How do you counter an invasion?

K.Rokossovski wrote:

This may go for a stretched-out battle going on for a week; but if your war takes that long, you're doing something wrong; a war should be one (and yes, occasionally lost, as well) in a matter of days.

Both me and Egypt had quite some big territories at this point, Egypt had large parts of Africa and was allied with Algeria, North and South Sudan and South Africa. I was fighting Egypt out of Greece but that was hard since he had quite a large fleet around Greece, battleships included. After being landlocked for quite some time it took me a while to gather enough units to take out the fleet (naval bombers and subs). At the same time I was fighting Egypt and North + South Sudan in the middle east, then South India also joined the party in the middle east. South India was allied with Ma-clique and Tibet.

The plan was to go for Egypt first since he was closest and the most capable player it seemed. UK and France were dealing with landings from north America and were in no position to help. On top of that, Algeria was also attacking France.

Also, Arkhangelsk went east and was there with Volga Nzhny. So, I was somewhat alone in my attack against Egypt.

Right as I was approaching the Suez canal I ran into a problem, I could not get to close to the suez. There were railroad guns in Egypt and losing troops to capture the provinces was not a good idea at that point (because of my large territory they kept rebelling a lot). My land stretched from Yugoslavia until Persia, in between was mine.

Then, Volga Nzhny attacked South India with all of his troops, which sadly were mostly light tanks. So after he lost his troops, South India and his coalition pushed back. Arkhangelsk found a capable opponent in Saskatchewan that had crossed into Asia and thus, I had my hands full.

I had to help Arkhangelsk defend the east, I also had to fight Egypt.

I could not cross the mediterranean because of the Egyptian fleet. So at that time I knew I had to use rockets to destroy Egypts production. I could reach all his core provinces that produced steel. As the same was the case for his ally Algeria I asked France to help me bomb Algeria's steel production.

At that point, my advantage grew. With Egypt and Algeria having an Axis doctrine and thus very powerful tanks, them not being able to produce many tanks and ships helped a lot. This meant that after destroying Egypts fleet, I was free to launch an invasion. I did not mind using the rockets because my economy was bigger than that of Egypt.

Our fight lasted for two weeks and it was really cool to utilise the more resource type warfare that is now possible in 1.5 as opposed to 1.0 where that is just never a good idea. By winning minor battles and slowly killing few troops left and right Egypt started to suffer. Being Axis hitting the economy of Egypt hit even harder than it normally would have I might add.

Egypt and Algeria later joined my coalition and won the map with us als Volga Nzhny and UK were defeated. I had to give Egypt steel for the remainder of the map because I wrecked his economy. For the last two weeks of Egypt joining I gave him about 5k steel a day to have him building tanks again. When talking about it with him he said it was horrible. Seeing his army dwindle ever further with nothing he could do.

So yeah killing the enemies economy has its place in the game, especially on bigger maps where sometimes it is all you can do. I also do not think a war 'should be won within a couple of days'. Sometimes there is no way around stretched out battles. Second, stretched out battles are a lot of fun and super strategic!

I personally take a slower approach to war. My main strat is to move up my defensive units to an unoccupied Provence, blast all nearby enemies away with artillery and repeat. If I’m playing a more skilled player I will put together a strike force of some of my best fast units and ram through enemy lines to just wreck havoc behind them so my enemy would have to divert troops from the main battle line or retreat entirely. To counter this strat is the reason you need a response force (as discussed above) so you don’t end up totally collapsing. Also bombers would limit my mobility as I would have to carry AA and forts would drastically slow me down.

So TLDR this is just examples how the strats above would work against me.

OutsiderJoe wrote:

When I get invaded, I cant really defend

If you get attacked later, you should have a lot of bombers and artillery prepared already. Bombers are good for active players, artillery is decent even if you aren't very active (especially in mountains). Use tactical bombers against infantry, attack bombers against tanks.

If you attack 1 unit with 10 units, your units will deal 10x more damage to the enemy, while he defends with his normal damage. This means you can deal 10x more damage to the enemy and still receive the same damage back. Therefore, it's far more effective if you have an army of 10 units and the enemy has a small one, than if you both have small ones.

Bombers take advantage of that. You can merge them into a group of 10 and strike against any enemy army within your range. Bombers are very fast to use. They don't get locked in a fight (can change targets anytime) and can get behind the enemy lines, while land units would have to break the front defences first. This means that if your enemy doesn't have good airforce, your planes have complete freedom to choose which army within range to attack. You can find the smallest armies and then attack them, even if they're behind the front. As I explained above, having a larger army against a smaller one makes the fight very advantageous for you, as you deal far more damage without receiving more from the enemy.

Tactical bombers are used against infantry, attack bombers against tanks.

Artillery have a different advantage. They can fire from behind your other units and aren't affected by the close combat fight. This means the artillery is firing the entire time with full strength (as long as enemy bombers or artillery don't damage it). This gives you a large advantage, as the enemy gets hit before he even reaches you. Getting weakened before a battle has a serious impact as you not only have lower health, but also your damage lowered by damage efficiency. For an army at 90% health, it has 90% health * 92% damage, which is only 82.8% strength.

(Health and damage multiplies, the health is just how long you can stay in battle dealing damage, so the more health you have, the more damage you end up dealing).

I said an army of 10 earlier. If an army has over 10 units only its top 10 units with the highest damage against an armour class deal damage to that armour class. So, only 10 units can be fighting an armour class like Infantry, but more than 10 units can contribute overall, if different units are good against different armour classes in the enemy army.

But those things aren't even relevant to this (lol).

Following.