukraine, Austria-Hungary, or Turkey.

Russia/Ukraine would take forever even if I succeeded somehow. Turkey would take forever due to straits. That leaves only one possible direction.

Playing without xp-free division template changes, as I'm wondering if it's making AI somehow dumber. I forgot just how hard it was to get that early XP. I wasn't really planning that, and wars I had so far involved very little fighting, so now my first tank divisions will come out in May, 4 months into the war.

Starting small and at inevitable war with everyone.


I think Danubian Federation is a new way for Austria-Hungary to reform. They have a lot more troops and planes than I do, but that's pretty much a given in the kind of wars I tend to fight.

Mitteleuropa fights Russians and Internationale, so I don't expect them to do well.

Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2017-07-01 17:16:05 UTC

#hoi4 #kaiserreich Bulgaria

AI in AUS campaign was very passive. Austria had none of that. They were vicious and in two months lost 822k of their initial 1086k army. I've never see anything that aggressive.

The war took from 22nd of January to 2nd of July, and Austria never for a second completely stopped viciously attacking, even when all hope was lost - but it slowed down a bit out of necessity, and had 0 manpower at current law level.

All of Austria had far more mountains and rivers than I expected, and I had regular 7 infantry / 2 artillery with just support artillery and maintenance, nothing fancy like marines or mountaineers or tanks or engineers.

Just as soon as I won, my whole focus tree completed. I think that's the first time I've ever had this happen - Bulgaria has really tiny tree, even smaller than most generic trees. Well, if that doesn't say I won the game, I'm not sure what would.

The only focus that was not taken was demanding Thrace from Turkey, but that requires Turkey to be 80% losing some other war, and they white peace out all their enemies before capitulation progress reached that level.

I finally finished training tank divisions (3 mtank 3 mot) last few weeks before war ended, but with poor supply and weak state of Austrian army I didn't even deploy them.

I like those short one afternoon campaigns, much better action to time ratio than a month of CK2 or EU4.

About the point where Austria fell. Tank divisions still not ready. It's crazy how few non-mountain non-river paths there are.

And as usual AI decided to naval invade me. Before that Greece naval invaded me. Why is AI so in love with sending troops to their death?


This short campaign is just Constantinople short of perfect borders.

If I had focus to join one of WK2 factions, I'd probably do it, but without such possibility I'll just end it here.